Structure and Function of the Arabic Verb (Routledge Arabic Linguistics Series) - Hardcover

Bahloul, Maher

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 041577215X ISBN 13: 9780415772150

Publisher: Routledge, 2007

Synopsis

Structure and Function of the Arabic Verb is a corpus-based study that unveils the morpho-syntax and the semantics of the Arabic verb.

Approaches to verbal grammatical categories - the constituents of verbal systems - often rely on either semantic-pragmatic or syntactic analyses. This research bridges the gap between these two distinct approaches through a detailed analysis of Taxis, Aspect, Tense and Modality in Standard Arabic. This is accomplished by showing, firstly, some basic theoretical concerns shared by both schools of thought, and, secondly, the extent to which semantic structures and invariant meanings mirror syntactic representations.

Maher Bahloul’s findings also indicate that the basic constituents of the verbal system in Arabic, namely the Perfect and the Imperfect, are systematically differentiated through their invariant semantic features in a markedness relation.

Finally, this study suggests that the syntactic derivation of verbal and nominal clauses are sensitive to whether or not verbal categories are specified for their feature values, providing therefore a principled explanation to a long-standing debate.

This reader friendly book will appeal to both specialists and students of Arabic linguistics, language and syntax.

About this title

About the Author

Maher Bahloul is an Assistant Professor of English and Linguistics at the American University of Sharjah.

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2007
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 041577215X
• ISBN 13: 9780415772150
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256