Academic literature on the topic 'Arabic language Genitivus'

It is well documented that there is a one-to-many relationship between Arabic and English genitival constructions. However, it is unclear whether, given this syntactic variation, such constructions show equivalence in semantic function. For this purpose, a corpus-based contrastive analysis of these genitive constructions in a bilingual novel is carried out. As a prelude to a quantitative and qualitative inspection of the data, the (non)interchangeability of the alternative English genitives is determined by eliciting intuitive judgments from 10 linguistically naïve native speakers of British English. Quantitatively, the study shows that the Arabic genitive almost covers the semantic functions expressed by the various English genitives found in the corpus. Qualitatively, the study reveals that the flexibility derived from the English genitive variation, as opposed to the fixed word order of the Arabic genitive, allows the speaker to convey additional meaning. However, the Arabic genitive which employs various formal devices such as overt markers of case, gender, number, definiteness and person can express the same semantic functions. These features render Arabic functional with one genitive and require English to vary its genitive relative to certain phonological, syntactic, semantic and pragmatic conditions.

This article adopts the surface overlap and derivational complexity hypotheses to study crosslinguistic transfer in the adult second language (L2) acquisition of English genitive alternation (between the s-genitives and the of genitives) by intermediate and advanced Egyptian Arabic-speaking learners. While the s-genitive (e.g. the boy’s shirt) and the of-genitive (e.g. the shirt of the boy) are allowed in principle to denote possession, the s-genitive is the native option when the possessor is human and the possessum is nonhuman. In standard syntactic analyses, the s-genitive is held to be more complex than the of-genitive, since it involves raising the possessor in the determiner phrase (DP). Egyptian Arabic is also known for its genitive alternation; it uses the synthetic genitive (the construct state), and the analytic genitive (the free state) that both overlap partially or significantly with the of-genitive. The results of an elicited production task showed that the intermediate group tended to produce the of-genitives in contexts in which the s-genitives were the target construction. The advanced group, on the other hand, produced the more complex s-genitives. These findings suggest that the surface overlap involved between the of-genitives and the corresponding genitive constructions in Egyptian Arabic conspired to trigger this crosslinguistic transfer. Also, resorting to the overlapping of-genitive option can be viewed as a strategy to avoid the more complex s-genitive option. The results of the advanced group imply that the acquisition of English genitive alternation undergoes two developmental stages. In the first, learners favor the less complex and overlapping of-genitives. In the second, they acquire the syntactic derivation in the s-genitives that raises the possessor in the DP.

This article aims to make a contribution to the debate concerning the origins of the Moroccan Arabic genitive preposition d(yal) and its implications for the emergence of Moroccan Arabic recently reignited in Heath (2015). The latter sources the preposition to a combination of Late Latin allative dē and pronouns in the context of a language shift that took place in Roman cities in the Maghreb. This hypothesis is shown to be inconsistent with both the linguistic and historical evidence, which favour the alternative hypothesis that the preposition arose from merger between the Old Romance genitive preposition de/i and the Classical Arabic definite article (ʔ)al (Ouhalla 2009a&b). This development took place in the context of Andalusi Arabic, which emerged in Spain in the ninth and tenth centuries and subsequently spread to Morocco by migration. In addition to outlining further linguistic evidence for the hypothesis, the article highlights the role of diglossia in the emergence of Andalusi Arabic, where Classical Arabic was the High variety that accounted for much of the vocabulary and Iberian Old Romance as the Low variety that accounted for the syntax base.

The default Case is a common phenomenon in Universal Grammar (UG). There are some languages which require that all Noun Phrases have Case. For these languages default Case meets something that has become known as the Case Filter (Rouveret and Vergnaud 1980). This is to say, if a particular Noun Phrase is not assigned a Case in association with some specification in some other part of the grammar, then default Case assignment principle can apply. Typical cross-linguistic default Cases are Nominative or Genitive, though the value of the default Case can vary from one language to another. While the default Case in English is accusative, it is nominative in most languages. The default mechanism which assigns this value is only invoked when the structural mechanism is not applicable. This paper argues, by citing multiple cross-linguistic examples, that assumption of a default Case in a language accounts for a better understanding of its syntactic and morphological structure. Based on Schütze’s (2001) proposal for English, it develops a theory to account for the default Case in Standard Arabic (SA). It argues that nominal expressions in SA do not receive nominative Case by assignment of other syntactic means. As such, its mechanism does not interact with the Case Filter, which is assumed to be a syntactic constraint. This paper shows that diverse phenomena in the distribution of nominative nominal expressions in SA can be treated using default Case. Previous studies have ample evidence that such phenomena from other languages have proved that instances for default Case are common, and furthermore, that there are opportunities within the Case framework to reduce the cross-linguistic differences in Case patterns in the event of choosing a default Case.

Постановка задачи. В отличие от европейских языков в арабском языке выражение притяжательных отношений происходит иными способами, а именно приименными, в первую очередь это конструкции с идафой ( ´iḍāfah ), а также конструкции с предлогами. В данной работе мы рассматриваем конструкции с предлогами li - и min, как одно из средств выражения притяжательности в арабском языке. Результаты. Конструкции с предлогами li - и min наиболее часто используются в арабском языке для выражения поссессивных отношений, поскольку могут выражать различные случаи поссессивности. В функции предлогов для выражения притяжательных отношений, кроме этих предлогов, могут употребляться «несобственно предлоги», которые в качестве самостоятельных имен обычно не используются. Притяжательные отношения в арабском языке могут выражаться частицами, выполняющими роль предлогов ( inda ), также используются служебные слова ( siwa , gayra ). Подобная картина наблюдается и в арабских диалектах. В некоторых (мавританский) сохранились старые предлоги из литературного арабского языка. В других (марокканский) эту функцию выполняют служебные слова ( d, dyāl, mtāε ). Выводы. Предлоги принимают активное участие в выражении притяжательности в арабском языке и его диалектах. Функции предлогов в арабском языке перенимаются частицами. С помощью частиц и слов, выполняющих роль предлогов между компонентами словосочетаний, может осуществляться притяжательная связь. Синтаксически и семантически предлоги могут быть заменены родительным падежом или идафной конструкцией, но в некоторых случаях предложная группа предпочтительнее. Problem statement: In contrast to the European languages in Arabic, the expression of possessive relations occurs in other ways, namely, well-known, and in the first place these are constructions with idafa (´ iḍāfah ), as well as constructions with prepositions. In our work, we consider constructions with the preposition li- and the preposition min , as one of the means of expressing possession in the Arabic language. Results. In the function of prepositions to express possessive relations, in addition to the mentioned prepositions, “improper prepositions” can be used, which are usually not used as independent names. Possessive relations in the Arabic language can be expressed by particles playing the role of prepositions ( inda ), and official words ( siwa, gayra ) are also used. A similar pattern is observed in Arabic dialects. In some (Moorish) old prepositions from literary Arabic are preserved. In others (Moroccan), this function is performed by service words ( d, dyāl, mtāε ). Conclusion. Thus, prepositions take an active part in the expression of possession in the Arabic language and its dialects. The functions of prepositions in the Arabic language are taken over by particles. With the help of particles and words playing the role of prepositions between the components of phrases, a possessive connection can be made. Syntactically and semantically, prepositions can be replaced by the genitive or idafa construct, but in some cases the prepositional group is preferable.

Moroccan Arabic has two competing syntactic constructions for possessive marking: a synthetic one and an analytic one. The distribution of these constructions is investigated in semi-spontaneous narratives (frog stories) from four Moroccan cities and from the diaspora community in the Netherlands. This distribution is found to depend very much on the individual lexical items that head the construction, and on the form of the dependent, pronominal dependents favouring the synthetic form. Regional variation in Morocco is linked to the sociolinguistic history of the regions. The northern town of Tangier, where language contact with Berber (and Late Latin) had the greatest impact on the formation of Arabic dialects, shows the greatest preference for the analytic genitive. The immigrant community in the Netherlands shows an increased preference for the analytic form in comparison with their peers in Morocco. This concerns possessives with NP dependents in particular, which suggests a direct influence of Dutch as the socially dominant language.

Abstract Oral transmission of the Tannaitic Hebrew double genitive vocative ribbono šella‘olam ‘Master of the Universe’ maintains the definite article in the Hebrew component of two ancient Jewish vernaculars: Jewish Neo-Aramaic and Judeo-Arabic in Djerba. The textual transmission of the phrase, changed it graphemically from the Tannaitic original רִבּוֹנוֹ שֶׁלָּעוֹלָם into medieval רִבּוֹנוֹ שֶׁל עוֹלָם. The new spelling was the source of its final formation in Yiddish and Judeo-Spanish, without the definite article. The decategorialization of this double genitive phrase from a theocentric vocative to a semantically bleached interjection in these Jewish languages, especially Yiddish, was the point of departure for its meaning and pragmatic function in nascent spoken Modern Hebrew, as evidence from Mendele’s bilingual oeuvre indicates. It may be tentatively proposed that further grammaticalization and broadening of this substrate component structure-function pairing may have led to the emergence of a new category of analogically constructed discourse markers in Modern Hebrew.

Abstract Oral transmission of the Tannaitic Hebrew double genitive vocative ribbono šella‘olam ‘Master of the Universe’ maintains the definite article in the Hebrew component of two ancient Jewish vernaculars: Jewish Neo-Aramaic and Judeo-Arabic in Djerba. The textual transmission of the phrase, changed it graphemically from the Tannaitic original רִבּוֹנוֹ שֶׁלָּעוֹלָם into medieval רִבּוֹנוֹ שֶׁל עוֹלָם. The new spelling was the source of its final formation in Yiddish and Judeo-Spanish, without the definite article. The decategorialization of this double genitive phrase from a theocentric vocative to a semantically bleached interjection in these Jewish languages, especially Yiddish, was the point of departure for its meaning and pragmatic function in nascent spoken Modern Hebrew, as evidence from Mendele’s bilingual oeuvre indicates. It may be tentatively proposed that further grammaticalization and broadening of this substrate component structure-function pairing may have led to the emergence of a new category of analogically constructed discourse markers in Modern Hebrew.

The Hebrew articleha- is apparently undergoing a process of degrammaticalization within Modern Hebrew. Its distribution has been changing in a particular direction that is unexpected from the point of view of historical linguistics. Whereas in Classical Hebrew it was found with a limited number of lexical items, it now attaches to a variety of phrases. This change is indicative of a change in its morpho-syntactic category: it is becoming more a clitic than an affix. The morpho-syntactic change is accompanied by a semantic change; its function is to mark the definiteness of the phrase it attaches to, rather than being part of the Classical Hebrew state system. We propose that the change has its roots in a language-internal change that affected the periphrastic genitive construction of Mishnaic Hebrew and was enhanced through several phases of language contact such as the contact of Medieval Hebrew with Arabic and the contact of nineteenth-century Hasidic Hebrew with Yiddish.

La thèse analyse la notion d'annexion dans le Kitāb de Sībawayhi comme dans la tradition grammaticale arabe à travers des textes choisis. Elle met en évidence deux systèmes explicatifs différents, les confronte et analyse leur pertinence. En ce qui concerne Sībawayhi, le chapitre 100 du Kitāb se révèle d'une importance capitale pour la notion d'annexion, surtout quand celle-ci est regardée, comme le fait la thèse, à travers le principe explicatif fondamental de liberté syntaxique (tamakkun) développé ailleurs dans le Kitāb. La thèse démontre les réticences des grammairiens arabes envers la catégorisation de l'annexion chez Sībawayhi (basée d'après nous sur la notion de liberté syntaxique) et sa théorie de la rection (camal) selon laquelle un nom peut régir un autre nom en le mettant au génitif. Les grammairiens arabes ont opté pour un système explicatif alternatif basé sur la théorie de la rection (selon laquelle le nom n'a pas de rection). Ce travail révèle ainsi, à travers le traitement du génitif dans l'annexion, deux logiques concernant la théorie de la rection qui ne donnent pas entière satisfaction. Par ailleurs, la thèse explique comment l'adoption par les grammairiens arabes d'un système rectionnel alternatif, présenté par ceux-ci comme cohérent avec la démarche Sībawayhienne, constitue en fait une rupture radicale avec celle-ci
The thesis analyzes the concept of annexation in Sībawayhi's Kitāb as in the Arab grammatical tradition through selected texts. It highlights two different explanatory systems, confronts them and analyzes their relevance. With regard to Sībawayhi, chapter 100 of the Kitāb appears of capital importance on the annexation, especially when this one is looked at, like does it the thesis, through the fundamental explanatory principle of syntactic freedom (tamakkun) developed elsewhere in the Kitāb. The thesis shows the reserves of the Arab grammarians towards Sībawayhi's categorization of the annexation (based according to us on the concept of syntactic freedom) and his theory of the governance / dependency (camal) according to which a noun can govern another noun by putting it in the genitive. The Arab grammarians chose an alternative explanatory system based on the theory of the governance / dependency (according to which a noun cannot govern another noun). This work reveals thus, through the treatment of the genitive in the annexation, two logics concerning the theory of the governance / dependency which do not give whole satisfaction. In addition, the thesis explains how the adoption by the Arab grammarians of an alternative governance / dependency system, presented by those like coherent with the Sībawayhienne approach, constitutes in fact a radical rupture with this one