Modality, Mood and Aspect in Spoken Arabic : With Special Reference to Egypt and the Levant

24x15cm, xx,129 pp., Series: Library of Arabic Linguistics, Monograph no. 11. "This volume on the intersecting grammatical categories of modality, mood and aspect in spoken Arabic is important because these complex topics have hardly been addressed in Arabic linguistic research, yet they are central to any communication between speakers of different areas of the Arab world.This is the first full length monograph derived from the Leeds University investigation into the structure of Educated Spoken arabic. It would be difficult to underestimate the value of this corpus for the study of variation in modern Educated Spoken Arabic, since it is unique in its size,comprehensiveness and geographical representativeness, covering educated spoken usage in all the major population centres of the eastern Arab world,and drawing from a wide variety of contexts of use. "Modality, Mood and Aspect in Spoken Arabic" represents a major advance in the elaboration of a grammar of Educated Spoken Arabic. It is concerned with the most interesting features of the verb phrase in the Educated Spoken Arabic of Egypt and the Levant. Material for the study has been deliberately selected from informal educated speech, drawn from the "middle region" of the Arab world in which the habit of crossing area boundaries is long- established. The work is the result of several years research by two field linguists" - Publisher's description. Minor rubbing. VG., dustwrapper.…