scholarly journals The The Arabic Aspectual Marker Qad from the Perspective of the Two-Component Theory of Aspect

2019 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 49-62
Author(s):  
Dania Adel Salamah

The study examined the Arabic aspectual particle qad within the framework of Smith’s Two-Component Theory of Aspect, which views aspectual meaning as a combination of covert situation types and overt viewpoint markers. The analysis, which was conducted on Modern Standard Arabic, revealed that the Arabic aspectual marker qad has a tendency to be used perfectively, but it also has imperfective uses. However, as far as situation types are concerned, the analysis found some variation when it comes to the use of imperfective and perfective qad. The findings were also correlated to different constructions in which qad typically occurs.

2018 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 61-82
Author(s):  
Ayah Farhat ◽  
Alessandro Benati

The present study investigates the effects of motivation and processing instruction on the acquisition of Modern Standard Arabic gender agreement. The role of individual differences (e.g. age, gender, aptitude, language background and working memory) on the positive effects generated by processing instruction has been investigated in the last few years. However, no previous research has been conducted to measure the possible effects of motivation on L2 learners exposed to processing instruction. In addition, a reasonable question to be addressed within the processing instruction research framework is whether its positive effects can be generalised to the acquisition of Modern Standard Arabic. The Academic Motivation Scale (AMS) and the Attitude Motivation Test Battery (AMTB) motivation questionnaires were used to capture different variables that influence motivation in order to create the two different groups (high and low motivated). In this experimental study, forty-one native English school-age learners (aged 8–11) were assigned to two groups: ‘the high motivated group’ (n = 29): and the ‘low motivated group’ (n = 12). Both groups received processing instruction, which lasted for three hours. Sentence-level interpretation and production tasks were used in a pre-test and post-test design to measure instructional effects. The learners were required to fill in gaps in both written and spoken mode for the activities. The study also included a delayed post-test administered to the two groups four weeks later. The results indicated that both groups improved equally from pre-test to post-test in all assessment measures and they both retained the positive effects of the training in the delayed posttests. Processing instruction was proved to be the main factor for the improvement in performance regardless of the learner’s level of motivation.


2020 ◽  
Vol 81 (2) ◽  
pp. 56-63
Author(s):  
S. A. Karpukhin

The article considers the competition of verbal aspects from a new perspective. Instead of employing the traditional method of demonstrating this phenomenon — an empirical replacement of the aspect of a verb in a phrase with the opposite — the author examines Dostoevsky’s choice between the variants found in different manuscripts of the same text. For the first time, based on a two-component theory of the semantic invariant of a verb type, the aspectual meaning of the selection of a verb aspect is revealed and, as a result of contextual analysis, an artistic interpretation of the selected type is proposed.


2016 ◽  
Vol 58 (1) ◽  
pp. 69-88
Author(s):  
Marcin Michalski

Abstract In Modern Standard Arabic constructions with cardinal numerals over ten in which the noun denoting the counted object follows the numeral, e.g. al-ḫamsūna ǧundiyyan ‘the fifty soldiers’ (as opposed to al-ǧunūdu l-ḫamsūna ‘idem’), the noun is indefinite singular. When a property of the object counted is to be expressed by means of an attribute: an adjective, participle, or a relative clause, it agrees with the noun in gender, but agreement in the three remaining categories, i.e. number, case and definiteness, may be distributed between the noun and the numeral. The present study analyzes examples of such constructions found in contemporary journalistic texts. Four agreement configurations are distinguished, out of which three were described by Classical Arabic grammarians, while one is non-classical. In some instances, due to the syncretism of declension forms, agreement in case is indeterminate. The analysis of the examples shows that apart from variation in agreement that can be observed with some types of the qualifier, the choice of a particular agreement configuration depends on phraseology and/or the lexico-syntactic properties of the qualifier: whether it is a proper adjective, a nisba adjective, a participle, or a relative clause.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document