LANGUAGES AND LINGUISTICS

STUDIES IN CONTRASTIVE
LINGUISTICS AND STYLISTICS

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 LANGUAGES AND LINGUISTICS

STUDIES IN CONTRASTIVE
LINGUISTICS AND STYLISTICS

AMR M. EL-ZAWAWY, PhD

New York
Copyright © 2016 by Nova Science Publishers, Inc.

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 CONTENTS

List of Figures vii

List of Tables ix
Preface xi
Part One: Contrastive Linguistics 1
Chapter 1 The Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis 3
Chapter 2 English and Arabic Phonology 7
Chapter 3 Word-Formation in English and Arabic:
Derivation and Compounding 15
Chapter 4 Loanwords in English and Arabic 21
Chapter 5 Passivization in English and Arabic 31
Chapter 6 Synonymy in English and Arabic 41
Chapter 7 Idioms in English and Arabic 49
Chapter 8 Cohesion and Coherence in English and Arabic 55
Part Two: Stylistics 79
Chapter 9 Al-Ma’arri and Herbert: A Dehistoricized
Hermeneutical Approach 81
Chapter 10 Introducing the Stylistic Notions Overtones and
Undertones 1: Nazik Al-Malai’ka’s Poetry 89
vi Contents

Chapter 11 Poetic Persona and Overtones in Abul-Qasim

Al-Shaby’s Poetry 99
Chapter 12 The Stylistics of W.B. Yeats’s Poetry 109
Glossary of Recurrent Terms 117
Bibliography 119
Author's Contact Information 127
Index 129
 LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 5-1. A conventional tree diagram for an active structure. 32

Figure 5-2. A conventional tree diagram for a passive structure. 33
Figure 8-1. Knott‘s ‘text spans.’ 56
Figure 8-2. A semantic network after de Beaugrande
and Dressler (1981) 66
 LIST OF TABLES

Table 2-1. English consonants with voicing, manner

and place of articulation 8
Table 2-2. Arabic consonants, with manner, place and voicing 9
 PREFACE

This collection of studies is not intended to overturn any theory either in

contrastive linguistics or in stylistics. It is not theoretically groundbreaking, so
to speak.
The present book is an arduous attempt at filling a gap clearly recognized
in both fields of contrastive linguistics and stylistics, and at bringing the two
seemingly discrete disciplines together. Contrastive linguistics, especially
when comparisons are drawn between two languages from distant linguistic
families such as Arabic and English, is suffering from a lack of studies that
pinpoint specific differences that otherwise are relegated to footnotes or
endnotes in books of semantics or error analysis. This marked deficiency
leaves the Arab learner all the more baffled, and may at times oblige him to
have recourse to references that are highly steeped in theoretical issues. The
Arab learner is thus required to read several chapters from separate books in
order to acquire the knowledge necessary to embark on valid comparisons
between his/her mother tongue and the English language.
The difficulties encountered by the Arab learner, who usually has to brush
up his/her Arabic in the process, are compounded by the fact that his/her
English is not up to scratch. In a sense, if comparisons are ever to be held, they
should be first based on solid linguistic knowledge of the two languages at
issue. I have encountered this obstacle both as an erstwhile student of
linguistics and as a lecturer of linguistics and translation for a dozen of years
now.
I have also included some studies on stylistics. They draw on comparisons
between Arabic and English poetry as a continuation of the contrastive method
adopted in the first part on contrastive linguistics. The stylistics part is mainly
derived from my knowledge of Arabic and English poetry, but also follows a
xii Amr M. El-Zawawy

linguistic avenue. This part was authored many years ago, unlike the
contrastive linguistics part, which grew out of my recent insights and extensive
readings.
I do not claim that the book is expressly intended for linguists or the
literati: it can also be put to use as a teaching manual of contrastive linguistics
and/or a concrete example of how stylistics can contribute to the linguistic
analysis of poetry. What urged me to sit down and write this rather short book
is the paucity of the research that tangentially touches upon contrastive
linguistics between English and Arabic on the one hand, and the modicum of
studies done in the field of comparative stylistics on the other. Nor is the book
a shot at unexceptionable insights or a compendium of all and everything. It is
a starter.
I would like to thank Professor Jeffrey Marck of the Australian National
University for proofreading the manuscript of the book, and for providing
valuable insights.
I admit hereupon that my attempt is far from being meritorious: it may be
meretriciously praised by some later on, but I admit that all mistakes and
mishaps are mine notwithstanding.

Amr El-Zawawy
Alexandria, Egypt
PART ONE: CONTRASTIVE LINGUISTICS
Chapter 1

THE CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS HYPOTHESIS

CONTRASTIVE LINGUISTICS AND CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS

Contrastive linguistics is a branch of contrastive analysis, which includes
error analysis as well. It is mainly concerned with the differences (and
sometimes the similarities) between two languages or more in terms of
phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics and pragmatics in addition to any
other linguistic nuances. The question that needs to be posed, however, is
whether contrastive linguistics is essential.
According to Selinker (1981), English is the language that is contrasted in
most cases, with the aim of improving language teaching. This claim has
previously been considered subject to doubt by several scholars such as Corder
(1967), Alatis (1968) and James (1968). They call for the ‘revitalization’ of
contrastive linguistics within an empirical framework. Viewed with respect to
time, ‘revitalization’ was cast in the mold of generative grammar. Thus,
teachers are expected to use generative grammar to provide insights into the
nature of language and its structure. In a sense, contrastive linguistics is not
about what should be taught, but what it is that they are actually teaching.
Selinker (1981) considers the task of contrastive linguistics as centered
around two methods. The first is based on choosing aspects of language and
searching for essential notions in them. However, the problem with this
approach is that many linguistic notions are yet to be verified. This leads to the
second method, regarding relevant data on certain theoretical issues and
discussing them in a contrastive framework. This trend has the advantage of
enriching contrastive studies with theoretical notions that can be validated
according to tangible findings.
4 Amr M. El-Zawawy

As for contrastive analysis (henceforth CA), some scholars take it to be a

field that lacks a solid basis. Abbas (1995) sees CA as suffering from a basic
weakness, i.e., its overwhelming emphasis on one type of error, especially
“interference.” In particular cases, CA fails to justify an error. Klein (1986)
provides a good example of Turkish, Spanish and Italian students learning
German. Following the grammatical structure of their native language, Turkish
students often place the verb into the final position. On the other hand, Spanish
and Italian learners do the same, although verbs are not in final positions in
their own languages. It is clear that interference of a learner’s L1 is not the
only factor here. As a reaction to this type of criticism, Error Analysis
(henceforth EA) was often suggested as an alternative but lies outside the
scope of the present book.

THE CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS HYPOTHESIS

Klein (1986) distinguishes between two hypotheses for second language
acquisition: the identity hypothesis and the contrastive hypothesis. The identity
hypothesis centers around the assumption that the acquisition of one language
has little or no bearing on the acquisition of another. The contrastive
hypothesis, on the other hand, is based on the idea that the structure of the first
language influences the acquisition of the second language. This hypothesis is
particularly related to the theory and practice of contrastive analysis; hence the
contrastive analysis hypothesis.

THE PROCEDURES OF THE CONTRASTIVE

ANALYSIS HYPOTHESIS
To carry out a contrastive analysis, Whitman (1970) proposes four steps:

1. Writing formal descriptions of any two languages under investigation.

2. Determining points of contrast.
3. Contrasting the points selected.
4. Predicting sources of difficulty through contrast.

The ‘points’ spoken of may be referred to as ‘forms,’ i.e., linguistic units

of any size. The procedures mentioned can be further explained through the
 The Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis 5

notion of a hierarchy of difficulty as proposed by Stockwell et al. (1965). This

hierarchy assumes three types of transfer: positive, negative and zero. When
the structures of two languages are similar, positive transfer will occur; when
they are different, negative transfer will occur; and when they are unrelated,
zero transfer obtains. Wardhaugh (1970, 124), however, states that the
hypothesis can be classified into two versions: strong and weak. The strong
version predicted that the majority of L2 errors were due to negative transfer.
The weak version, on the other hand, merely explained errors after they were
made.

EVALUATING THE CONTRASTIVE ANALYSIS HYPOTHESIS

Pros

The contrastive analysis hypothesis is grounded on the idea that it offers

predictions about errors. The procedures of finding points of contrast and
predicting sources of difficulty accord well with the real teaching situation.
For example, Arab learners tend to substitute /b/ for /p/ due to the absence of
/p/ in standard Arabic. /f/ and /v/ pose difficulties along similar lines. Besides
linguistic internalization, learners need to be aware of the sources of difficulty
and their reasons.

Cons

The contrastive analysis hypothesis invited several areas of criticisms. It is

intrinsically built upon Structuralism, which lost gloss with the advent of
Innateness. Thus, the assumption of mentalism did not find a palpable position
in the contrastive analysis hypothesis, which blatantly ignored it. Moreover,
Hughes (1980) argues that the contrastive analysis hypothesis failed due to a
number of considerations it lacked, namely the learner, what has to be learned
and the way of learning. Clearly, the first factor is germane to Innateness,
where the LAD plays a major role. The second factor is related to the content
presented to the learner. The contrastive analysis hypothesis focused on the
description of any two languages, but current linguistic investigation may lack
sufficient and complete data for an adequate study of language. The way the
data are presented is also not taken into consideration and this is clear in the
mechanical procedures adopted by the contrastive analysis hypothesis.
6 Amr M. El-Zawawy

Wardhaugh (1970) points out that the contrastive analysis hypothesis was
also criticized on the grounds that it could not take into account relative
difficulty among L2 segments that shared the property of being different from
the L1. In their 1970 study, Oller and Ziahosseiny (184) proposed a moderate
version of the contrastive analysis hypothesis to explain the hierarchy of
difficulty. They conducted a study which was based on English spelling errors
on the UCLA placement test. Spelling errors of foreign students whose native
language employed a Roman alphabet were compared with spelling errors of
foreign students whose native language had little or no relation to such an
alphabet.
Other strictures that can be aimed at the contrastive analysis hypothesis
include the following (based on Byung-gon 1992):

1. The interference from L1 is not the only cause of the error: ignorance
may be the real reason.
2. The contrastive analysis hypothesis assumes that interference operates
from L1 to L2, while there are cases where the opposite might be true,
e.g., Arab native speakers failing to pronounce a satisfactory ‫ ﺽ‬/d/ in
Arabic.
3. Some errors predicated by the contrastive analysis hypothesis never
occur.

CONCLUSION
It can be concluded that the contrastive analysis hypothesis used to be a
viable tool for comparing and contrasting a pair of languages or more. Yet it
remains arguable whether it can be amended in order to accommodate the
advances made in linguistic inquiry. The Chomskyan tradition has been
challenged over the past three decades more than once with several penetrating
criticisms that at times left the theory untenable. It is also clear that the method
of setting the phonological systems, the syntactic structure and the semantics
of one language next to those of another language is still in use in many
classes of linguistics and translation. However, the idea of error analysis has
proved that it is not always interference that causes the errors committed by
second language and/or foreign language learners while speaking and writing.
Perhaps a new contrastive analysis hypothesis needs to be formulated.
Chapter 2

ENGLISH AND ARABIC PHONOLOGY

INTRODUCTION
This chapter outlines the phonological systems of both English and
Arabic. It offers an introduction to the two systems with their basic sounds,
and provides point-by-point differences between the two systems in terms of
consonants, vowels (including diphthongs), and stress patterns.

CONSONANTS
Consonants are traditionally defined as the speech sounds where there is a
certain obstruction of the air stream coming from the lungs. This obstruction
may be complete or partial. Complete obstruction is exemplified by what
happens in the case of plosives, where the air is obstructed at the lips (e.g., /p/,
/b/) then suddenly released. Partial obstruction is exemplified by friction, since
the air stream is released only after some friction happens at the lips or farther
back in the oral cavity. This process is universal: all languages possess
consonants. English and Arabic are no exception. However, it is important to
review English and Arabic consonants before contrasting the two languages.

English Consonants
English consonants are typically described according to manner of
articulation, place of production and voicing. It is of note that the name of the
manner of articulation refers to the place of articulation: if a consonant is
nasal, then this may indicate that the obstruction of the air is somewhat
8 Amr M. El-Zawawy

managed at the nasal cavity. Yet my table which I propose hereunder is

essential to provide another table where the manner and place of articulation
are accurately indicated:

Table 2-1. English consonants with voicing,

manner and place of articulation

Bilabial Labio- Interdental Apico- Lamino- Velar Glottal

dental alveolar palatal
Stops Voiceless p t k
Voiced b d g
Fricatives Voiceless f θ s ∫ h
Voiced v ð z ʒ
Affricates Voiceless t∫
Voiced d
Nasals m ŋ
Laterals l
Semi-vowles w r j
(or off-glides)

Apart from the sounds which do not occur in Arabic, the table also
includes voicing, i.e., whether the sound initiates vibration of the vocal cords
or not. Thus, /b/ is voiced, since it causes vibration of the vocal folds, while /p/
is voiceless, since it does not.

Syllabic Consonants
This is an area where a word of caution is in demand. Syllabic consonants
are a special case in English, where consonants act as vowels thus forming
syllables. The consonants in English that are allowed to form syllables are /n/,
/m/, and /l/. They are always preceded by vowels, which are then dropped,
leaving the consonant to act as a consonant-cum-vowel inside the syllable.
Examples of syllabic consonants include: ‘bitten’ [ˈbɪtnˌ], ‘rhythm’ [ˈrɪðmˌ]
and ‘police’ [pˈlˌiːs], where these words have two syllables intact.

Arabic Consonants
The same identification of manner, place and voicing can be fairly applied
to Arabic consonants. The following table summarizes the consonants of
Arabic:
 Table 2-2. Arabic consonants, with manner, place and voicing

Bilabial Labio- Inter- Dental Lamino- Uvular Velar Glottal

dental dental palatal
Stops Voiceless (dark) t, q k
t,
t
Voiced b d g

Fricatives Voiceless f θ, s, ∫ x h
(dark) (dark)s
θ
Voiced ð, z ʒ ġ ‘
(dark)
ð
Affricates Voiceless ’
Voiced dʒ
Nasals m
Laterals l,
(dark)I
Semi-vowles w j
(or off-glides)
10 Amr M. El-Zawawy

It is noteworthy that the ‘dark’ sounds exist in Arabic but are lacking in
English, much in the same way as the table above has English sounds that do
not exist in Arabic. But before embarking on the contrastive study of the
consonants of both languages, a number of points, advanced by Watson
(2002), should be taken into consideration. These points pertain to the
differences that can be observed according to the intra-Arabic phonological
system, where certain consonants, though institutionalized, are somewhat
variable:

1. /q/ voiceless uvular stop. Restricted to religious and Standard Arabic

lexemes, e.g., il-qur’an ‘the Qur’an,’ il-alqahira ‘Cairo’;
2. /r/ pharyngealized dental–alveolar tap (emphatic counterpart of /r/).
Found predominantlyin European loans and in native words with guttural
vowels, e.g., baraʃutt.
3. /b/ pharyngealized bilabial stop (emphatic counterpart of /b/). A clear
example is: baba ‘pope.’
4. /m/ pharyngealized bilabial nasal stop (emphatic counterpart of /m/). An
example is: mayyiti ‘my water.’
5. /l/ pharyngealized lateral (emphatic counterpart of /l/). It is similar to
dark /l/ in English, but it follows the rule of velarizing the word ‘Allah’
without a preceding preposition.
6. /p/ voiceless bilabial stop. Found in a few loan words among educated
speakers, e.g., Paris ‘Paris.’
7. /ʒ/ voiced palate-alveolar fricative. Found in a few loan words, e.g.,
ʒakitta ‘jacket,’ biʒama ‘pair of pajamas.’
8. /v/ voiced labio-dental fricative. Found in a few loan words among
educated speakers, e.g., villa ‘villa.’ However, most aging Arabs find it very
difficult to produce a satisfactory /v/, and usually replace it with /f/.

VOWELS
English Vowels

The term ‘vowels’ will be applied to both vowels and diphthongs for two
reasons. First, diphthongs are traditionally viewed as composed of two vowels.
Second, Arabic has very few or no diphthongs according to some accounts,
and this will make the contrast between the two languages easier.
 English and Arabic Phonology 11

English has twelve vowels, and they are all produced without any
obstruction of the air stream. Vowels are typically described according to their
place of articulation inside the oral cavity in addition to the movement of the
tongue to close or open the mouth. The lips are usually relaxed and play no
significant role in the production process.
The features ‘close,’ ‘close-mid’ and the like are the result of the
movement of the tongue up and down in the oral cavity. Thus, the vowel /i/ is
produced front in the mouth with the tongue very close to the upper teeth.
The most troublesome of all the English vowels is the schwa /ə/, having no
systematic spelling, and being able to replace any of the eleven remaining
vowels in rapid, casual speech.
English has eight diphthongs: /ei/, /ai/, /au/, /ɔɪ/, /əʊ/, /ʊə/, /ɪə/, /eə/. They
can be said to have endings that help classify them. Thus, three diphthongs end
in /i/, two in /u/, and three in /ə/.

Arabic Vowels

In much the same way, the term ‘vowels’ will be applied to both vowels
and diphthongs. Watson (2002) notes that Standard Arabic had three short
vowel phonemes: two close vowels, palatal *I and labio-velar *u, and one
open vowel.
As for short vowels, she sees the opposition between /i/ and /u/ as existing
in all dialects in the long vowels. All modern dialects of Arabic have at least
three long vowels, /ã/, /ï/, and /ü/. / ï / and / ü/ have an articulation which is
closer than that of their short counterparts, and / ã/ has a front articulation.
The dialects also have diphthongs derived historically from diphthongs.
The diphthongs are *ay and *aw, which coalesced historically in dialects such
as Cairene, Central Sudanese (Hamid 1984, 27–8), and those spoken in much
of the Levant, to be realized as /ē/ and /ō/.

STRESS PLACEMENT
English Stress

English stress is centered on the idea of light and heavy syllables. Light
syllables possess short vowels or the schwa, while heavy syllables typically
12 Amr M. El-Zawawy

have long vowels, diphthongs and/or more than one consonant at the end. This
very broad observation has exceptions that endanger its applicability across a
wide range of cases. For example, the word ‘borrow’ has a diphthong in the
second syllable, but stress is not placed on it. Sometimes the word includes
two short vowels, and the choice becomes much harder, e.g., ‘engine.’
Moreover, certain morphemes greatly affect stress placement, and even
carry exceptions within. For example, ‘-graphy’ and ‘-tion’ are said to change
stress placement in ‘photography’ and ‘relaxation,’ since ‘photo’ alone carries
stress on the first syllable, while ‘photography’ has stress placed on the second
syllable. Yet a word such as ‘exception’ has stress placed on the second
syllable, and ‘except’ also has stress placed on the second syllable, thus
nullifying the influence of the morpheme ‘-tion.’
Stress in English is a major source of difficulty even for native speakers,
who sometimes assign the same word two acceptable stress patterns, e.g.,
‘controversy.’

Arabic stress

The Defense Language Institute Manual (1974) provides general rules for
stress in Arabic as follows:

1. The last syllable in an Arabic word is never stressed.

2. Heavy syllables usually receive stress, and light syllables never do.
3. Any suffixes typically change stress patterns.

However, Watson (2002) provides a much more elaborate picture. She

particularly focuses on Cairene Arabic stress. She arrives at the following
rules:

(a) Stress a final superheavy or CVV syllable:

Kã’tabt ‘I wrote’
Fala’hïn ‘peasants’
Ki’tãb ‘book’

(b) Otherwise stress a penultimate heavy (CVC or CVV) syllable:

‘bētak ‘your m.s. house’
‘bintik ‘your daughter’
Dar’rasni ‘he taught me’
 English and Arabic Phonology 13

Mu’darris ‘teacher’
Yikal’limhum ‘he speaks to them’

(c) Otherwise stress the penultimate or antepenultimate syllable,

whichever is separated by an even number of syllables from the closest
preceding heavy syllable (A), or—if there is no such syllable—from the
beginning of the word (B):

ii. Penultimate stress

(a) mudar’risa ‘teacher f.’

Madr’asa ‘school’
(b) ‘fihim ‘he understood’
Kata’bitu ‘she wrote it m.’
dara’bitu ‘she hit him’
ii. Antepenultimate stress
(a) in’kasarit ‘it f. was broken’
Yix’talifu ‘they differ’
(b) ‘darasit ‘she learned’
‘kataba ‘scribes’

CONTRASTING ENGLISH AND ARABIC CONSONANTS

The following points of difference have been identified:

 /p/ does not occur in Arabic as a phoneme but as an allophone in some

loanwords.
 /t/ and /d/ are dental in Arabic but alveolar in English.
 /v/ also does not occur in Arabic, and is usually mispronounced as /f/.
 There are some consonants that do not occur in standard Arabic, i.e.,
/ʒ/, /t∫/ and /ŋ/. Standard Arabic and some other dialects use /dʒ/
instead of /ʒ/ and some other dialects (e.g., Egyptian) use /g/. Also / ŋ/
does not occur in Arabic as a phoneme, but it occurs as an allophone
of /n/ before stop consonants such as /sin/ sin and /siŋ/ sing; /sinə/
sinner and /siŋə/ singer; /ran/ ran and /raŋ/ rang.
14 Amr M. El-Zawawy

 /n/ is nasal and alveolar in English but dental in Arabic.

 Arabic /r/ is a tongue tip trill, whereas English /r/ is a flap.
 Arabic hamza does not exist in English as a phoneme, but as an
allophone in certain dialects.
 Arabic / ġ / does not exist in English at all.
 Arabic /d/ does not exist in English as a separate phoneme, but as an
allophone in such words as ‘dust’ and doll.’
 Arabic /q/ does not exist in English and has no allophonic counterpart.
 Syllabic consonants do not exist in Arabic.

CONTRASTING ENGLISH AND ARABIC VOWELS

The following points of difference have been identified:

 English has twelve vowels while Arabic has five vowels.

 English has eight diphthongs while Arabic has four diphthongs.

CONTRASTING ENGLISH AND ARABIC STRESS PATTERNS

English and Arabic possess similar stress rules in that they assign stress to
syllables that have long vowels or diphthongs. However, Arabic never stresses
final syllables in a word. Arabic also has specific stress rules that allow for
very few or no exceptions at all. These rules are based on the alternation of
consonants and vowels.

CONCLUSION
This brief discussion of the phonology of English and Arabic is just an
introduction. Some thorny issues of rhythm and intonation have been avoided,
since they require separate volumes. Arab learners should pay special attention
to the differences pointed out in this discussion, since their foreign accent is
usually a result of not being able to observe how certain consonants are
different across the two languages. This may cause them to carry over their
native-language pronunciation habits into English.
Chapter 3

WORD-FORMATION IN ENGLISH AND

ARABIC: DERIVATION AND COMPOUNDING

INTRODUCTION
English and Arabic possess two different morphological systems. English
morphology can best be described as linear and affixing, while Arabic
morphology is often described as nonconcatenative. In this latter type of
morphology, the stem of a content word has three discontinuous morphemes
(i.e., al-jazr ‫(ﺍﻝﺝﺫﺭ‬: the consonantal root, which is the fundamental lexical unit
of the language; the templatic pattern into which the consonantal root is
inserted imposing an additional meaning to that of the root; and the vowels
which mark variations in, for example, the voice (active or passive) in verbs,
agentive relations in nouns derived from verbs, and singular–plural relations in
nouns.
In English, in contrast, nouns, for example, can be formed by a linear
process of affixation as the following illustrates:

-ery machinery
-dom freedom
-hood brotherhood
-ism humanism
-ship friendship
-age mileage
16 Amr M. El-Zawawy

These two systematically different morphological behaviors shall not be

discussed in full in this short chapter, which is limited to the derivational and
compounding processes in both English and Arabic.

ENGLISH DERIVATION
English derivation is governed by the insertion of affixes, which can be
prefixes or suffixes. There are no infixes at all in English. Prefixes can be
added to almost all word classes except some adverbs. Thus, ‘pre+determine’
is an example of a prefix plus a verb. Similarly, ‘pre+mature’ is made up of a
prefix preceding an adjective. There is also ‘pre+fix’ which is made up of a
prefix plus a noun. English also tends to use suffixes in a productive manner to
generate a huge corpus of nouns and other word classes. Blevins (in Aarts and
MacMahon, 2006) discusses the following types of English suffixes:

(i) Class-preserving suffixes: -hood, manhood; -al; economical;-hood,

childhood; -ship, friendship; -ics, linguistics; -ess, tigress; -ette, kitchenette.

(ii) Class-changing suffixes:

a. verb-forming derivational suffixes: -fy, beautify; -ate, fabricate; -en,
harden, strengthen; -ize, industrialize.
b. noun-forming derivational suffixes: -er, teacher, NewYorker, teenager;
-ant, informant; -ee, trainee; -ation, coordination, organization; -ment,
employment; -al,refusal; -ing, reading.

c. adjective-forming derivational suffixes: -al, logical; -ical,economical;-

ial, partial, -ful, beautiful; -able,comprehensible; -ish, yellowish, Irish,
chidish; -ible,edible; -ed, curved; -ive, possessive; -ative, comparative; -
itive, additive; -ic,synthetic; -an, European; -ern, western;-ous, joyous; -y,
gloomy.

d. adverb-forming derivational suffixes: -ly, quickly;-ward(s), backwards;

-wise, moneywise, *crabwise1.

1 This asterisk indicates that ‘crabwise’ can function as both an adjective and an adverb.
 Word-Formation in English and Arabic 17

ENGLISH COMPOUNDING
As Bauer (in Aarts and MacMahon, 2006, 489) contends, ‘there is no
known lexical restriction of the words which can be compounded.’ However,
it is sometimes claimed that nominalizations do not compound easily with
each other. Moreover, it is fair to say that compounds in English have the
structure lexemic-base (ibid). The general rule with English compounds is that
the modifying (left-hand) element occurs in the stem form (i.e., without being
inflected for number or gender). However, some words which otherwise look
like compounds have the modifying element marked as plural. The term teeth
ridge, for example, is a standard part of linguistic terminology, and teeth as a
plural form is irregular, as is the case with teeth, and is thus presumably
independently listed in the lexicon. Yet there seem to be some definite sets of
regularities for compounds in English as follows (after Frank 1972):

-Noun + Noun: post office, spaceship, high school, woman teacher, he-
goat, dining-room, parking lot, student teacher, paper basket, self-expression,
sunshine, bedroom, department store, physics book.

Of particular interest is the view presented by Ibrahim (2010) who prefers

to treat such a type of compounds semantically as being of the following sub-
types:

 Endocentric N + N = armchair
 Appositional N + N = maidservant
 Copulative N + N = Alsace-Lorraine

 Possessive noun + noun: lady’s maid, traveler’s checks, a citizen’s

bank.
 Verb + Noun: jump rope, pickpocket, flashlight.
 Noun + Verb: handshake, lifeguard.
 Gerund + noun: living room, swimming pool.
 Noun + gerund: fortune telling, housekeeping, ice skating.
 Adjective + Noun: gold coin, well-wisher, off-white, high school,
smallpox, blackbird, common sense, blue print.
 Particle + Noun: off-year, by-product, overdose.
 Verb + prep/Adverb: breakdown, grown-up.
 Noun + pp: brother-in-law, commander-in-chief.
18 Amr M. El-Zawawy

Compounding in English is also viewed within the context of what

is termed ‘neo-classical compounds.‘ Examples include genocide and
psychology, which were created in modern times using elements from the
classical languages Latin and Greek. Such compounds are treated by many
accounts (cf. Hall 1964 and Al-Jarf 2000) as made up of two parts. But as
Bauer (2006) sees, there are a number of questions about neo-classical
compounds in English. It is not altogether clear that they should be treated
alongside compounds rather than as a separate type of word-formation. The
first part in many of them cannot stand alone. Moreover, do words such as
psycholinguistics count as neo-classical compounds or as derivatives?

DERIVATION IN ARABIC: THE ROOT-PATTERN SYSTEM

As has been stated above, Arabic morphology is non-concatenative: it
consists of a root between its letters (usually consonants) are inserted a number
of certain vowels. This is called the root-and-pattern morphology and is
usually exemplified by the following:

he wrote katab-a (v.) ‫ﻙﺕﺏ‬

he corresponded kaatab-a (v.) ‫ﻙﺍﺕﺏ‬
it was written kutib-a (v.) ‫ﻙﺕﺏ‬
book kitaab (n.) ‫ﻙﺕﺍﺏ‬
books kutub (n.) ‫ﻙﺕﺏ‬
writer; (adj.) writing kaatib (n.) ‫ﻙﺍﺕﺏ‬
writers kuttaab (n.) ‫ﻙﺕﺍﺏ‬
write! (2 m.s.) uktub! (v.) ‫ﺍﻙﺕﺏ‬
office maktab (n.) ‫ﻡﻙﺕﺏ‬
library maktaba (n.) ‫ﻡﻙﺕﺏ ﺓ‬
writing kitaaba (n.) ‫ﻙﺕﺍﺏ ﺓ‬

Verbs in the above examples can have inflectional suffixes. Thus for katab
alone, there are the following variations:

I wrote Katabtu (first person singular)

He wrote Kataba (second person singular, masculine)
She wrote Katabat (second person singular, feminine)
They (masculine) wrote Katabu (third person plural, masculine)
 Word-Formation in English and Arabic 19

They (feminine) Katabna (third person plural, feminine)

Both of them wrote Katabaa (third person dual, masculine and feminine)

Such non-concatenative morphological behavior is greatly productive.

Thus, the consonant root can be viewed as a nucleus or core around which are
fit a wide array of potential meanings, depending on which pattern is operating
into the root.

ARABIC COMPOUNDING
Compounding in Arabic is not as productive as derivation. Most
compounds in Arabic are either established or made after a particular foreign
pattern via translation. The basic types of compounds in Arabic are as follows
(cf. Ibrahim, 2010):

 -Genitive compounds, e.g., ‫ﺃﺏﻭ ﻡﻭﺱﻯ‬abū mousā

 -Predicative compounds, e.g., ‫ﻑﺕﺡ هللا‬fatḥ Allah
 -Synthetic compounds, e.g., ‫ ﺡﺽﺭﻡﻭﺕ‬ḥaḍramūt

There are, however, other types which will be discussed below.

Compounding into One Word (Naht, i.e., Compounding by

Coinage)

Although compounding is not common in traditional Arabic morphology,

it is used in MSA for recently coined items and for loan-translations,
especially technical terms. Ryding (2005) provides the following examples:

 ra’smaal ‘capital’ formed from conjoining the words ra’s ‘head’ and
maal ‘money.’
 alaamarkaziyya ‘decentralization,’ from the words laa ‘no’ and
markaziyya ‘centralization.’
 faw-Sawty ‘supersonic,’ abbreviating the word for ‘above, super’ fawq
to faw-, joining it with the noun Sawt ‘sound,’ and suffixing the
adjectival /-iyy/ ending.
20 Amr M. El-Zawawy

Compounding into Two Words (Tarkiib, i.e., Two-Word

Compounds)

This usually results in noun phrases, such as ‘adam wujuud ‘non-

existence’ or kiis hawaa’’airbag,’ or a combined participle-noun phrase such
as muta’iaddid-u l-’aṭraaf, ‘multilateral.’2 With the massive rapidity in
technical translation into Arabic, these kinds of lexical compounds have
become more prevalent over the past two or three decades.

Numerical Compounds

In numerals eleven and twelve, the numeral names are compounds, the
first part referring to the first digit and the second part always some form of
the word ‘ten’ (ašr or ašra), e.g., aḥad ašar, thalath ašar, arba’ašar, etc.

COMPARING THE TWO LANGUAGES

English and Arabic are not on a par with the derivation of different
word classes. English derivation is linearly managed, since it proceeds
through the addition of affixes on the periphery of the word. No infixes are
used for derivative purposes. Arabic, in contrast, applies the root-and-pattern
morphology in order to produce a large number of derivatives, invoking
prefixes, suffixes, infixes and even transfixes. The derivatives are, moreover,
inflected for number, gender and case.
In compounding, English outwits Arabic. English compounds are based
on somehow rigid rules that can be observed and abstracted. Arabic
compounds, like English neo-classical compounds, are institutionalized, and
new ones are usually composed on analogy with foreign ones, i.e., via literal
translation with minor changes.

2Note that in such cases, the dual or plural is usually made by adding the dual suffix to or
pluralizing the head noun, the first noun in the phrase:
two bedrooms ġurfat-aa nawm-in ‫ﻑﺕﺍ ﻥﻭﻡ‬ ‫ﻍﺭ‬
three bedrooms ġuraf aanwam ‫ﻍﺭﻑﺍﻝﻥﻭﻡ‬
Chapter 4

LOANWORDS IN ENGLISH AND ARABIC

INTRODUCTION
Loanwords are usually treated alongside borrowing. Both are integral
processes of lexical extension. Borrowing, as a process, is conducive to
loanwords that are easily spotted by native speakers, unless the donor language
is etymologically related to the recipient language, i.e., the two languages are
of the same linguistic family. Thus, European languages which share a
common ancestor, such as English and Swedish, share some words that are
borrowed across the two, but are hardly recognizable as loanwords, since
normalizations have worked their way through them. Similarly, Arabic,
Hebrew and Aramaic share many words that are cross-borrowed and difficult
to pinpoint if presented on a test list.
The comparison is more difficult if the two languages are of different
families, in this case English and Arabic. The present chapter will seek to
discover the regularities that govern loanwords in both languages. English
words in Arabic and Arabic words in English will be examined.

LOANWORDS IN THE LINGUISTIC LITERATURE

There are several views on the ways in which loanwords are received and
normalized in the recipient language. Bynon (1977, 226) maintains that the
phonological structure of a great number of loanwords may be either on good
terms with that of the borrowing language or close to it. However, some
remain unassimilated. According to Bynon (ibid, 227), the speed and degree of
22 Amr M. El-Zawawy

adaptation solely depends on sociolinguistic and structural factors. Strictly

speaking, transmitting loanwords through ‘the intermediary of a local spoken
variety of the donor language’ yields to the act of substitution at the levels of
phonology and/or morphology.
Mustafawi (2002) presents three different views with respect to
loanwords. The first is adapted from Eliasson (1995) and Myers-Scotton
(1992; 1993), who do not distinguish between borrowing and code switching
and attribute them to the same mechanism. The second view is also presented
by Eliasson (1994) who considers any single word from a donor language that
is not an established loanword in the recipient language to be a code switched
word. The three authors claim that for a lexical item to be considered a
borrowing it must fill a lexical gap in the recipient language. The third view is
held by Poplack (1993) who says that borrowing and code switching are
different mechanisms. That is, in code switching, the integrity of the grammar
of both the donor and the recipient languages is respected, while in borrowing,
only the integrity of the grammar of the recipient language needs to be
respected. Moreover, borrowings do not necessarily ‘fulfill lexical needs’ in
the recipient language. Accordingly, loanwords are best characterized as
borrowings, even when their distribution across the community is currently
limited.
Daher (n.d.) examines the extent and effects of lexical borrowing between
American English and Syrian Arabic, focusing on (1) changes to the
phonology and morphology of the borrowed words and (2) changes to the
phonological structure of the borrowing language. Loanwords with an
unfamiliar sound structure are the most likely to go through an adaptive
process, so that they will better accord with the phonological structure of the
recipient language. Because of their contrasting phonological systems, Arabic
is more likely to adopt English words outright -- preserving the original sounds
-- while English is more likely to adapt certain Arabic sounds by replacing
them with similar English sounds. There is no indication that Arabic
loanwords have had any effect on the phonological system of English. English
appears, however, to be partly responsible for at least an increase in the use of
the sounds /g/, /v/ and /p/ in Syrian Arabic.
Hafez (1996) synchronically studies loanwords in Egyptian Arabic, i.e.,
examining the integration of loanwords at present without studying their
etymology. Thus the study does not investigate such diminished loans as
/tijatru/, /’esbetalja/, /talletwââr/, and /’agzagi/, which were later replaced by
the indigenous /mâsrâh/, /mostašfa/, /râsiif/ and /sajdâli/, respectively. Instead,
the paper studies the various degrees of integrating loanwords into the
 Loanwords in English and Arabic 23

phonological and morphological systems of EA (Egyptian Arabic). Most

loanwords (e.g., /munâwrâ/ from “manoeuvre,” /warsa/ from “workshop,” and
/musiiqâ/ from “musica” or “musique”) often undergo such integration so that
eventually their foreignness is unfelt and monolinguals use them frequently
without the urge to find an indigenous alternative to them (even if one is
available).

ARABIC LOANWORDS IN ENGLISH

As Gajzlerová (2009) maintains, it is estimated that 80 per cent of the
words in the lexicon of English are borrowed. Fromkin and Rodman (1993 in
Gajzlerová, ibid) also confirm that of the 20,000 words in common use, about
three-fifths are borrowed. A considerable number have been borrowed from
Arabic as will be shown below.
The inclusion of substantial numbers of Arabic words in English has been
viewed with dubiousness. There are instances of words such as ‘fekir,’ ‘cat’
and ‘Trafalgar,’ which are recurrent in many books on the subject. A simple
search through the Internet would yield dozens of words that are said to be
borrowed from English into Arabic. Consider the following sample (adapted
from Wikipedia):

admiral

‫ ﺃﻡﻱﺭ ﺍ‬amīr al-biḥār, “commander of the seas,” a title in use in Arabic

‫ﻝﺏﺡﺍﺭ‬
Sicily and continued by the Normans in Sicily in a Latinized form, and
adopted successively by Genoese and French.
albatross
‫ ﺍﻝﻍﻁّﺍﺱ‬al-ghaṭṭās, literally “the diver,” presumably a cormorant or another
of the pelican birds, which are diving water birds.
alchemy, chemistry
‫ﺍﻝﻙﻱﻡﻱﺍء‬al-kīmiyā, alchemy.
caliber, calipers
‫ﻕﺍﻝﺏ‬qālib, mold.
camphor
‫ﻙﺍﻑﻭﺭ‬kāfūr, camphor.
candy
‫ﻕﻥﺩﻱ‬qandi, sugared. Arabic is from Persian qand = “cane [sugar],” and
possibly from Sanskritic before that, since cane sugar developed in India.
24 Amr M. El-Zawawy

carat (mass), carat (gold purity)

‫ﻕﻱﺭﺍﻁ‬qīrāt, a very small unit of weight defined by reference to a small seed
or grain. The medieval Arabic word had an ancient Greek root keration,
literally “carob seed,” also denoting a small unit of weight.
caraway (seed)
‫ ﻙﺭﻭﻱﺍ‬karawiyā, caraway seed. It was spelled “caraway” in English in the
1390s in a cookery book.
carob (seed)
‫ ﺥﺭّﻭﺏ‬kharrūb, the edible bean of the carob tree.
elixir
‫ اإلكسﻱﺭ‬al-’iksīr, alchemical philosopher’s stone. The Arabs took the word
from the Greek xērion (then prepended Arabic al- = the), which had entered
Arabic with the meaning of a healing powder for wounds.

ghoul
‫ ﻍﻭﻝ‬ġūl, ghoul. Its first appearance in English was in a popular novel,
Vathek, an Arabian Tale by William Beckford, in 1786.
giraffe
‫ ﺯﺭﺍﻑﺓ‬zarāfa, giraffe. Entered Italian and French in the late 13th century.
guitar
‫ ﻕﻱﺕﺍﺭﺓ‬qītāra, a kind of guitar. “The name reached English several times,
including 14th century giterne from Old French. The modern word is directly
from Spanish guitarra, from Arabic qitar.”

The original list extends for five or six pages, and the etymologies given
are usually diachronically rooted in the long history of the Arabs’ contact with
the Greeks. The adaptations were mostly phonological and the loanwords have
been morphologically normalized according to Arabic rules of grammar.

ENGLISH LOANWORDS IN ARABIC

As Ryding (2005) contends, Arabic has incorporated words from
European languages, such as Latin and Greek. In recent times, much of the
borrowing has been from English and French. Most of these borrowed nouns
are considered solid-stem words, not analyzable into root and pattern.
Consider the following:
 Loanwords in English and Arabic 25

music ‫( موسيقى‬moosiika) camera ‫كاميرا‬

comedy ‫ كوميديا‬doctor ‫دكتور‬
petroleum ‫ بترول‬ton ‫طن‬
computer ‫ كومبيوتر‬film ‫فيلم‬
television )‫( تليفزيون (تلفاز‬tilīfizyūn) bank ‫بنك‬
telephone ‫تليفون‬

Certain common everyday terms, such as ‘telephone,’ ‘camera,’ and

‘doctor’ also have Arabic-based equivalents (loan translations) (e.g., ‫)هاتف‬,
most of which have been coined by consensus of authorities on the Arabic
language in the Arabic language academies in Cairo, Baghdad, and Damascus.
These academies are scholarly research institutes whose primary goal is to
maintain the accuracy, richness, and liveliness of the Arabic language through
defining standards, prescribing correct usage, and setting procedures for the
coining of new terms.
Acronyms, however, are used as they are, although they are normalized to
appear as one words rather than acronyms. The Arabic newspaper style in
particular also borrows acronyms for international bodies and uses them as
individual words, spelled in Arabic:

UNESCO ‫اليونسكو‬
OPEC ‫األوبك‬
UNICEF ‫اليونيسيف‬

Extensive borrowings have been from English. English loanwords in

Arabic are easily spotted either due to their foreign phonology or their
morphologically adapted forms. Baker (1987) prefers to consider loanwords in
Arabic part of the Arabization process.
Below is a discussion of these phonological and morphological
adaptations or alternations.

Phonological Changes

Phonological changes in English loanwords can be boiled down to the

following:
26 Amr M. El-Zawawy

a. Voicing and Devoicing

Devoiced phonemes are common in the process of assimilation of lexical
borrowings to the phonological system of the host language. In Arabic, in
some examples, the English voiced labio-dental fricative /v/ was converted
into its voiceless counterpart, namely /f/. This was apparent in the following
loanwords: service [sarfi:s], cover [kafar]. However, in other loanwords, /v/
was retained as in receiver [risi:var] and ‘kaviar’ [kaviar] (see Alomoush and
Alfaqara, 2010). In voicing, there is substitution of the Arabic voiceless
bilabial stop [p] with its English voiced counterpart [b], e.g., ‫[ جروبات‬gru:ba:t]
and floppy [ flobi:]. What is more, it was noted that /s/ was voiced as /z/, as in
the case of ‘gas’ [ga:z].

b. Vowel Lengthening
It was noticeable that sometimes short vowels like /u, o, i/ were
lengthened. Moreover, the vowel /o/ is replaced by /a/. This was true of the
following English loanwords: motor [ma:to:r] and microphone [makrafo:n]
and others. Additionally, in some examples, short vowels in one syllable
loanwords were lengthened; for instance, /a/ was lengthened into the long
central vowel /a: / as in gas [ga:z].

c. Stress Shifting
Hafez (1996) remarks that loanwords follow the same stress patterns of
Arabic wherever their source language stress is placed on the last syllable in
bi-syllabic words following the pattern (CV(C)-’CVVC) when the last syllable
is long. Examples include /dok-’toor/ for “doctor,” /bâs-’boor/ for “passeport,”
/?al-’boom/ for “album,” /gor-’nâân/ for “journal,” /mo-’toor/ for “moteur,”
/râ-’dââr/ for “radar,” and /do-’lââr/ for “dollar.” Stress falls on the
penultimate syllable if the penultimate vowel is long and the last one short
(Hassaan 1979, 173) as in /’baa-ku/ for “packet,” /ka-’taa-wet/ for “cutout,”
/bal-’loo-na/ for “balloon,” /fâ-’tuu-râ/ for “fattura” i.e., “bill,” and /?o-ma-’tii-
ki/ or /?o-to-ma-’tii-ki/ for “automatic.” Stress would also fall on the
penultimate syllable if both penultimate and final vowels are of medium
length. This applies to bisyllabic words as in /’ban-ju/ for “agno” /ka’-set/ for
“cassette,” /’sam-bu/ for “shampoo,” /’rad-ju/ (or “radio,” /’war-sa/ for
“workshop”; tri-syllabic words as in /ko-’ber-ta/ for “couverture,” /ga-’ket-ta/
for “jacket,” /me-’dal-ja/ or /ma-’del-ja/ for “medallion,” and /nâ-’bât-si/ for
“is nobeti”; and quadri-syllabic words as in /bât-tâ-’rej-ja/ for “battery” or
“batteria.”
 Loanwords in English and Arabic 27

d. Insertion of Initial Glottal Stop

Since the phonological system of the Arabic language does not permit the
occurrence of the consonant cluster /sk/ in initial position, Standard Arabic
might resort to inserting the vowel /i/ at the beginning of the word just after
the pause. This is exemplified by scanner [?skanar] and scooter [?sku:tar].
Other examples include accessories [?iksiswa:ra:t], album [?albu:m] and
automatic [?u:tuma:ti:k].

e. Insertion of /-a/ Sound in Final Position

In words which are difficult to render in acceptable Arabic, /a/ is added to
the borrowed word. Examples include ‫كوميديا‬, ‫ بيولوجيا‬and ‫تراجيديا‬, for ‘comedy,’
‘biology’ and ‘tragedy,’ respectively.

f. Segment Substitution
Some consonants and vowels do not fit the phonological criteria
of the Arabic language. Therefore, they were often substituted with the
corresponding segments. Examples include cover [kafar] and joker [ʒo:kar].
The substitutions are usually done by means of the phonologically adjacent
sound either in voicing or in place of articulation.

Morphological Changes

According to Hafez (1996) and Alomoush and Alfaqara (2010),

morphological adaptations can be accounted for in the light of the following
criteria: transmorphemization and inflection. Transmorphemization will be
first discussed below.

a. Transmorphemization
Zero transmorphemization: when English loanwords remain as they occur
in English. In this sense, Arabic suffixes are not added to them. For example,
link remains as it occurs in English. The same thing applies to keyboard,
though some use louhit almafateeh instead.
Compromise transmorphemization: When English loanwords retain the
English suffix of the source word. For instance, in Arabic, the word scanner
retains the suffix -er. This is true of downloading, which keeps the English
suffix –ing.
28 Amr M. El-Zawawy

Complete transmorphemization: It refers to the criterion that the original

suffix of English loanwords is completely replaced by a corresponding native
suffix. There are English loanwords to which the Arabic plural suffix [a:t] may
be added. Here are two: [sidiha:t] CDs and [kasita:t] cassettes.

b. Inflection
Number
Arabic makes a distinction between singular, dual and plural. In Arabic,
adding inflected forms to masculine nouns is apparent by the addition of the
suffix [e:n], whereas feminine nouns are marked for dual by adding the suffix
[te:n]. This was apparent in many English loanwords as in the case of the
English loanword email: two emails [?i: mayle:n], two satellite receivers [risi:
vare:n], and two female doctors [dokto:rte:n].

Plural
Countable nouns, whether masculine or feminine, were regularly
pluralized by adding the inflectional suffix [a:t], as in [mubaila:t] “mobiles.”
The broken plural pattern is also applied as in the following examples:3
[filim] sing., pl. [?afla:m] “films” (consonantal root: f-l-m ) (vocalic
patterns: i-i: and a-a: respectively ) captain [kabtin] sing., pl. [kaba:tin].
(consonantal root: k-b-t-n) (vocalic patterns: a-i and a-a:-i, respectively)
“filter” [filtar] sing., pl. [fala:tir]. (consonantal root: f-l-t-r (vocalic patterns: i-a
and a-a:-i, respectively).

Gender
The Arabic inflectional suffix “ah” [ah] was added to mark the femininity
on Arabic singular nouns. Accordingly, a set of borrowed words were
feminized by adding the above suffix. For example, the word “doctor” may be
feminized to be realized as [dokto:rah]. The same thing applies to capsule
which was realized in Arabic as [ kabso:lah]. On the other hand, in Arabic,
masculine nouns do not have inflectional suffixes to mark their gender;
examples of these were: doctor realized as [dakto:r], satellite [satalait], and so
on. Since Arabic has grammatical gender rather than natural gender, inanimate
objects may have either a masculine gender or a feminine gender.

3For the 27 forms of the broken plural in Arabic, see Robert Radcliffe, “Arabic Broken Plurals,”
Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics II, Mushira Eid and John McCanhy (eds.), John
Benjamins, Amsterdam, 1990, p. 94-119.
 Loanwords in English and Arabic 29

c. Derivation
Some loanwords may generate two sets of verbs, one transitive, the other
intransitive. For example, the word “nervous,” from which the root “nrfz” is
abstracted, thus generating not only the transitive /narfez/, /jenarfez/,
/menarfez/, and /narfaza/ but also the intransitive /?etnarfez/, /jetnarfez/,
/metnarfez/ and /narfaza/. The same is also true of many computer terms, such
as /ysayev/ from the English ‘save (as)’ and /yashayet/ from the English ‘chat.’

CONCLUSION
It is clear from this brief discussion that there is a vast difference
between the way English and Arabic treat loanwords. The processes by
which English accommodates loanwords are not explicitly discussed in the
literature: dictionaries of etymology just list the origin of the word and its
line of adaptation. A glimpse at the above list of Arabic words brought
into English gives a hint that there is no sufficient evidence as to the
formation process. In contrast, Arabic boasts a large number of borrowed
words, and their process of adaptation is strictly governed by phonological and
morphological alternations. Even words not borrowed from English either
undergo the same alternations or are left unchanged, i.e., asmaa’ jamidah
(solid-stem names).
Chapter 5

PASSIVIZATION IN ENGLISH AND ARABIC

INTRODUCTION
The passive structure has traditionally been studied under the heading of
‘voice.’ Hartmann and Stork (1976) describe it as a verb form or a particular
syntactic structure which indicates a certain relationship between the subject
and object in a sentence. Although straightforward, this description is
troublesome if viewed within the framework of contrastive analysis.
Passivization in English and Arabic is usually considered a rich area for
contrastive analysis. The differences between the passive voice in English and
in Arabic stem from the fact that passivization in English is straightforward:
the rule is applied by a series of transformations that can be generalized over a
wide range of cases. Except for a seemingly limited number of verbs in
English, almost all transitive verbs can be passivized. At the same time, the
passive structure in English has a number of discourse functions that
determine its uses and appropriateness. But this is not the case in Arabic.
Passivization in Arabic is rather complex, and such complexity stems from the
fact that there are several measurements (i.e., awzan) that need to be taken into
account. Moreover, the variations in the use of the passive voice across
different discourse functions make the task even more difficult: there are cases
when two passive markers are appropriate and the justifications are not usually
easy to pin down.
In this short chapter, passivization shall be compared in English and
Arabic in order to discover the differences between the two languages in this
particular syntactic aspect. Several examples will be given from both
languages to illustrate focal points.
32 Amr M. El-Zawawy

PASSIVIZATION IN ENGLISH
Lyons (1968) prefers to discuss the passive voice in English in the light of
the following conditions:

1. The object of the active sentence becomes the subject of the

corresponding passive sentence.
2. The verb is active in form in the most basic version and passive in
form in the less basic version.
3. The subject of the passive sentence is not necessarily expressed
overtly, and if so, a particular adjunct or preposition usually fronts it.

These conditions are not new, for Chomsky (1965) formalized them in a
sequence of transformations as follows: (i) the surface structure; (ii)
generalized Transformations (GTs); and (iii) deep structure. Generalized
transformations are to relay the surface structure into a deep structure. For
example, the following sentence is an active one. The usual Chomskyan
treatment is through a surface tree-diagram as follows:
The dog ate the bone.

Figure 5-1. A conventional tree diagram for an active structure.

Through a series of transformations, the following diagram is produced:

 Passivization in English and Arabic 33

Figure 5-2. A conventional tree diagram for a passive structure.

To mention or not to mention the subject which is fronted by a preposition

(usually ‘by’) is a matter of discourse focus. The Functionalists (cf. Daneš
1994) provide an interesting investigation of this matter by discussing the
differences between theme, transition and rheme. In a sentence like ‘The floor
was brushed by John,’ the theme is the floor, the rheme John and the transition
the passive string ‘was brushed.’ This stands in opposition to the active
structure, where the transition is an active string. New information is usually
expressed by rhemes while given information is often expressed by themes. In
this case, passivization is meant to give focus to what might be considered new
information from the user’s perspective.
Furthermore, Palmer (1996) remarks that there is a difference in meaning
between the activized and passivized structures. For example, in ‘Many men
read few books’ and ‘Few books are read by many men’ and similarly in
‘Many arrows didn’t hit the target’ and ‘The target wasn’t hit by many
arrows,’ it is asserted that there are lots of men who read very little and lots of
arrows that did not hit the bull’s eye, while there are few valuable books and
one target (Palmer 1996, 123).
Yet there are structures in English which are active in form but passive in
meaning. Examples include the following (adapted from Khafaji: 1996):

1. The book sold well.

2. The shirt dried.
3. The train filled.
4. This matter relates to the old one.
34 Amr M. El-Zawawy

PASSIVIZATION IN ARABIC
Traditional accounts on the passive voice in Arabic focus on the mundane
difference between the following:

‫ ضرب الولد الكرة‬ḍarba alwald alkurah

‫ ضُربت الكرة‬ḍurbat alkurah

The transformation from the active into the passive voice is simply carried
out through the omission of the subject and adding a diacritic ḍammah and
matching the gender agreement. Such accounts also focus on the type of the
verb as a way of reducing the complications implicit in the passivization
process in Arabic. They provide lists of Arabic verbs that appear in the passive
form. A sample list is the following (cf. Al-Jarf 2000, 108)

)‫‘ عٌني (بالطفل‬unīya (bilṭifl)

)‫ جٌن (الرجل‬jun (arrajul)

)‫‘ أٌغمي (عليه‬uġmīya (‘alīh)

‫ سٌقط في يديه‬suqiṭ fī yadīh

‫ ٌغشي عليه‬ġušī ‘alīh

‫‘ أولع بالشئ‬oul’ bilšai’

Other accounts set the problem in a wider context, and include the passive
participle in the discussion of Arabic passivization. The passive participle
(isml al maf’oul) is usually treated through the number of letters in the root.
Still other traditionalists widen the scope of the passive voice to include the
form and type of the verb used. In addition to the transitive and intransitive
verb types, Al-Akkad (n.d.) discusses the malleable verb (i.e., motawai),
which can be exemplified by ‫( فٌتح الباب‬futiḥa al-bab) as opposed to ‫انفتح الباب‬
(infataḥa al-bab).
In the following sections, the passive participle is discussed at length as a
component of the passive voice in Arabic. But before this, it should be
mentioned that, just like English, Arabic, to the surprise of many, imposes
 Passivization in English and Arabic 35

certain restrictions on the inclusion of the agent in the passivized structure; this
will be the focus after the discussion of the passive participle.

THE PASSIVE PARTICIPLE (ISML AL MAF’OUL)

As Ryding (2005) contends, the passive participle (ism al-maf ‘oul)
describes the entity that receives the action, or has the action done to it. Arabic
passive participles therefore describe or refer to entities involved in an activity,
process, or state.
The passive participle can be derived from any form. Passive participles
can be formed from triliteral as well as quadriliteral verbs. But as Rydnig
(ibid) stipulates, in order to have a passive participle, a verb should be
transitive.
The form of the passive participle describes the result of an action, whether
it functions as a noun or an adjective. It may take a broken plural or the sound
feminine plural. It refers to a nonhuman entity and the sound masculine plural
if it refers to human males. Consider the following list of the nominal passive
participles:

concept/s ‫مفاهيم‬/‫ مفهوم‬mafhūm/mafāhīm

group/s ‫مجموعات‬/‫ مجموعة‬majmū’ah/majmū’āt
plan/s ‫مشاريع‬/‫ مشروع‬mašrū’/mašārī’
manuscript/s ‫مخطوطات‬/‫ مخطوطة‬maḳṭūṭah/maḳṭūṭāt
implication/s ‫مدلوالت‬/‫ مدلول‬madlūl/madlūlāt
topic/s ‫موضوعات‬/‫ موضوع‬mawḍū’/mūḍū’āt
movables ‫منقوالت‬/‫ منقول‬manqūl/manqūlāt

Passive participles can likewise be adjectives: PP adjective:

known ‫ معروف‬ma’rūf
busy ‫ مشغول‬mašġūl
blessed ‫ مبروك‬mabrūk
forbidden ‫ ممنوع‬mamnū’
36 Amr M. El-Zawawy

VERB STRUCTURES AND THE PASSIVE VOICE

The following deployment is based on the discussions provided by
Cantarino (1974) and Rydnig (2005). The explanations and examples are
tailored to the scope of the present chapter.

Strong/regular root:

The regular root refers to the Arabic base form which does not include a
vowel or a glottal consonant (i.e., hamzah).

‫ﻥٌﻕﻝ ﺇﻝﻯ ﺍﻝﻡﺱﺕﺵ‬

‫ﻑﻯ ﻭ ٌﻡﻥﻉ ﻡﻥ ﺍﻝﺩﺥﻭﻝ ﺇﻝﻯ ﺍﻝﻡﺩﻱﻥ ﺓ‬
nuqil ‘ilā almaschfā wa mun’min addaḳūl ‘ilā almadīna
He was transported to the hospital. He was prevented from entering.
the city.
ٌ
‫ﻙﺕﺏﺏﺡﺭﻭﻑ ﻉﺭﺏﻱ ﺓ‬
kutiba biḥrūf ‘arbya
It was written in Arabic letters.

Assimilated root:
The assimilated root refers to the vowel that naturally occurs at the
beginning of the root.
‫ﻉﻝﻯ ﺍﻝﻕﺍﺉﻡ ﺓ‬
‫ﻭﺽﻉﺕ ﻡﺹﺭ‬
wuḍi’at miṣr ‘alā alqā’ima
Egypt was placed on the list.

Geminate root:
The geminate root is the one that has a doubled consonant in the middle.
‫ﺡٌﺩﺩﺕ ﺍألصوﺍﺕ‬
ḥudidat al’aṣwāt
The votes were determined.

Hamzah root:
This refers to the root which includes the glottal consonant hamzah in the
middle.
‫ﺱﺉﻝﺍﻝﻡﺝﺭﻡ‬
ٌ
su’la almujrim
The criminal was interrogated.
 Passivization in English and Arabic 37

Hollow root (al-ajwaf):

The hollow root (i.e., al ajwaf) is the root that has a vowel in the middle.
‫بيعت إلى أحد التجار‬
biy’t ‘ilā ‘aḥd attujār

It was sold to a merchant.

Defective root (al-mu’tal):

It refers to the root that has a vowel in the end.
‫بٌني المنزل بالطوب‬
bunīya almanzilu bilṭūb
The house was built of bricks.

RESTRICTIONS ON THE MENTION OF AGENT

When a passive verb is used in Arabic, mention of the identity of the agent
or doer of the action is usually omitted: it may be unknown or simply
unnecessary. The paradigm is that if the agent is mentioned, the passive
construction is not normally used; the active verb is then the preferred option.
However, instruments or other inanimate causative factors (such as the
weather) may be mentioned by means of prepositional phrases, e.g., ‫فٌتح الباب‬
‫بالمفتاح‬, roughly translated as ‘The door was opened by/with this key.’
It should be noted that when the subject of the passive verb is mentioned as
a separate noun, it is in the nominative case (as in the sentence above, ‘the
door’). The technical Arabic term for the subject of a passive verb is naa’ib al-
fa’afil. This naa’ib is always diacritically inflected as the nominative (see
Ryding 2005).

Mention of Agent: Min Qibal, Min Janib, ‘Ala Yad

Although the clause ‘min qiabali’ is usually avoided, it is recurrent in the

media language where an agent or doer of the action may be mentioned in an
Arabic passive sentence. When this is the case, certain phrases tend to be used,
just as English would use the term “by.” These are min qibal, ‘ala yad and min
janib (Rydnig, 2005):
38 Amr M. El-Zawawy

‫سٌكنت هذه المساجد من قيل المسلمين‬

sukinat haḏhi almasājd min qibal almuslmīn
But these mosques are occupied by Muslims.

‫قٌتل على يد المتظاهرين‬

qutila ‘alā yad almutaḓāhrīn
He was assassinated by the demonstartors.

‫أٌعلن ذلك الحديث من جانبه‬

‘u’lina ḏalka alḥadīṯ min jānbih
This speech was mentioned by him.

CONCLUSIONS AND A COMPARISON BETWEEN THE

TWO LANGUAGES
Arabic passivization describes or refers to entities involved in an activity,
process, or state. Arabic participles are based on a distinction in voice: they are
either active or passive. This contrasts with English, where participles are
based on tense (present or past) and are used as components of compound verb
forms. Arabic participles are not used in the formation of compound verb
tenses. Arabic is richer in passive structures than English, where the passive
voice is used to lay emphasis on the doer. In English, the transformations
involved in passivization are uniform and straightforward, while in Arabic
diacritics play a major role by placing dammah on the verb form and changing
some of its structure. The differences between Arabic and English in this
respect are not simply in structure; there are also differences in the mention of
the doer or agent. While English tolerates the mention of the agent, which is
always fronted by ‘by,’ Arabic prefers to keep the agent unknown, and if it is
mentioned, such phrases as ‘min qibal’ and ‘min janib’ are used. Some
linguists, especially Rangkuti (n.d.), contend that in Arabic the agent is not the
same as that found in English as the agent in Arabic has been combined to the
verb of the sentence.

Example in English:

Active: My father bought a new motorcycle.

Passive: A new motorcycle was bought by (my father).
 Passivization in English and Arabic 39

Example in Arabic:
‫قرأ المسلمون القرآن‬
Active: Qara’a al muslimun al-qur’āna.
Read+past the+Moslem the+Qur-an.
‘The Moslem read the Qur-an.’
‫قٌرأ القرآن‬
Passive: Quri’a al qur’anu.
Read+pass the+Qur-an.
‘The Qur-an was read.’
Chapter 6

SYNONYMY IN ENGLISH AND ARABIC

INTRODUCTION
Synonymy is a basic semantic concept and a problematic sense relation. It
is a property of all natural languages, being oriented towards the preservation
of language across centuries. The multiplicity of words that mean the same or
are markedly similar in meaning protects language from decay.
The notion of synonymy is copiously dealt with in the linguistic literature.
Several studies have been made on what synonymy is, whether it exists or not
and how words are complete or partial synonyms in many languages. The
present chapter will focus on synonymy in English and Arabic in order to
discover how the two languages concur or diverge in their definition and types
of synonymy.

SYNONYMY IN ENGLISH
The problem of synonymy in English has been voluminously examined in
the literature on semantic relations at the word level. The problem is not with
whether synonymy in general exists or not, but with whether absolute
synonymy is found in English or not. The definitions of synonymy and its
types, other than absolute synonymy, have also been discussed along very
similar lines by many linguists, but the conditions under which synonymy
operates differ from one point of view to another.
Bolinger (1977, 1) asserts that ‘if two ways of saying the same thing differ
in their words or their arrangements they will also differ in meaning.’ Cruse
42 Amr M. El-Zawawy

(1989) prefers to handle synonymity according to certain sub-classes. He

classifies synonymity into cognitive synonyms and pleisonyms. Cognitive
synonyms, he maintains, ‘must have certain semantic properties in common ‘
(ibid, 270). Pleisonyms are distinguished from cognitive synonyms by the fact
that they yield sentences with different truth-conditions. His examples include
foggy: misty, fearless: brave, and pretty: handsome, among others. Lyons
(1997) sets certain conditions for absolute synonyms: (i) all their meanings are
identical; (ii) they are synonymous in all contexts; and (iii) they are
semantically equivalent on all dimensions of meaning, both descriptive and
non-descriptive. If two or more lexical items fail to satisfy one or two of the
above conditions, then they are partial synonyms. Lyons (ibid, 60) points out
that near-synonymy, Cruse’s plesionyms are different from partial synonyms
in that they are ‘expressions that are more or less similar, but not identical, in
meaning.’ He, like Cruse, deems absolute synonymy extremely rare in natural
languages (ibid, 61). This actually leads us to Nida‘s definition of synonymy.
Nida (1975, 98) states: “In most discussions of meaning, synonyms are treated
as though the terms overlap, while in reality what is involved is the
overlapping of particular meanings of such terms.”
Nida (ibid) then goes on to elaborate on this issue by saying that:

“Certain sets of related meanings appear to be so close to one another

that one cannot determine whether or not they are complete synonyms. In
such instances it may seem impossible to determine just how such
meanings may differ from one another… Most persons assume that there
are differences of meaning but are unable to indicate what they are. If
some speakers suggest what appear to them to be distinctive features of
meaning, others will disagree. Such a series meanings highlights two
important aspects of semantic analysis: (1) there are closely related
meanings which cannot be analyzed, largely because they are marginal to
everyday usage; not that the diagnostic components of their meanings are
identical, but the features are obscure.(2) There is a tendency to regard
different forms as necessarily having different meanings. Basically this
presupposition is true, for though a number of homophones exist in all
languages, it is doubtful whether there are any real synonyms, i.e.,
different forms with identical meanings.” (102)

Other linguists, especially Harris (1973), see synonymy as governed by

certain differences. Harris (ibid 10) lists nine possible factors:
 Synonymy in English and Arabic 43

i. One term is more intense than the other, e.g., repudiate: refuse.
ii. One term more general and inclusive in its applicability, e.g., refuse:
reject.
iii. One term is more highly charged with emotion than the other, e.g.,
looming: emerging.
iv. One term may imply approbation or censure, e.g., thrifty: economical.
v. One term is more professional than the other, e.g., domicile: house.
vi. One term may belong more to the written language, e.g., passing:
death.
vii. One term is more colloquial than the other, e.g., turn down: refuse.
viii. One term is more dialectal than the other, e.g., flesher: butcher.
ix. One term belongs to child-talk, e.g., daddy/dad/papa: father.

More recently, Kearns (in Aarts and McMahon, 2006) discusses

synonymy in English according to its types. The strictest notion of synonymy,
which she calls absolute synonymy, requires absolute identity of all aspects
of meaning (including connotation, style and register) for two terms to be
classed as synonyms. The diagnostic of absolute identity is complete
interchangeability: absolute synonyms would be those that can substitute one
another in any context in which their common sense is denoted with no change
to truth value, communicative effect. She maintains that absolute synonymy is
generally agreed upon to be extremely rare, if not non-existent, although
candidates for absolute synonymy, such as everybody/everyone and anyhow/
anyway, are occasionally noted. Kearns further relates the question of
synonymy to the Principle of Contrast, i.e., every two linguistic forms contrast
each other in meaning. The Principle of Contrast is best seen at work in
instances of language change where the so-called absolute synonyms
disappear over time, either by the loss of one term or by changes in the sense
of at least one term.
Chierchia (2006) also examines synonymy in the light of language
acquisition and sentence paraphrases as a heuristic for defining synonymy and
further examining the viability of the interchangeability condition. To her,
knowing a particular language entails knowing which two or more sentences
are paraphrases of each other or simply synonyms. Like Kearns (ibid), she
uses interchangeability to work out an acceptable definition of synonymy:
‘Two synonymous sentences (and, more generally, two synonymous
expressions) can always be used interchangeably’ (565). She (ibid) gives the
following assumptions:
44 Amr M. El-Zawawy

a) Suppose one utters any complex expression a containing a sub-

expression (a). If one can replace (a) with a different expression (b),
without changing the overall communicative import of (a), then (a)
and (b) are synonymous.
b) (a) is synonymous with (¼ b) in the utterance of any expression (a)
containing (a), (a) can be replaced with (b) without changing the
communicative import of the utterance.

Based on these two assumptions, she argues that because the sentences of
a language are infinite, it is impossible for speakers to memorize synonymous
sentences one by one. Hence, they must recognize synonymy by rule. This rule
can be couched in terms of truth conditions in order for informants to be able
to compare them and conclude their synonymity. This drives her to reject
interchangeability, or substitutivity, as a criterion for discovering synonymy.
It can be concluded from this brief survey of the studies on synonymy that
synonyms exist in English, but absolute synonymy is problematic: whether
absolute synonymy exists or not is a matter of great controversy.

SYNONYMY IN ARABIC
As early as the second Hegira century, grammarians spoke of the question
of synonymy as a peculiarity of Arabic as a language of huge repertoire.
Synonymy in Arabic is defined by Al-Rommani and Al-Razi (in Al-Mari,
1987) as the lexemes which have the same meaning or same ostensive
meaning. Al-Rommani (ibid) also discusses the position of synonymy in the
Arabic grammar across the ages. However, the topic of absolute synonymy
figures as a bone of contention.
Among the old grammarians who were in favor of absolute synonymy was
Al-’Asmai’i who ascribed this to the richness of Arabic. Other grammarians,
especially Qutrub, followed suit. Some of those ancient grammarians even
considered synonymy as a healthy phenomenon in Arabic. Ibn khalaweh and
al-Fayrūzābādī (in Hasan, n.d.) recognized some benefits of synonymy:

1. The multiplicity of words and methods in order to enable us to

express ourselves. That is, in case we forgot a certain word, or it was
difficult to pronounce a sound in the word we need, we tend to use its
synonym. It is said that a wise old man called Wasel Ibn Ataa had
never been heard saying a word that has the sound /r/, because he was
 Synonymy in English and Arabic 45

not able to pronounce the /r/ sound, so he used other words as

synonyms all his life.
2. Synonyms assist in eloquence, rhythm, etc.
3. There are certain words in Arabic that have many synonyms in such a
way that one cannot deny the existence of synonymy, e.g., lion:‫األسد‬
‫ الضيغم‬,‫ الليث‬,‫ الهرماس الغضنفر‬,‫أسامة‬, al’asd, alġaḍanfar, allayṭ, alḍaīġm,
‘usāma, alhirmās.

In modern times, some grammarians provided justifications. Al-Shaya’

(1993; passim) furnishes the following as reasons for the existence of absolute
or full synonyms in Arabic:

1. The richness of the morphological bases of Arabic.

2. The fact that some adjectives become so widespread that they are
treated as nouns and synonyms of the original other nouns, e.g., ‫السيف‬:
‫( الحسام‬i.e., sword).
3. Loanwords that entered Arabic.
4. Metaphorical uses (i.e., al majaz) of the words, e.g., ‫اللغة‬: ‫( اللسان‬al-
luġa: al-lisan).

Yet a group of coevals opposed this view and opted for differentiating
among words which purport to have the same meaning. In ancient times, this
group of opponents included Al-Hamazani, Ibn Khalaweih, Ibn Seedah and
Al-Razi. But chief among them was Ib Al-Faris, who provided a number of
basic differences among such words as ‫المائدة‬: ‫( الخوان‬alma’idah: alkhowan)4
and ‫القلم‬: ‫( األنبوبة‬al’anboubah: alqalam)5. More advanced studies were
conducted by Al-’Askari in the fourth century A.H. His Al-Forouk Al-
Luġaweyya (Linguistic Distinctions) is by far the most comprehensive. Al-
’Askari argues that if two words are exactly the same in meaning, one of them
must be dropped because it will then be a tautology. He also examines many
Arabic words that seem to be absolutely synonymous but have substantial
differences, e.g., ‫الكبر‬: ‫التيه‬, (attih: al-kibr), 6‫النصيب‬: ‫( القسمة‬al-qismah: annasiib)7
and ‫الفساد‬: ‫( الغي‬al-ġayy: al-fasad)8.

4 Both have the meaning of ‘a table.’

5 Both have the meaning of 'a pen' or ‘a quill.’
6 Both have the meaning of ‘haughtiness.’
7 Both have the meaning of ‘fortune.’
8 Both have the meaning of ‘corruption’ and ‘temptation.’
46 Amr M. El-Zawawy

In modern times, the group of opponents extended to include a handful of

eminent scholars such as Anis, Bishr and Mubarak, among others. Anis (in Al-
Masri, 1987)9 turns attention to the effect of dialects and temporality as major
criteria in differentiating among words. Bishr (in ibid) also maintains that
absolute synonymy exists as an abstract term, not recognizable through
tangible evidence. Mubarak (ibid) considers absolute synonymy as a sign of
language depletion at times of degradation.
Al-Masri (1987) and Al-Muhsini (n.d.) prefer to go a step further by
discussing the sources of synonymy in Arabic as an attempt at discovering
whether absolute synonymy exists or not. The first source is tribal
competition; that is, one Arab tribe coined a name and another opposed it. The
second source is the traditional Arabic dictionaries. They followed that tribal
competition, claiming that their data were authoritative. The third source is the
fact that some adjectives become so widespread that they are treated as nouns
and synonyms of the original other nouns, e.g., ‫األسد‬: ‫( العباس‬al’asad:
al’abbas)10. The fourth source is phonological and semantic development, e.g.,
‫هلبت السماء‬: ‫‘( ألبت السماء‬alibat assama’: halibut assama’)11. The fifth source is the
ancient Arabs’ preoccupation with poetic musicality, which made them seek
rhyming words despite the subtle differences in meaning. The sixth source is
the decay of meaning differences with the passage of time, e.g., ‫الشك‬: ‫الريبة‬
(aššak: arriybah)12.

COMPARISON BETWEEN THE TWO LANGUAGES

From the telescoped discussion above, it is clear that synonymy is
semantically problematic in both languages in question. English linguists are
intent on classifying synonyms according to their use; this drives them to
consider absolute synonymy rare, if non-existent. They have also evolved
conditions under which synonymous words are clearly differentiated. These
conditions are spatiotemporal (i.e, based on geographical and temporal
dialects) and truth-based ones (i.e., based on logic). Yet the bottom line is that
if two words have exactly the same meaning according to the conditions
briefly presented, one of these words must fall into disuse.

9
Al-Masri has annotated Al-Romānī’s Al’alfādh almatrādfa almatqārba alma‘nā.
10 Both are variant names for the lion.
11 Both mean that the sky was pouring.
12 Both have the meaning of ‘doubt’ or ‘dubiety.’
 Synonymy in English and Arabic 47

Arab grammarians share the same belief, but some see synonymy as an
emblem of the authenticity and richness of the Arabic language. Those who
support absolute synonymy maintain that such a type is clearly existent and
opens up vistas for substitutivity to avoid boredom. Others believe that
absolute synonymy is a falsified notion, since, as the English linguists contend,
two words with exactly the same meaning cannot co-exist.
Synonyms in English and Arabic are similarly defined: they are
semantically very akin to each other, but differ in some other regards. Both
languages consider partial synonymy the solution for the case of absolute
synonyms. However, in English, the scale of synonynmity is rather elaborate:
there are absolute synonyms (if any), partial synonyms (highly current) and
near-synonyms (even more highly current). This scale is peripherally
augmented by some differentia such as the factors of colloquialism and spatial
and temporal dialects. Other factors, as Harris (1973) argues, include
professionalism and register. In Arabic, the situation is marked by those who
are for and those who are against absolute synonymy. Arab grammarians,
ancient and modern, are driven by the fact that synonymy is part of language
continuity: if absolute synonymy is non-existent, modes of expression would
diminish. Those grammarians are divided into supporters of synonymy on a
large scale, including absolute synonyms, and those who see partial or near-
synonyms more plausible, as a better approach to the Arabic language for
those who are interested in composition (cf. Al-’Askari and Ibn Seedah). This
latter approach is similar to the one adopted by modern linguists.
Chapter 7

IDIOMS IN ENGLISH AND ARABIC

INTRODUCTION
Idiomatic expressions are a recurrent feature in almost all natural
languages described in the linguistic literature hitherto. They are one of the
manifestations of the arbitrariness of linguistic expressions, and are often
included as a separate topic in any textbook on semantics. Crystal (1980)
defines them as the sequences of words which are semantically and often
syntactically restricted. Trask (1999) describes them as those expressions
whose meaning cannot be recovered from the meanings of their constituents.
Iffil (2002, 2) also has a similar definition: ‘an idiom is a fixed expression
whose meaning cannot be taken as a combination of the meanings of its
component parts.’
These definitions point to important facts about idioms. Idioms are rigidly
fixed in their semantics and often in their syntactic structures. They are also
made up of component parts that are otherwise meaningful in their own right.
These facts entail a discussion of the semantics and syntax of idioms. The
present chapter is concerned with the exploration of idioms in both English
and Arabic within the framework of their semantic and syntactic behavior.

IDIOMS IN ENGLISH
Two influential scholars, Cruse (1986) and Palmer (1996), have discussed
the notion ‘idiom’ in English in an attempt to discover its regularities both
semantically and syntactically. But it is worth noting that some other accounts
50 Amr M. El-Zawawy

on idioms prefer to divide them into types governed by syntactic structures

rather than entire units. For example, Boatner and Gates (1975 in Awwad,
1976) divide English idioms into lexemic, phraseological and proverbial.
Examples of lexemic idioms include ‘hammer and tongs’ and ‘cut and dried,’
while phraseological and proverbial idioms are exemplified by ‘fly off the
handle’ and ‘air your dirty linen in public,’ respectively.
The first attempt was made by Cruse‘s (1986). Cruse is intent on
exploring idioms alongside dead metaphors under the umbrella of syntagmatic
relations. Using the notion of ‘semantic constituent,’ he opts for non-
circularity in defining idioms. Thus, he requires from an idiom two salient
properties: (a) to be lexically complex and (b) to be a single minimal semantic
constituent (i.e., having its meaning wholesale not in virtue of the meanings of
its components). These two stipulations inherently exclude non-idioms such as
‘help’ and ‘destroy’ and render expressions such as ‘by and large’ and ‘far and
away’ (as asyntactic idioms). Moreover, Cruse (ibid) cautions against the
interruptions and reorderings in idiomatic expressions. For instance, ‘pull
someone’s left leg’ and ‘kick the large bucket’ are not idioms, since ‘left’ and
‘large’ interrupt them, and similarly ‘the bucket was kicked’ is not idiomatic
due to reordering. Cruse also discusses dead metaphors and proverbs.
Although both are very similar to idioms, they should be distinguished13. As
Cruse (ibid) contends, a metaphor induces the reader (or hearer) to view an
object or state of affairs as being like something else by applying to the former
linguistic expressions normally peculiar to the latter, e.g., ‘leave no stone
unturned.’
Palmer (1996) prefers to discuss idioms in the context of collocations.
Thus ‘fly off the handle’ and ‘kick the bucket’ include the collocations of ‘fly’
and ‘kick’ in addition to the opacity of the resultant combination. Palmer states
that semantically idioms do not function like single words. Therefore it is not
possible to add the past marker –ed to the whole string ‘kick the bucket’ to be
*’kick the bucketed.’ Moreover, there are some restrictions on pluralization.
For instance, ‘spill the beans’ cannot be made ‘spill one bean.’ Additionally,
cleft structures cannot be applied to all idioms, e.g., *’It was the bean that was
spilled.’ Unlike Cruse (1986), Palmer speaks of types of idioms. He considers
phrasal verbs one of these types, being made up of more than one word and
having a meaning not recoverable from their parts. There are also partial
idioms. For example, ‘red hair’ does not have the usual meaning of red and

13 This view runs counter to the one expressed by Boatner and Gates (1975) above, since they
include proverbs in the class of idioms.
 Idioms in English and Arabic 51

hair as color terms. Similarly, ‘white coffee’ and ‘white wine’ are idiomatic in
the sense that white is not strictly defined as an absence of color.
Thus, it can be concluded that English idioms are fixed expressions but
they exhibit peculiar semantic and syntactic behavior. They may also subsume
phrasal verbs and a partial type. But the most important fact about idioms is
that they cannot be broken down into meaningful units.

IDIOMS IN ARABIC
Idioms in Arabic enjoy a long record of discussion. Since 1008,
Arab grammarians devoted entire books to the topic. For example, as
Fayed (2003.) mentions, Al-Tha’alibi included many idiomatic expressions in
his book Thimar Al-Qulub (Fruitions of the Heart). Similarly, Al-Zamakhshari
compiled a dictionary of idiomatic expressions a century after (ibid), calling it
Assas Al-Balagha (The Foundations of Rhetoric). In recent times, Hamzawi
(n.d.), Fayed (2003) and Awwad (1990) studied the structure and function of
the idiomatic expression in Arabic in the light of modern linguistics. It is
pertinent to discuss those recent attempts to discover the regularities of Arabic
idioms.
Al-Hamzawi (n.d.) maintains that idioms in Arabic should be examined in
the light of their main property, which is their frozen status. This property they
share with proverbs. This argument requires differentiating between the two
regarding the way they are used. Starting with the proverb, Hamzawi (ibid)
lists the following properties:

1. It is a semantic unit whose meaning is different from the meanings of

its components.
2. It is not open to reordering, since it is morphologically frozen.
3. It cannot be literally translated into a foreign language, but should be
rendered communicatively.
4. It is semantically compact, being made of two or three words.

To him, proverbs are akin to idioms. However, in his discussion of idioms,

Al-Hamzawi (ibid) opts for identifying four types:

1. 1. Proper name idioms: ‫ يوم حليمة‬yawm ḥalīma and ‫مواعيد عرقوب‬

mawā’īd ‘urqūb (both indicating unfulfilled promises).
52 Amr M. El-Zawawy

2. Idioms that include unknown events, e.g., ‫ جنت على نفسها براقش‬jant ‘alā
nafs-hā barāqš (indicating a wrong decision at the wrong time).
3. Idioms related to people who uttered them or mentioned them in holy
books, then those idioms became quotations, e.g., ‫لحاجة في نفس يعقوب‬
‫ قضاها‬liḥāja fī nafs ya’qūb qaḍāhā (indicating an unknown reason).
4. The proverbial expression (i.e., proverbs).

It is clear from Al-Hamzawi’s typology that idioms and proverbs are

confused. Such a classification of idioms transparently runs counter to what
Cruse (1986) sees.
Fayed (2003) provides a rather elaborate examination of idioms. Her
approach is more similar to modern linguistic approaches, since it invokes
semantic, syntactic and sociolinguistic tools to discover how idioms are
structured and used in MSA. Fayed defines an idiom as a fixed expression
pertaining to a certain language, and made up of one or more words and whose
meaning cannot be worked out through the meanings of its constituent parts.
This definition is clearly similar to the ones deployed in the introduction of the
present chapter. Fayed also identifies the following types of idioms in Arabic:

1. Extra-constituent idioms: e.g., ‫( حدائق الشيطان‬Devil’s Gardens) and ‫جلد‬

‫( الذات‬self-flagellation).
2. Descriptive idioms: e.g., ‫( التصفية الجسدية‬liquidation), ‫البنية التحتية‬
(infrastructure), and ‫( التطهير العرق‬ethnic cleansing).
3. Verbal idioms: e.g., ‫( يعطي الضوء األخضر‬give the red light) and ‫يرفع‬
‫( الراية البيضاء‬hoist the white flag).
4. Nominal idioms: e.g., ‫( اللعب في الوقت الضائع‬play in the injury time) and
‫( اللعب على المكشوف‬play over the board).
5. Phrasal idioms: e.g., ‫(بعد خراب مالطة‬after Malta has been destroyed)
and ‫( على الهواء‬on air).

Furthermore, Fayed (ibid) speaks of the sources of idiomatic expressions

in Arabic. There are idioms which are adapted via translation from foreign
languages, especially English, e.g., ‫( الخطوط الحمراء‬red lines) and ‫الخط الساخن‬
(hotline). There are also idioms taken from gaming, e.g., ‫( خلط األوراق‬shuffling).
Still other idioms are taken from the medical and military registers, e.g., ‫غسل‬
‫( المخ‬brainwashing) and ‫( ساعة الصفر‬the zero hour), respectively.
 Idioms in English and Arabic 53

Awwad (1990) prefers to divide Arabic idioms into the following:

1. Lexemic: this type is further subdivided into:

a. Verbal: e.g., ‫( اقتحم البيت‬to break into a house).
b. Nominal: e.g., ‫( قاسم مشترك‬a common denominator).
c. Adverbial: e.g., ‫ (جاء سبهلال‬to act haphazardly).
d. Adjectival: e.g., ‫( أحر من الجمر‬in full swing).
2. Phraseological: e.g., ‫( من أعماق قلبه‬wholeheartedly).
3. Proverbial: e.g., ‫( من سار على الدرب وصل‬to achieve something through hard
work).

It is noteworthy that Awwad‘s typology equates proverbs with idioms,

which is what is cautioned against by Cruse (1986).

COMPARISON BETWEEN THE TWO LANGUAGES

It is clear that idioms in the two languages in question are not treated in
the same way. English semanticists examine idioms in the light of their
uniqueness both semantically and syntactically. Cruse (1986) and Palmer
(1996) tackle idioms as fixed expressions that cannot be semantically broken
down. They also note that they are not always open to reordering or
passivation. Such peculiarities make idioms similar to phrasal verbs as Palmer
(ibid) contends. The problem with Arab grammarians, on the other hand, is
that most of them have followed the tradition of including proverbs under
idioms. Such an inclusion has led to the confusion of defining the basic
properties of Arabic idioms. As Al-Hamzawi (n.d.) and Awwad (1990)
maintain, there are proverbial idioms whose precise meanings are sometimes
difficult to discover due to their unknown sources.
Despite these similarities, idioms in both languages are usually frozen
expressions that cannot be deciphered based on their components. In English,
there are a limited number of idioms, often collected in specialized
dictionaries. In contrast, idioms in Arabic are often seen as traditional and
borrowed via calqued translation. Traditional idioms are taken from old
grammars and the Qur’an or the prophetic tradition. Borrowed or calqued
idioms are ever-expansive, being based on journalese. This latter type is
usually carried into Arabic via translation, and is rarely included in
mainstream dictionaries.
Chapter 8

COHESION AND COHERENCE

IN ENGLISH AND ARABIC

JUST BEFORE STARTING: DEMARCATING THE BORDERS

BETWEEN COHESION AND COHERENCE

The notion of ‘coherence‘ might be problematic, especially when viewed

in relation to cohesion. There are some models that consider cohesion and
coherence synonymous, being both derived from the verb ‘cohere.’ Other
models consider the two disparate. Both views are discussed below.
Knott‘s (1996) is a case in point. She prefers to discuss cohesion and
coherence under one umbrella term, which is ‘coherence relations.’ She (ibid,
1-2) believes that coherence can be discussed in the light of incoherence.
Moreover, she underlines the role of context in coherence, giving the
following example:

1. Sally decided to take the history course. The ducks on the lake were not
eating the bread.

Knott (ibid, 3) maintains that the above text can be perfectly understood if
Sally is imagined to have unusual superstitions about the ducks on the lake.
Knott‘s prelude to coherence relations is the processing of coherence itself.
This is done, she contends (ibid, 12-13), in view of ‘text spans’ which are
textual units of the size of a clause or even lager. We can apply her ‘theory’ to
the following context:
56 Amr M. El-Zawawy

--------------------- (Evidence) (Elaboration)

Bill can’t be feeling well. He didn’t eat. He didn’t even drink the soup.

Figure 8-1. Knott‘s ‘text spans.’

The horizontal lines represent text spans, and the curved line represents
the relation between them. She divides coherence relations into the following
(ibid 16-20):

1. Additives: complex, apposition, comparison.

2. Adversatives: contrastive, correction, dimensional.
3. Causal: specific, conditional, respective.
4. Temporal: sequential, simultaneous, conclusive, correlative.

What is notable here is that Knott‘s approach views cohesion and

coherence as intimately close to each other. The same view is adopted by
Redeker (2000, 4) who maintains that: “A widely accepted current paradigm
for the description of textual coherence is a group of approaches that describe
text organization in terms of coherence relations, rhetorical relations, or
discourse structure relations.”
On the other hand, there are approaches which insist on the separation
between the two terms theoretically. Hobbs‘ (1987) is a case in point. He (ibid
6) maintains that the cohesive relations studied by Halliday and Hasan (1976)
can be seen as deriving from coherence relations. Hobbs (ibid) provides a
classification of coherence relations as follows:

1. Elaboration: ‘Go down Washington Street. Just follow Washington

Street three blocks to Adams Street.’ The pattern is recognized by
inferring ‘going’ from ‘following’ and matching the paths from the
two sentences.
2. Parallel: ‘Set the stack pointer to zero, and set link variable P to
ROOT.’
3. Contrast: ‘You are not likely to hit the bull’s eye, but you’re more
likely to hit the bull’s eye than any other equal area.’

It is clear that Hobbs‘ coherence relations make no reference to cohesive

markers, and thus underpin the role of inferencing and implication in
coherence as opposed to explication in cohesion.
 Cohesion and Coherence in English and Arabic 57

Mani et al. (2003) also underline the differences between cohesion and
coherence. To them, coherence is a reflection of the hierarchical structure of
the text to achieve certain argumentative goals, whereas cohesion is brought
about by the use of linguistic devices that are dispersed in different portions of
the text to lend it connectedness. Ben-Anath (2006) also concurs, bringing to
the fore the role of connectives in discourse comprehension. She (ibid: 3)
criticizes Halliday and Hasan‘s model (1976) as incomplete in terms of text
understanding. She quotes Blakemore’s (1992) view which emphasizes the
shift from linguistic connectivity (i.e., by means of explicit cohesive markers)
to connectivity of content (i.e., by means of coherence relations).

COHERENCE-BASED MODELS IN ENGLISH

van Dijk’s Model (1977)

van Dijk’s model of discourse comprehension has revolutionized text

linguistics and discourse analysis. It has established basic notions such as
coherence, frames, scripts, microstructures and macrostructures. It has also
paved the way for further explorations in pragmatics and cognitive linguistics
through van Dijk’s collaboration with Kintsch (1978). van Dijk’s model
(1977) derives its importance from emphasis on the role of coherence as a
starting point for pragmatic analysis on more global levels (i.e.,
microstructures and macrostructures).
van Dijk (1977, 93) defines coherence as ‘a semantic property of
discourses, based in the interpretation of each individual sentence relative to
the interpretation of other sentences.’ He (ibid 96) believes that coherence
relations exist between propositions (like those explained above); values must
thus be assigned to these propositions or parts of sentences. He also speaks of
‘model structures’ which depend on each other; individuals may be introduced
or eliminated in the course of discourse, and each sentence is to be interpreted
with respect to its ‘actual domain of individuals’ (van Dijk’s term). This
implies, as he maintains, that sentences in a discourse are connected to each
other so that interpretation occurs a priori. Moreover, ‘properties’ or ‘relations’
(i.e., predicate values) change for an individual ‘at different time points and in
different possible worlds’ (96). Thus, a discourse containing two propositions
like John is ill and John is not ill may not be inconsistent.
van Dijk (ibid) gives a concrete example of coherence at work. The
following passage is cited:
58 Amr M. El-Zawawy

“Clare Russel came into the Clarion office on the following

morning, feeling tired and depressed. She went straight to her room, took
off her hat, touched her face with a powder puff and sat down at her desk.
Her mail was spread out neatly, her blotter was snowy and her
inkwell was filled. But she didn’t feel like work…” (98-99)

van Dijk discusses one important cognitive condition of semantic

coherence through this passage, i.e., the ‘assumed normality of worlds
involved’ (99). He identifies the term as the role played by individuals’
knowledge about the structures of worlds in general and of particular states of
affairs or courses of events in determining expectations about the semantic
structures of discourse. Thus, normal propositions can be added to the above
passage as well as abnormal ones. van Dijk lists the following as abnormal
propositions (or discourse alternatives):

1-(…) took off her clothes (…)

2-(…) threw her desk out of the window (…)
3- (…) her mail was hanging on the wall (…)
4-(…) she drank her inkwell (…)

He introduces here the notion of ‘frame, which is ‘[t]he set of propositions

characterizing our conventional knowledge of some more or less autonomous
situation (activity, course of events, state)’ (ibid 90-91). The above example
illustrates the office frame with all its events and contents.

van Dijk (ibid 102-103) summarizes coherence conditions as follows:

1. Each situation of each model of the discourse model is either identical

with an actual (represented) situation or accessible from this situation.
2. There is at least one individual function for all the counterparts of this
function.
3. For all other individuals, there is a series of other functions
defined by relations of partiality (inclusion, part-whole, membership,
possession).
4. For each property (or relation) applied to the same individual in the
successive models of discourse model, there is a more comprehensive
property or a dimension containing sets of characteristics.
5. For each fact in the subsequent models of the discourse model, there
is a fact that is a condition of other facts or a consequence of it.
 Cohesion and Coherence in English and Arabic 59

6. A sequence of sentences consisting of two coherent sequences is

coherent if there is a relation such that individuals or properties of the
two topics or frames satisfy this relation in the discourse, or if the first
sequence contains a predicate giving possible access to the possible
worlds in which the second sequence is satisfied.

van Dijk touches upon inferencing as a consequence of coherence in

discourse:

“It has been remarked several times that natural language discourse
is not EXPLICIT. That is, there are propositions which are not directly
expressed, but which may be INFERRED from other propositions which
have been expressed. If such implicit propositions must be postulated for
the establishment of coherent interpretations, they are what we called
MISSING LINKS.”(Original emphasis) (108)

To van Dijk (109), inferencing is closely related to ‘completeness,’ i.e.,

the degree to which information is explicit in a discourse. The following
examples (109) well illustrate the point:

1. John came home at 6 o’clock. He took off his coat and hung it on the
hat stand. He said ‘‘Hi, love’’ to his wife and kissed her. He asked
‘‘How was work at the office today?” and he took a beer from the
refrigerator before he started washing up the dishes…
2. John came home at 6 o’clock and had his dinner at 7 o’clock.
3. John came home at 6 o’clock. Walking to the main entrance of the flat
he put his hand in his left coat pocket, searched for the key to the
door, found it, took it out, put it into the lock, turned the lock, and
pushed the door open; he walked in and closed the door behind
him(…)

Example 1 is, van Dijk argues, a relatively complete action discourse: all
actions of roughly the same level have been referred to. Example 2 is
incomplete, however: it does not mention John’s activities between 6 and 7
o’clock. Example 3 is over-complete: it details actions that can be easily
inferred. An under-complete discourse, van Dijk (ibid 110) maintains, may run
as follows:
60 Amr M. El-Zawawy

4. (…) He put his hand in his left pocket and searched for the key. He
turned the lock. He closed the door (…)

In this example, details are given of one action but not of the other actions.
van Dijk’s model, moreover, makes reference to higher levels of discourse
processing, namely macrostructures. They are global structures that organize
discourse structures in a memorable way. Macrostructures (van Dijk 1977,
143) have the functions of organization, in processing and memory, of
complex semantic information; this information will be reduced to
macrostructures. Thus, the following text can be boiled down to ‘Fairview was
dying’:

Fairview was dying. In the past, it had been a go-ahead, prosperous,

little town and its large factories, specializing in hand-tools, had been a
lucrative source of wealth. (143)

van Dijk finally discusses the cognitive bases of macrostructures:

“In ACTUAL PROCESSING, these operations [i.e., information

reduction ones] are however HYPOTHETICAL or PROBABLISTIC:
during input and comprehension of a certain sentence and underlying
propositions the language user tentatively constructs the macro-
proposition which most likely dominates the proposition in question. This
hypothesis may be confirmed or refuted by the rest of the discourse. In
case of refutation another macro-proposition is constructed.” (Original
emphasis) (157)

van Dijk (159) also maintains that his model is based on hierarchicality:
discourse processing does not proceed linearly through micro-information;
hierarchical rules and categories and the formation of macro-structures are
necessary.

De Beaugrande and Dressler’s Model (1981)

De Beaugrande and Dressler’s model of coherence-based comprehension

is one of the most influential. It derives its significance from the fact that it
provides an integrated theory of human text-processing together with graphic
 Cohesion and Coherence in English and Arabic 61

illustrations of the salient processes of coherence. The model has undergone

two stages of development, which are explicated below.
De Beaugrande and Dressler (1981, 90) define coherence in the light of a
continuity of senses; “[a] ‘senseless’ or ‘nonsensical’ text is one in which text
receivers can discover no such continuity, usually because there is a serious
mismatch between the configuration of concepts and relations expressed and
the receivers’ background knowledge” (96). De Beaugrande and Dressler
further pose the following questions as a stepping stone (ibid 96):

1. How do people extract and organize content from texts for use in
storing and recalling?
2. What factors of the interaction between the presented text and
people’s prior knowledge and disposition affect these activities?
3. What regularities can be uncovered by varying factors such as the
style of the surface text or the user groups to whom the text is
presented?
4. What is the role of expectations?

An initial step towards exploring the above questions, they explain, is to

redefine coherence. Thus, coherence is “the outcome of combining concepts
and relations into a NETWORK composed of KNOWLEDGE SPACES
centered on main TOPICS” (96; original emphasis). De Beaugrande and
Dressler’s model focuses as such on reception of text rather than production.
Their main point is to discover ‘control centers,’ i.e., points from which both
accessing and processing of texts can be strategically done. These centers are
termed ‘primary concepts’:

(a) OBJECTS: conceptual entities with a stable identity and constitution;

(b) SITUATIONS: configurations of mutually present objects in their current
states;
(c) EVENTS: occurrences which change a situation or a state within a
situation;
(d) ACTIONS: events intentionally brought about by an agent.

‘Secondary concepts,’ on the other hand, incorporate the following (96-

97):

(a) STATE: the temporary, rather than characteristic, condition of an

entity;
62 Amr M. El-Zawawy

(b) AGENT: the force-possessing entity that performs an action and thus
changes a situation;
(c) AFFECTEDENTITY: the entity whose situation is changed by an event or
action in which it figures as neither agent nor instrument;
(d) RELATION: a residual category for incidental, detailed relationships
like ‘father-child,’ ‘boss-employee,’ etc.;
(e) ATTRIBUTE: the characteristic condition of an entity (cf. ‘state’);
(f) LOCATION: spatial position of an entity;
(g) TIME: temporal position of a situation (state) or event;
(h) MOTION: change of location;
(i) INSTRUMENT: a non-intentional object providing the means for an
event;
(j) FORM: shape, contour, and the like;
(k) PART: a component or segment of an entity;
(l) SUBSTANCE: materials from which an entity is composed;
(m) CONTAINMENT: the location of one entity inside another but not as a
part or substance;
(n) CAUSE;
(o) ENABLEMENT;
(p) REASON;
(q) PURPOSE;
(r) APPERCEPTION: operations of sensorially endowed entities during
which knowledge is integrated via sensory organs;
(s) COGNITION: storing, organizing, and using knowledge by sensorially
endowed entity;
(t) EMOTION: an experientially or evaluatively non-neutral state of a
sensorially endowed entity;
(u) VOLITION: activity of will or desire by a sensorially endowed entity;
(v) RECOGNITION: successful match between apperception and prior
cognition;
(w) COMMUNICATION: activity of expressing and transmitting cognitions
by a sensorially endowed entity;
(x) POSSESSION: relationship in which a sensorially endowed entity is
believed (or believes itself) to own and control an entity;
(y) INSTANCE: a member of a class inheriting all non-cancelled traits of
the class;
(z) SPECIFICATION: relationship between a superclass and a subclass, with
a statement of the narrower traits of the latter;
(aa) QUANTITY: a concept of number, extent, scale, or measurement;
 Cohesion and Coherence in English and Arabic 63

(bb) MODALITY: concept of necessity, probability, possibility,

permissibility, obligation, or of their opposites;
(cc) SIGNIFICANCIE: a symbolic meaning assigned to an entity;
(dd) VALUE: assignment of the worth of an entity in terms of other
entities;
(ee) EQUIVALENCE: equality, sameness, correspondence, and the like;
(ff) OPPOSITION: the converse of equivalence;
(gg) CO-REFERENCE: relationship where different expressions activate the
same text-world entity (or configuration of entities);
(hh) RECURRENCE: the relation where the same expression reactivates a
concept, but not necessarily with the same reference to an entity, or with
the same sense.

De Beaugrande and Dressler (ibid 98) add other operators, such as a

determinateness operator, a typicalness operator, a termination operator, an
exit operator, etc. They analyze the following text fragment using the concepts
outline above:

“A great black and yellow V-2 rocket 46 feet long stood in a New
Mexico desert. Empty it weighed five tons. For fuel it carried eight tons
of alcohol and liquid oxygen.” (98)

They argue that human processors apply strategies of problem-solving

assisted by three basic operations: spreading activation (of nodes), inferencing,
and global patterns. They also add the following fragments to the above piece
of text:

Everything was ready. [2.2] Scientists and generals withdrew to

some distance and crouched behind earth mounds. [2.3] Two red flares
rose as a signal to fire the rocket. With a great roar and burst of flame the
giant rocket rose slowly at first and then faster and faster. [3.2] Behind it
trailed sixty feet of yellow flame. [3.3] Soon the flame looked like a
yellow star. [3.4] In a few seconds, it was too high to be seen, [3. 5] but
radar tracked it as it sped upward to 3,000 mph. (99-100)

For the entire text, they provide an intricate network.

Later, however, de Beaugrande (1981, 2005) revises the model, coming

up with novel concepts. He introduces four basic concepts: parsing
64 Amr M. El-Zawawy

(identifying the grammatical dependencies of the surface text), concept

recovery (associating language expression with cognitive content), idea
recovery (building the central conceptual configuration that organizes content)
and plan recovery (identifying the plans and goals that the text is intended to
pursue). Back-tracking, he argues, is freely allowed among these phases, and
the model permits approximations depending on individual readers’ capacities.
The initial processing unit is the stretch of text that can be ‘comfortably
held in the working memory under current limitations of attention, familiarity,
and interest’ (de Beaugrande, 2005). Thus, clauses, a group of sentences, etc.
can be considered suitable processing units. (See the controversy over UT
below.) The goal of processing, he argues (28), is not syntactic analysis, but
rather building a model of a textual world, which is ‘reconstituted’ by the
reader.
De Beaugrande (29-33) uses the self-same ‘rocket’ example, giving the
same mental networks developed before. He only adds the world-knowledge
correlate technique, which contains facts readers would be likely to know
before encountering the text, e.g., rockets use fuel to operate, burning fuel
produces flares, etc.

Centering Theory (Grosz and Sidner, 1986)

Grosz and Sidner (1986) distinguish among three components of discourse

structure: linguistic structure, intentional structure, and attentional state. The
first component, the linguistic structure, is supposed to group utterances into
discourse segments, while the second component, the intentional structure,
consists of discourse segment purposes and the relations between them. The
third component, the attentional state, is an abstraction of the discourse
participants’ focus of attention, and records the objects, properties, and
relations that are very important at a given point in the discourse.
‘Centering‘ is an element of the local level and pertains to the interaction
between the form of linguistic expression and local discourse coherence. In
particular, it relates local coherence to choice of referring expression (or
anaphora, such as pronouns in contrast to definite description or proper name).
The term is based on the idea that differences in coherence correspond in part
to the different demands for inference made by different types of referring
expressions, given a particular attentional state.
Hu and Haihua (2001, 5) prefer to focus on the formalisms inherent in the
Centering Theory. They provide the following constraints and rules:
 Cohesion and Coherence in English and Arabic 65

1- Constraints:
a. There is precisely one backward-looking center Cb (Ui, D).
b. Every element of the forward centers list, Cf (Ui, D), must be realized in
Ui.
c. The center, Cb (Ui, D), is the highest-ranked element of Cf (Ui-1, D) that
is realized in Ui.

2- Rules:
For each Ui in a discourse segment D consisting of utterances U1, …, Um.
a. If some element of Cf (Ui-1, D) is realized as a pronoun in Ui, then so is
Cb (Ui, D).
b. Transition states are ordered. The CONTINUE transition is preferred to
the RETAIN transition, which is preferred to the SMOOTH-SHIFT transition,
which is preferred to the ROUGH-SHIFT transition.

They (10) also argue that that the typology of transitions from one
utterance, Ui-1, to the next utterance, Ui, is based on two factors: (a) whether
the backward-looking center, Cb, is the same from Ui-1 to Ui, and (b) whether
this discourse entity is the same as the preferred center, Cp, of Ui.
It is clear that the model is similar to the other coherence-based models in
their complexity and quantification of discourse processing.
Applying de Beaugrande and Dressler’s model, we now consider the
following text (available online)14. The sentences are numbered for
convenience of reference:

(1)The owner of a missing cat is asking for help. (2) “My baby has
been missing for over a month now, and I want him back so badly,” said
Mrs. Brown, a 56-year-old woman. (3) Mrs. Brown lives by herself in a
trailer park near Clovis. (4)She said that Clyde, her 7-year-old cat, didn’t
come home for dinner more than a month ago. (5)The next morning he
didn’t appear for breakfast either. (6)After Clyde missed an extra-special
lunch, she called the police.
(7)When the policeman asked her to describe Clyde, she told him
that Clyde had beautiful green eyes, had all his teeth but was missing half
of his left ear, and was seven years old and completely white. (8)She then
told the officer that Clyde was about a foot high.

14 100 Free English Short Stories for ESL & EFL Learners. Available online: http://www.rong-
cahng.com. Retrieved on 15/4/2008.
66 Amr M. El-Zawawy

(9)A bell went off. “Is Clyde your child or your pet?” the officer
suspiciously asked. (10) “Well, he’s my cat, of course,” Mrs. Brown
replied. (11) “Lady, you’re supposed to report missing PERSONS, not
missing CATS,” said the irritated policeman. (12) “Well, who can I report
this to?” she asked. (13) “You can’t. You have to ask around your
neighborhood or put up flyers,” replied the officer.”

The text is an excerpt from a long story about a missing cat. The cat is
called Clyde, and its owner is called Mrs. Brown. The coherence relations to
be established here depend on the ability on the part of the reader to discover
that Clyde is the cat and the pet, and that in either case it has been stolen. In
this case, a semantic network, based on de Beaugrande and Dressler (1981),
can be drawn to illustrate the point:

Figure 8-2. A semantic network after de Beaugrande and Dressler (1981)

Clyde is perceived of as a cat, while Clyde is part of the category of pets.

At the same time, a cat has its superordinate terms as ‘pet,’ which Mrs. Brown
perceives of as ‘baby.’ The pet and baby are affected entities, since both refer
to Clyde which has been affected by the action of stealing. This network is,
 Cohesion and Coherence in English and Arabic 67

however, meant to explain the coherence relations holding among the different
realizations of the pet at different textual intervals: for other coherence
relations, other intricate networks are needed.

APPLYING THE CENTERING THEORY

Taboada and Zabala (2008, 70-71) attempt an application of the Centering
Theory on the following text:

(1) a. Harry suppressed a snort with difficulty.

b. The Dursleys really were astonishingly stupid about their son,
Dudley.
c. They had swallowed all his dim-witted lies about having tea witha
different member of his gang every night of the summer holidays.
d. Harry knew perfectly well that Dudley had not been to tea
anywhere;
e. he and his gang spent every evening vandalizing the play park.

They contend that in the first utterance, (1a), there are two centers: Harry
and snort. (1a) does not have a backward-looking center (the center is empty),
because this is the first utterance in the discourse segment. In (1b), two new
centers appear: the Dursleys and their son, Dudley. The lists include centers
ranked according to two main criteria: grammatical function and linear order.
The Cf list for (1b) is: Dursleys, Dudley.9 The preferred center in that
utterance is the highest-ranked member of the Cf list, i. e., Dursleys. The Cb of
(1b) is empty, since there are no common entities between (1a) and (1b). In
(1c), a few more entities are presented. They further provide the following
formulae:

a. Harry suppressed a snort with difficulty.

Cf: Harry, snort
Cp: Harry _ Cb: Ø
Transition: zero
b. The Dursleys really were astonishingly stupid about their son,
Dudley.
Cf: Dursleys, Dudley
Cp: Dursleys _ Cb: Ø
Transition: zero
68 Amr M. El-Zawawy

c. They had swallowed all his dim-witted lies about having tea with
a different member of his gang every night of the summer holidays.
Cf: Dursleys, Dudley, lies, tea, member, gang, night, holidays
Cp: Dursleys _ Cb: Dursleys
Transition: continue
d. Harry knew perfectly well that Dudley had not been to tea anywhere;
Cf: Harry, Dudley, tea
Cp: Harry _ Cb: Dudley
Transition: rough shift
e. he and his gang spent every evening vandalising the play park, [...]
Cf: Dudley, gang, evening, park
Cp: Dudley _ Cb: Dudley
It is clear from their analysis that the text is not highly coherent, since the
transition constraint is missing two times and only roughly detectable in the
rest of occurrences.

COHERENCE AND COHESION IN ARABIC

Cohesion and coherence in Arabic are located on a semantic plane.
Cohesion is assigned the Arabic term ‘as-sabk,’ which is viewed by
lexicographers as attempting to gather diverse parts together in a unified
whole. Al-Fayrūzābādī (2005) defines as-sabk as related to the caster who
casts speech into unified molds. In modern Arabic linguistics, as-sabk is
considered an integral aspect of lexical cohesion. This type of cohesion is
achieved through the explicit use of connectives, thus it is inherent in the
formal shape of the text.
Coherence is assigned the Arabic term ‘al-ḥabk.’ It means pedantry and
precision. Ibn Manzūr (1981) defines al-ḥabk as related to fastening a robe.
Modern accounts, especially Miftāḥ (2006), refer to both cohesion and
coherence as being both derived from ‘al-iltiḥam.’ Coherence is assigned an
alternative term, viz. ‘al-tansik,’ whereas cohesion is assigned ‘al-tanḍiḍ.’
However, it should be noted that al-Gurgānī (2000) locates cohesion and
coherence on the poetic plane. He considers the two notions as the central
drive for composing palatable poetry. He argues that lexical items are but
lifeless units that require permutations and particular arrangements in order to
be comprehensible. Similarly, al-Askari contends that grammatical structure is
not alone sufficient for providing a coherent text: it requires collocations that
 Cohesion and Coherence in English and Arabic 69

give meaning its charm. The analysis of al-Gurgānī combines the grammatical
linkage and the semantics. Both of these represent the two elements of
‘cohesion’ and ‘coherence’ and the relationships among them, in addition to
al-Gurgānī’s indication of the ‘intentionality’ relationship, which is considered
an important standard in determining textuality (notice the affinity with de
Beaugrande’s model). As Ali (2013) contends, the explanations of al-Gurgānī
were not sufficient with regards to the formal side of grammar, but he also
made hints that are related to linguistic validity. Further, al-Gurgānī explained
some poetic examples when he presented certain issues such as (fasād an-
nazm) ‘the corruption of composition.’
A central study of cohesion in Arabic is Blau (1977). He investigates
‘adverbial construction’ in Hebrew, Arabic, and Aramaic. In this study, he
argues that such adverbials acquire this special status by their “separation from
the rest of the sentence by conjunctions and/or presentatives.” Some examples
of these adverbials that Blau (1977) lists from Arabic are wa-min huna ‘thus,
therefore,’ al-ann ‘now,’ ‘ala alraghm min ‘despite that,’ and fi-l-waqi’ ‘as a
matter of fact.’
Al-Batal (1990, 1994) defines connectives as “any element in the
text which--regardless of whether or not it belongs to the form class of
conjunctions--indicates a linking or transitional relationship between phrases,
clauses, sentences, and paragraphs” (1985, 2) Al-Batal (1985) invokes
Halliday and Hasan‘s (1976) definition of cohesion in text, using this
concept “as a general framework” for his analysis. Within this framework,
“connectives” are regarded as cohesive devices which “provide an explicit
surface realization (cohesion) of underlying semantic relations (coherence).”
The analysis presented in his study “is based on the occurrences of connectives
in one modern Arabic expository text.” Al-Batal’s (1985, 1990) interest in
Arabic ‘connectives’ as important devices that require great attention and his
awareness of the importance of approaching them from a discourse perspective
makes his work pioneering in this area of research. His treatment of these
elements and his deep insights about their contribution to “textual cohesion in
Arabic writing” [have] been crucial,” as Ryding (2005, 407) points out, “to our
understanding of their nature and importance.”
Al-Batal (1985, 1990) describes 28 occurrences of ‘connectives‘ operating
above the sentence level out of 231 occurrences of all ‘connectives.’ Other
than wa ‘and,’ and fa ‘since, for, so, thus,’ the only discourse connectives in
his study that could be included in the discourse markers’ group are: kazlika
‘we add to this,’ gayra ‘anna ‘however, but’ min thamma ‘thus, therefore,’
70 Amr M. El-Zawawy

thumma ‘then,’ and ‘amma fa ‘as for.’ While wa and fa occur several times in
the text, there is only one occurrence of each of the rest.
Another important aspect of cohesion and coherence in Arabic is the
definition of the text. Az-Zannād (1993, 12) prefers to define a text as ‘a
texture of words correlated with each other.’ Similarly, Biḥīrī (2005, 94) views
the text as “a set of elements among which an internal network is created,
attempting to achieve some sort of harmony and coherence among these
elements.” These two definitions point to the pivotal role played by cohesion
and coherence in forming any text in Arabic.

A SUMMARY OF RYDING’S TAXONOMY OF

ARABIC CONNECTIVES
Ryding defines Arabic connectives as words or phrases that connect one
part of discourse with another, and link sentences within a text are referred to
as discoursemarkers. She also adds that the frequent use of connectives results
in a high degree of textual cohesion in Arabic writing that contrasts
significantly with the terser style of written English. Moreover, different
researchers classify members of these categories in different ways.
At the sentence level, traditional Arabic grammarians classify particles
(ḥuruuf ‫ )حروف‬according to whether or not they have a grammatical effect on
the following phrase or clause. For instance, the particle kay ‫‘ كي‬in order that’
requires the following verb to be in the subjunctive mood; the negative particle
lam ‫ لم‬requires the verb to be in the jussive mood; and the subordinating
conjunction‘anna ‘that’ requires the subject of the following clause to be
either a suffix pronoun or a noun in the accusative case. Thus the operational
effect of the function word is a primary feature in its classification.
The effects of these particles on the syntax and inflectional status of
sentence elements form a major component in the theoretical framework and
analysis of Arabic syntax. Along these lines, connectives are presented here
according to whether or notthey exercise a grammatical effect on the following
sentence element. In one class, there are the many connecting words that serve
linking functions only, without requiring a grammatical change, called here
‘simple linking connectives.’
Ryding provides the following categories:

1. wa- ‘and’ (waaw al-’aitfih)

 Cohesion and Coherence in English and Arabic 71

1.1. Sentence starter wa-

Sentences within an expository text after the introductory sentence are
often initiated with wa- ‘and’ and/or another connective expression. The
following examples are beginnings of typical sentences. As a sentence-starter,
wa- is considered good style in Arabic, but it is not usually translated into
English. The following examples well illustrate the point:

‫وغادر للقاهرة أمس مساعد الوزير‬

wa- ġaadar-a l-qaahirat-a ‘ams-i musaa’iid-u waziir.
(And) the assistant minister of defense left Cairo yesterday . . .

‫ووصل الرئيسان إلى العاصمة أمس‬

wa-waṣal-a l-ra’iis-aani ‘ilaa l-fiaaṣimat-i ‘ams-i . . .
(And) the two presidents arrived in the capital yesterday . . .

1.2. Coordinating conjunction wa-

The coordinating conjunction wa- ‘and’ is an intersentential additive that

links clauses, phrases, and words. In particular, Arabic uses wa- in lists where
in English a comma would be used to separate each item15. The following
examples well illustrate the point:

‫منها مصر واألردن والكويت ولبنان وقطر وعمان ودولة اإلمارات العربية المتحدة والمملكة‬
‫العربية السعودية‬
min-haa miṣr-u wa-l-’urdunn-u wa-l-kuwayt-u wa-lubnaan-u wa-qa ṭr-u
wa-fiumaan-uwa-dawlat-u l-imaaraat-i l-’arabiyyat-i l-muttahidat-i wa-l-
mamlakat-u l-fiarabiyyat-ul-safiuudiyyat-u.
Among them are Egypt, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Qatar, Oman, the
(‘State of ‘) the United Arab Emirates, and the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

‫مواد أدبية ولغوية وتاريخية وفلسفية‬

mawaadd-u ‘adabiyyat-un wa-luġawiyyat-un wa-taariixiyyat-un wa-
falsafiyyat-un
literary, linguistic, historical, and philosophical materials

15Theconnective wa is considered part of the word following it, and thus becomes an integral
unit of it like any letter in the word.
72 Amr M. El-Zawawy

2. fa- `inna ‘and so; and then; yet; and thus’

This connector is usually called fa’ al-isti’nafiyya or fa’ al-sababiyya. It

plays several semantic roles, being indicative of sequentiality, resultativeness,
contrast, and conclusion. It may start a sentence in a text or it may link
elements together within a sentence.

‫فهم مازالوا مهتمين بأحداث االنتفاضة‬

fa-hum maa zaal-uu muhtamm-iina bi-’aḥdaath-i l-intifaaḍat-i.
Yet they are still interested in the events of the uprising.

‫فإنه يتجاهله‬...‫وإذا لم يلغ اآلخر‬wa-’idhaa lam ya-lghi l-’aaḳar . . . fa-’inna-hu ya-

tajaahal-u-hu.
If he doesn’t abolish the other . . . (then) he ignores it.

‫فتحت الباب فانفتح‬

fataḥ-tu l-baab-a fa-nfataḥ-a
I opened the door and [so] it opened.

3. Contrastive conjunctions

3.1. bal ‫‘ بل‬rather; but actually’16

The word bal is an “adversative”: it introduces a clause whose semantic

content conveys the idea of something additional but also different or
contrastive from the main clause.

‫وترجمت هذه الكتب إلى الالتينية بل كتب معظمها بالحروف العبرية‬

wa-turjim-at haadhihi l-kutub-u ‘ilaa l-laatiiniyyat-i bal kutib-a mufiḍam-
u-haabi-ḥuruuf-in ‘iibriyyat-in.
These books were translated into Latin, but [actually] they were mostly
written in Hebrew script (‘letters’).

‫ليس في األمر ثمة صقور أو حمام بل هناك توزيع واسع لألدوار‬

lays-a fii l-’amr-i thammat-a Suquur-un ‘aw Hamaa’im-u bal hunaaka
tawziifi-unwaasi’i-un li-l-’adwaar-i.

16'Wa’ in classical Arabic cannot follow ‘Bal.’

 Cohesion and Coherence in English and Arabic 73

There are in the matter neither hawks nor doves, but rather there is a wide
distribution of roles.

3.2. ‘inna-maa ‫ إنما‬wa-’inna-maa ‫‘ وإنما‬but; but moreover; but also, rather’

This connective word has both confirmational and contrastive components

to its meaning.
‫لم تكن تسجيال فقط وإنما هوانعكاس لواقع اجتماعي‬
lam ta-kun tasjiil-an faqaT wa-’inna-maa huwa in’iikaas-un li-l-waaq’i-i
l-ijtimaa’iiyy-i.
It was not only documentation, but moreover a reflection of social reality.

4. Explanatory conjunctions
4.1. ‘ay ‫‘ أي‬that is, i.e.’

This small word is an explicative particle equivalent to the Latin

abbreviations i.e., and viz.

‫ كلما هو واقعي‬،‫أي‬
‘ay, kull-u maa huwa waaqi’iiyy-un
that is, everything that is real

5. Resultative conjunctions
5.1. ‘iḏ ‫‘ إذ‬since’; ‘inasmuch as’

This small word is a resultative particle that introduces a clause providing

areas on for the main clause, but has a time to it and is usually considered a
variant of ‘iḏa ‫إذا‬.

‫حقق الحزب الحاكم نصرا ساحقا على منافسه إذ حصل على معظم المقاعد‬
ḥaqqaq-a l- ḥizb-u l-jumhuuriyy-u l- ḥaakim-u na ṣr-an saa ḥiq-an ‘ialaa
munaafis-ii-hi ‘iḏḥaṣal-a fialaa mufi ḏam-i l-maqaa’iid-i.
The ruling republican party realized an overwhelming victory over its
opponents since it obtained most of the seats.

5.2. ‘iḏan ‫( إذا‬spelled with nuun) and ‘iḏ-an ‫( إذن‬spelled with nunation)
‘therefore; then; so; thus; in that case’
74 Amr M. El-Zawawy

This connective word initiates a clause or question that comes as a result

or conclusion from a previous statement. In informal style, it may also come at
the end of the clause. The two variants refer to different rules. ‘iḏan ‫ إذا‬occurs
without pause following it, while ‘iḏan ‫ إذن‬should be followed by a short
pause.

‫إذا هناك منهجان‬...‫إذا لماذا يتوجب علينا‬

‘iḏan li-maadhaa ya-tawajjab-u ‘ialay-naa . . . ‘iḏan hunaaka manhaj-

aani . . .
Then why do we have to . . . Thus, there are two methods . . .

5.3 ḥattaa ‫ حتى‬past tense: ‘until’

When ḥattaa is followed by a past tense verb, it introduces a clause that

shows a result of the previous clause. When used before a noun, it refers to a
place or locative.

‫ولم تزل في النمو حتى أصبحت من أهم المدن في المنطقة‬

wa-lam ta-zul fii l-namuww-i ḥattaa’a ṣbaḥ-at min ‘ahamm-i mudun-i l-
minṭqat-i.
It kept growing until it became [one] of the most important cities of the
region.

‫أكلت السمكة حتى رأسها‬

‘akalutu al-samakata ḥattaa ra’saha
I ate the fish to its head.

6. Adverbial conjunctions
6.1. Adverbial conjunctions of place: ḥayth-u ‫‘ حيث‬where’

It is extensively used for place. It alsohas non-locative meanings when

used with other particles, such as min ḥayth-u ‘regarding; as for’ or bi-ḥayth-u
‘so that; so as to’or ḥaythu-ma ‘wherever.’

‫في كلية حيث تدرس حيث القديم يختلط مع الحديث‬

fii kulliyyat-in ḥayth-u tu-darris-u ḥayth-u l-qadiim-u yaḳtaliṭ-u ma’i-a l-
ḥadiith-i
 Cohesion and Coherence in English and Arabic 75

in a college where she teaches where the old mixes with the new.

‫افعل الخير حيثما كنت‬

‘ifa ‘al al-khayr ḥaythuma kunt.
Do charitable deeds wherever you are.

6.2. Adverbial conjunctions of time

These adverbials provide information on the time of the action or temporal

contrast, and are traditionally called zuruf. The two particles ma and ‘iḏin are
suffixed to some of them.

6.2.1. bayn-a-maa ‫‘ بينما‬while; whereas’

‫ضبطوا بينما كانوا يستهلكون المخدر‬

ḍubiṭ-uu bayn-a-maa kaan-uu ya-stahlik-uuna l-muḳaddir-a.
They were arrested while they were consuming the drug.

‫فكانت الثقافة العربية رسمسة بينما ظلت الالتينية العامية لغة الناس‬
fa-kaan-at-i l-thaqaafat-u l-’arabiyyat-u rasmiyyat-an bayn-a-maa ḏall-
at-i l-laatiiniyyat-ul-fiaammat-u lughat-an li-l-naas-i.
Arabic culture was official whereas vernacular Latin remained a language
of the people.

6.2.2. ba’id-a-maa ‫‘ بعدما‬after’

As Ryding cautions, this connective is usually followed directly by a past

tense verb. Note that the preposition ba’id-a’after’ can be followed only by a
noun or pronoun; it is necessary to use ba’id-a-maa before a clause beginning
with a verb.

‫بعدما شاهد أحد المارة بعدما وقعت على الثلج‬

ba’id-a-maa shaahad-a-hu ‘aḥad-u l-maarrat-i ba’id -a-maa waqa’-at
‘alaa l-thalj-i
after one of the passers-by saw him after she fell on the ice

6.2.3. ba’id -a-’idin ‫‘ بعدئذ‬after that; then; subsequently’

76 Amr M. El-Zawawy

This compound expression is equivalent in most situations to the adverbial

conjunction thumma:

‫وبعدئد انتقل إلى بيت كريم‬

wa- ba’id -a-’idin -i ntaqal-a ‘ilaa daar-i kariim-in.
After that he moved to Karim’s house.

6.2.4. ḥiin-a-maa ‫‘ حينما‬when; at the time when’

‫لكن األزمة نشبت حينما عرقلت الشرطة دخول الطالب‬
laakinna l-’azmat-a nashab-at ḥiin-a-maa ‘arqal-at-i l-shurṭat-u duḳuul-a
l-ḳullaab-i
But the crisis broke out when the police obstructed the entrance of
students.

6.2.5. ‘ind-a-maa ‫‘ عندما‬when; at the time when’

‫عندما جئنا إلى هنا عندما تقدمنا في العمر‬
‘ind-a-maa ji’naa ‘ilaa hunaa ‘ind-a-maa ta-taqaddam-u fii l-’umr-i
when we came here when they grew older (‘advance in age’)

6.2.6. ‘ind-a -’idin ‫‘ عندئذ‬then; at that point in time; at that time’

‫والبد عندئذ من طرح قضية االنسحاب‬
wa laa budd-a ‘ind-a -’idin min ṭarḥ-i qaḍiyyat-i l-insiHaab.
Rejection of the issue of withdrawal was inevitable at that point.

6.2.7. thumm-a ‫‘ ثم‬then; and then; subsequently’

This connective points to an action that occurs at a relatively longer
interval of time.

‫ثم ضعها في صندوق‬

thumm-a ḍa’-haa fii Sanduuq-in.
Then put it in a box later.

Ryding then introduces adverbials of similarity, which are not strictly

connectives, since they can be used without particular rules. They include ‫مثلما‬
and ‫حسبما‬.

7. Disjunctives
 Cohesion and Coherence in English and Arabic 77

There are two main disjunctives in Arabic possessing the same function as
English ones, viz. ‫‘ أو‬aw and ‫‘ أم‬am. The two are not interchangeable. The first
‫‘أو‬aw is used without a preceding hamza in the clause. Consider the following
example:

‫لنجاح الحزب الحاكم أو فشله‬

li-najaa ḥ-i l- ḥizb-i l- ḥaakim-i ‘aw fashl-i-hi
for the success of the ruling party or its failure.

The sentence does not start with interrogative like hamza. As for ‫‘ أم‬am,
consider the following example:
‫الأدري أأشرب أم أأكل‬
La-’adri ‘a’ashrab ‘am ‘a’akul
I do not know whether to drink or eat.

The sentence is fronted with an interrogative-like hamza. The use of ‫‘ أو‬aw

in this context is not appropriate. It is important to note that the use of ‫إما‬
‘imma necessitates, on the other hand, the insertion of ‫‘ أو‬aw rather than ‫‘ أم‬am.
Consider the following example:

‫إما أن تشرب أو تأكل‬

‘imma ‘an tashrab ‘awta’kul
Either you drink or eat.

8.3.1. Topic shift: ‘amma. . . fa- ‘as for . . .’

Topic-shift is usually signaled by ‘amma, which is roughly equivalent to

English ‘as for’ or ‘as to.’ This expression occurs sentence initially, and the
other clause in the same sentence starts with ‘fa.’

‫أما القسم المترجم فمتنوع جدا‬

‘ammal-qism-u l-mutarjam-u fa-mutanawwa’i-un jidd-an.
As for the translated part, it is very diverse.

8.3.2. Addition: ‘alaa daalika ‫’على ذلك‬in addition to that; moreover;

furthermore…’

‫على ذلك أكد الصحفي‬

‘ilaa daalika ‘akkad-a l- ṣaḥaafiyy-u . . .
78 Amr M. El-Zawawy

Moreover, the journalist affirmed . . . . . .

‫على ذلك استمرت قوات االحتالل في العمليات‬

‘ilaa daalika stamarr-at quwwat-u l-iḥtilaal-i fii ‘amaliyyaat-in . . .
In addition to that, the occupation forces continued operations . . .

COMPARING THE TWO LANGUAGES

From the elaborate discussions above, it becomes clear that English and
Arabic operate differently in their cohesion and coherence subsystems. English
enjoys a wealth of studies on cohesive devices and the diverse relations
coherence can exhibit in written discourse. Arabic, in contrast, suffers from a
dearth of studies done in the field. The traditionalists, albeit wryly aware of the
differences that obtain between cohesion and coherence, confine most of their
discussions to the realm of poetry. The studies by Al-Batal (1985, 1990, and
1994) are the only sources to depend on the investigation of cohesion, and are
not systematically refined in the same way those on English are. Even
Ryding‘s reclassification does not point to the fact that listing is used rather
than categorization on the basis of semantic analysis.
Semi-computational models of coherence, especially de Beaugrande’s and
Grozs,’ also give English coherence studies a decisive edge. This renders the
comparison between English and Arabic in terms of coherence rather difficult
due to the lack of relevant academic studies.
 PART TWO: STYLISTICS

INTRODUCTION

This part is mainly concerned with select studies on stylistics from a

comparative perspective. The essays presented here point to the two prominent
traditions of verse in English and Arabic. Although the poems dealt with are
not epitomes of the two traditions, they are, for those deeply interested in
comparative literature and stylistics, as stimulating as any thriving comparison
in the field. The present studies are meant to bring to the fore the points of
comparison that duly give English poetry its right without forfeiting the
grandeur of Arabic poetry.
In this part, I have been battening down the hatches, so to say. The studies
span a range of poets ancient and modern, whose poetry furnished the
necessary tool kit for a theoretical set of assumptions. In the course of these
comparisons, their poetry has been subjected to evaluation and has been given
a new lease of stylistic life. For example, Al-Ma’arri’s and Herbert’s poetry is
discussed herein with a view to their philosophy, religious or otherwise, and
Weltanschauung. Although both poets can at first sight be thought of as
moving in opposite directions—with one shrouding his life in utter gloom and
excessive pessimism, while the other luxuriating in the joys of life, then
amending itself later—they exhibit a noticeable stylistic affinity. Both poets
take into account the ‘implied reader’ (Iser’s term) who is supposed to
comprehend and even apprehend the meaning of meaning. Thus both aim at
addressing a ‘superreader’ (Rifaterre’s term), and force ‘literary repertoire’ to
take precedence over other easily perceptible denotations. Another example is
Al-Shaby’s poetry, which addresses many issues and trends which baffle
critics. It is difficult to venture on a comprehensive reassessment of Al-
80 Amr M. El-Zawawy

Shaby’s poetry, because the fact is that his lines are passion-loaded and highly
poetical. In his verse, what appears first as a tone of desperation turns out to be
a vociferous call for optimism. More baffling still, the titles of his poems are
reminiscent of certain emotions, much of which are pertinent to special
undertones.
Two seminal stylistic notions are introduced in the present studies, namely
overtones and undertones. English dictionaries define an ‘overtone‘ as
something ‘harmonic.’ They also define an ‘undertone’ as ‘subdued tone.’ The
two definitions point to important facts: first, it is harmony which best
characterizes an overtone because overtones represent the feature which meets
the reader’s eyes so readily that he/she may deem it the dominating force
behind the literary work. Second, the ‘subdued tone’ is what appears later on,
in the course of meditation, and may affect, nimbly notwithstanding, the
interpretation of the literary work. This apparent dichotomy is particularly
clear in Al-Mala’ika’s poetry. What is suggested by the undertones is
concurrently echoed in the overtones, which, if counted upon in the very
beginning, may be misleading, though they, by way of circumlocution, might
reveal a vestige of the strident undertones. Thus, Nazik Al-Mala’ika’s poetry
is too subtle to guess at or interpret at face value. Her poems verge on
confessional poetry, then suddenly, on a second reading, turn out to be
impersonal. It is that dilemma which has called for a double-standard
treatment—namely, the sharp distinction between overtones and undertones. It
is also the same dilemma that has necessitated deep examination of other
poems, though belonging to different poetic trends, as well as other poetic
structures.
As a translator of sorts, I have tried to project the complex image. The
poems quoted here are carefully chosen and translated. They depict how close
the two cultures of English and Arabic are, and how, in translation, Arabic
poetry seems to be no less powerful and interesting than English poetry. No
drastic modifications in length or imagery have thus been affected, and,
sometimes literal notwithstanding, the translated versions are an attempt to
separate the sheep from the goats. Their language may sound a little archaic
and loaded, but they are still acceptable. It is inescapable, however, that some
have necessitated prosaic translations, since they stand untranslatable to a
great extent.
This short introduction is just for elaborating the above points. Now let us
go to the studies.
Chapter 9

AL-MA’ARRI AND HERBERT:

A DEHISTORICIZED
HERMENEUTICAL APPROACH

INTRODUCTION
A critical examination of both Abul Alaa’ Al-Ma’arri’s and George
Herbert’s17 poetry may seem at first intimidating, but delving into the
ingenuity of the two poets, one can explore dimensions where exceptionality is
no more than common territory. With his excessive pessimism and genuine
philosophical results, Al-Ma’arri seems to be more European than Arabic, and
it is that ramification which has characterized him as similar to English poets,
especially those concerned with co-mingling religious undertones with secular
issues. It is also this ramification which makes him more akin to the
Metaphysical poets with their quasi-logic and ‘hyper-philosophization.’ Not

17Abul Alaa' Al-Ma'arri (973-1058) was a Syrian poet of great renown. He was not born
sightless, but lost vision inearly childhood due to smallpox. He first set out as a poetaster in
Baghdad, but to no avail. Depressed by his failure, he soon developed literary genius and
distinguished himself as a professed ascetic and pessimist. He never married and even
claimed misogyny. His poetry has always been classified as a leap towards modernism. He
stands out amongst other Arab poets, ancientand modern, by his Luzumiyyat, where he
imposed upon himself strict rules of rhyme and rhythm. His poetry is also characterized by
pungent criticisms of hypocrisy and superstitions and some later poems are considered by
orthodox Muslims to be almost heretical (cf. Dudley and Lang, 1969).
George Herbert (1593-1633) was an English poet and clergyman. In 1609, he moved from
Westminster to Trinity College, Cambridge. He started as a court favorite (during James's
reign), but his religious poetry marked a sudden change to the Church. He took holy orders
and spent the rest of his life as an ardent religious poet. His collection The Temple
encompasses almost all his poetry (cf. Chambers Biographical Dictionary, 1984).
82 Amr M. El-Zawawy

that Al-Ma’arri is similar to the whole lot of Metaphysicals: rather, he does not
retain the frivolity of John Donne, or the affected aura of Thomas Traherne: he
is an austere poet analyzing life as best as a pessimist and misogynist can.
Chief among the austere Metaphysicals is George Herbert, who, taking holy
orders, ventures on borrowing the style prevalent in the Bible to his poetic
advantage, thus figuring as more prone to be on a par with Al-Ma’arri, who,
influenced by the inimitability of the Qur’an, tries to fall back on the early
meanings of lexical items.
It may be appropriate to state in this respect that the present study aims at
discussing the logic adopted by both Al-Ma’arri and Herbert in the light of the
hermeneutic approach with little or no emphasis on the historical aspect of
their verse. Not only that: other critical investigations shall be made into the
nature of the poetry of the two.

A Hermeneutical Tour De Force

In ‘Companions Gone’ by Al-Ma’arri, there is an unmistakable tone of

imminence and death-succumb. The call of fate to the speaker to ‘move’ is
unclear, and the awareness of how death equates all mortals is even difficult to
condone. The poem, like many other ones, can be analyzed hermeneutically
according to the distinction proposed by Maclean (1986). The ‘noesis’
(Husserl’s term, 1982) of Al-Ma’arri is echoed through the speaker. He is
getting the reader swept about by attacking him/her by his intention—which is
the analysis of life with a constant eye on the verity of death. Although the
theory of Husserl has been castigated by many for its emphasis on the
difficult-to-prove intentionality of the poet or the writer, it is safe enough to
apply it here because Al-Ma’arri is a confessed pessimist upon his word:

That is what my father has done to me,

And I have done harm to nobody!18

Yet Ingarden’s approach (in Maclean, ibid) is also applicable. His

Unbestimmtheitsstellen (i.e., ‘spots of indeterminacy’) is no more than an
analysis of phonetic formations, meaning units, schematized aspects and
represented objectivities. As for the poem mentioned above, it is the phonetic
formations which characterize it as unique. The insistence on the same rhythm

18All the translations of the excerpts from Al-Ma'arri's poetry are attempted by the author.
 Al-Ma’arri and Herbert 83

and rhyme scheme emphasizes how life has become all too boring and
unbearable for the speaker, and proves Husserl’s point about ‘noesis’ and
‘noema.’ Al-Ma’arri adopts a structure reminiscent of the architectonics of
Herbert in ‘The Pulley’: meaning is thus broken down into units mostly
monologic. Both schematized aspects and represented objectivities are then
‘intended’ to provide the world of the text. Both Al- Ma’arri and Herbert share
the last two ‘objects’ (Ingarden’s term), and the speakers usually address fate
or a superhuman power. However, the above analysis miserably overlooks the
personal circumstances of both poets. Born sightless and prone to abominate
women and flesh, Al-Ma’arri distinguishes himself as a poet driven by
personal tendencies, even similar to Herbert’s dabbling in religion: the latter
seems to be, at times, a skeptic like Al-Ma’arri, and discloses his inner revolt
in ‘The Collar’:

I struck the board, and cry’d, No more:

I will abroad.
Al-Ma’arri also concurs in ‘I know Not’:
As to bodies, in dust are their tombs,
And souls I know not their rooms!

However, Herbert starts a skeptic then ends a pious man, but Al-Ma’arri
topples the process over, and usually ends a shrewd skeptic as in ‘O
Tomorrow’:

Thy fear of God is a provision,

So believe it to be the best in thy water-skin.
How wholesome death is for its quaffer,
If the dead will soon get together.

Such awareness of the flashing doubt of Herbert and the cynical credulity
of Al-Ma’arri accords well with the Geneva School’s revival of the ‘authorial
consciousness.’ The emphasis on the recurrent leitmotifs in both poets is thus
mandatory. In Al-Ma’arri’s verse, there is always a mention of the cycle of life
and death as well as concrete objects and animals. In ‘The Truth,’ for instance,
there is an unswerving attitude towards man’s destiny—viz. death and decay.
Yet what is amazing is the question beyond death itself:

As for truth, ‘tis that I will pass,

And only God knows what I shall face.
84 Amr M. El-Zawawy

Herbert also ventures into the unknown but only inside his own
imagination (cf. ‘The Flower’):

Who would have thought my shrivel’d heart

Could have recover’d greennesse? It was gone
Quite under ground; as flowers depart
To see their mother-root, when they have blown;
Where they together
All the hard weather,
Dead to the world, keep house unknown.

DICTION, TRADITION AND CULTURE

Both poets take into account the ‘implied reader’ (Iser’s term, 1980) who
is supposed to comprehend and even apprehend the meaning of meaning. Thus
both aim at addressing a ‘superreader’ (Rifaterre’s term, 1983), and forces
‘literary repertoire’ to take precedence over other easily perceptible
denotations. Al-Ma’arri’s reference to objects is a case in point. He mentions
the grave as the last resting place, and fraternizes with a blind man’s staff. In
this particular way, he echoes the verses of the Qur’an in many of his poems,
and Paret (1983) has been much in the right to notice that:

“It was also reported of a skeptic and writer of the fifth/eleventh

century, the blind Abu’l-Ala al-Ma’arri who died in 449/1057, that he
tried to produce an imitation of the Qur’an. The accusation refers to his
compendious work al-Fusul wa-’l-ghayat, only the first seventh of which
has survived, a supreme example of the art of poetry and rhyme that was
based on the classical Arabic literary language, and of which the author
was a master. It is written in elaborate rhyming prose, and individual
sections of stanzas occasionally open with archaic oaths such as: “ I
swear by him who created horses and yellowish-white [camels] who lope
along in al-Ruhayl… These incantations are reminiscent of early
Qur’anic texts” (213).

Other examples than mentioned above occur in ‘ The Loyal Staff,’ where
the language of the Qur’an is easily recalled:

If sin changes faces, aye,

Then ye will behold in doomsday
 Al-Ma’arri and Herbert 85

People’s sullen, pale—black, nay!

If Mind guides them to the right way,
Into the wrong one they
Are goaded by their natures smoothly!

The last three lines, on the other hand, bring to the mind the noble verse
256 in ‘Al-Baqara’ (the second chapter in the Qur’an).
Thus it is clear that Al-Ma’arri’s diction draws upon sources deeply rooted
in the Arabic tradition. He refers to objects and animals, being affected by the
grandeur of the Holy Qur’an. In a similar vein, Herbert attempts an imitation
of the language of the Bible, especially in ‘The Pulley’:

When God at first made man,

Having a glasse of blessings standing by;
Let us (said he) poure on him all we can;
Let the worlds riches, which dispersed lie,
Contract into a span.

However, Austin (1996) suggests that Herbert’s diction is generally

colloquial. The examples quoted by her include words such as ‘snudge,’
‘jogs,’ ‘gad,’ etc. More extremist still, Wadia (2001)19 states that ‘The Pulley’
is mainly derived from the myth of Zeus, who gave Pandora a box containing
Hope and other miserable paraphernalia. Warned not to open it, Pandora grew
more inquisitive and violated the promise, causing the release of numberless
epidemics and misfortunes to befall the world. Only Hope was the best object.
Nevertheless, this is not the dictum, and although viewed with doubt by many,
it proves that Herbert’s verse has roots deeper in time than the Bible itself: the
very idea evidences once more the validity of the ‘literary repertoire’ proposed
by Iser.

ARGUMENTATION AND STRUCTURE:

TIMELESSNESS IN A NEW KEY
The above interpretation may also serve as proof of Gadamer’s model
(1977), where classicism is combined with timelessness. It seems that Herbert,

19Wadia's
view is based on her understanding of the relationship between mythology and poetry,
which is not to be disregarded in any act of interpretation.
86 Amr M. El-Zawawy

like Al-Ma’arri, is eager to hinge upon sources remoter in time and supremely
nobler in nature than his own poetry in order to achieve timelessness. As
Gadamer himself believes, timeless works of literature continue to hold court
because their ‘universality’ renders them able to continue to fascinate us in the
present. By introducing that remark, Gadamer fuses historicism into literary
criticism, and this is clear in Al- Ma’arri’s emphasis on analyzing the root
nature of life and death and what lies beyond them. Al-Ma’arri thus ventures
on topics of timeless value such as the consecutive cycle of life, the
unimportance of worldly gains, and the extravagance of the rich despite their
short lives. Likewise, Herbert emphasizes the inexorable end of all mortals in
‘Mortification’ and the need to emerge clean out of grievous sins. In brief,
timelessness is skillfully manipulated to defy extinction through reiteration or
exhausted anxiety of influence.
To achieve a fresh view of what they tackle, both poets further clothe their
poetry in a shroud of argumentation and ‘hyper-philosophization.’ Here
Ricour’s revival of the ‘hermeneutical arc’ can be invoked. As explicated by
Maclean (see 3 below), the arc starts with a ‘naïve understanding of the whole
of the text’; then it proceeds to hypotheses or assumptions based on semantic
proofs in the text at issue. Finally, the meaning of the text is ‘actualized’ (i.e.,
‘blanks’ are concretized or accounted for) by pseudo-reference through
entering upon the ‘world of the text.’ A concrete example is Al-Ma’arri’s ‘The
Truth,’ where the beginning is nothing but the usual comment on the
destination of all human beings:

As for truth, ‘tis that I will pass,

And only God knows what I shall face.

By taking the poem to mean the vainglory of life, the reader exercises a
naïve understanding. What sustains that comprehension is the rest of the poem,
where day and night are thought to be imperishable, and the speaker’s personal
experiences are connected to the brevity of life. However, assumptions may be
made with the recurrence of types of animals and celestial objects. A good
leading question to ask is that: why does Al- Ma’arri choose such types in
particular? Black bile, horses, meteors, isthmus, mistletoes, etc. figure clearly
in the poem, and are further related to the idea of life itself. ‘Blanks’ of this
type can be then actualized by assuming that Al-Ma’arri is intent on creating a
world of objectivity out of subjectivity for his text. In a sense, although the
whole poem centers around one speaker whose experiences and feelings are
exposed almost lyrically, there are other objects which are, nevertheless,
 Al-Ma’arri and Herbert 87

invoked in order to vindicate the nature of the theme—that is, death. As such,
a black bile is made to be the wife of the speaker, and a bird is encaged like a
soul to be released sooner or later. It is the ‘world of the text’ which thus
necessitates the grouping of such objects, living and non-living, at the same
time.
Herbert also creates a world for his texts. Like the other Metaphysical
poets, he opts for the conceit as a vent. In ‘Life,’ for example, flowers are
employed as a starting point; then the very heart of the speaker intervenes. A
tacit analogy is drawn between the speaker’s heart and the flowers. Their smell
is afterwards brought to the fore as a symbol of good deeds:

…Since if my scent be good,

I care not if
It be as
Short as yours.

Yet the pseudo-logic of the poem proves to be more persistent: the ‘scent’
may also mean life, the very title name of the poem. Moreover, describing the
manner in which flowers die as ‘most cunningly’ may be ambivalent. The
adverb may be either deceitfulness of flowers (i.e., their deception of the
speaker) or the rapidity through which life ‘steals away.’ As such, the poem
conforms to the ‘hermeneutical arc,’ and then creates a world where more than
one actualization can be attained. Then same bewilderment can also be
detected in Al-Ma’arri’s ‘Companions Gone,’ especially in the last three lines,
where the passage of time is framed inside a laudatory mould:

Then, can we clap hands

For the changing night, and
Our claps be heard
On our chord?

The very question topples over, as I have previously stated, the theme-
horizon. Is the speaker weary of the world or prone to stick to it? Answers are
never easy.
What augments the depth of analysis here is the monologic structure. Al-
Ma’arri seems to be addressing himself all the time, and, when addressing
another, thrusts his own skepticism mid-way. In other poems, the reverse
happens, and in both cases, the ‘horizon of expectations’ (Jauss’s term) is
transcended easily: the reader’s first readings are usually ironized. In ‘O
88 Amr M. El-Zawawy

Tomorrow,’ for instance, the prevalent tone of piety and didactic surrender is
set at naught in the last line, as is the case in line 36 of ‘The Truth.’ In
Herbert’s verse, a similar technique is detected. In ‘Mortification,’ the last two
lines are shrouded in an atmosphere of obscurantism:

Yet Lord, instruct us so to die,

That all these dyings may be life in death.

In ‘The Flower,’ too, another simulacrum is administered:

And now in age I bud again,

After so many deaths I live and write…

However, Clarke (1997) believes that Herbert’s poetry is constructed

around a dialogic rather than monologic structure:

“Eventually, all voices in a written dialogic discourse collapse into

one rhetorical and typographical surface. Herbert is all too aware of that
no external voice actually intrudes into his poetry: at least, if it does, it
speaks in his own familiar accent.” (186)

She thus takes it to be dialogic on the surface, but monologic at heart. That
is there is a dialogic construction, yet it is no more than affected voices of the
same speaker.

CONCLUSION
To conclude, both Al-Ma’arri and Herbert are almost similar. They
partake of the prevalent tradition, and attempt timelessness, though on a
narrow scale. Their poems seem to have no more than their Weltanschauung
which eventually turns into Weltschmerz: their speakers have a clear ‘world
view,’ but they soon melt into the strictures they aim at their readers. In this
respect, their verse does not escape didacticism, though Herbert’s is less so.
Their arguments may also appear heated at times.
Chapter 10

INTRODUCING THE STYLISTIC NOTIONS

OVERTONES AND UNDERTONES 1:
NAZIK AL-MALAI’KA’S POETRY

INTRODUCTION
Studies on Nazik Al-Mala’ika’s poetry20 are fragmented and do not reach
sufficient depths. Khulusi (1950) wrote two articles published in Islamic
Review (40-45) and the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (149-107) entitled
“Contemporary Poetesses of Iraq.” A large section of the article is devoted to
Nazik Al-Mala’ika, where he suggested a number of influences such as those
of the Emigrant Literature (Arab-American), John Keats, D.H. Lawrence, and
Mahmud Hasan Isma’il on her work. Altoma considers Khulusi the first critic
to refer [in a Western publication] to Al-Mala’ika’s departure from the
traditional two-hemistich system and her adoption of the foot as a rhythmic
unit.
Ahmed, in one essay, referred to Nazik Al-Mala’ika as one of the
preeminent poets (1956, 164). His second essay cited excerpts from Al-
Mala’ika’s poem, “The Hidden Land.” In 1959, the French writer Rossi
published an article titled, “Impressions sur la Poesie d’Irak. Jawahiri, Mardan,

20Nazik Al-Mala’ika (1923 –2007) was an Iraqi female poet . She was born in Baghdad to a
mother who was a poet, and a father who was a teacher. She graduated in 1944 from the
College of Arts in Baghdad and later completed a master's degree in comparative literature
at the University of Wisconsin in 1959, and she was appointed professor at Baghdad
University, the University of Basra, and Kuwait.
90 Amr M. El-Zawawy

Nazik Al-Mala’ika, Bayati,” where he translated her poem “To Wash Away
Dishonor” into French.
Altoma views the year 1961 as witnessing several attempts to introduce
Nazik Al-Mala’ika in the West. Monteil (1961) includes in his Anthologie
Bilingue de la litterature arabe contemporaine both the French and the Arabic
texts of Al-Mala’ika’s poem “Five Songs for Pain.” In addition, Stewart, who
was also Al-Mala’ika’s professor, touches her poetry in his essay “Contacts
with Arab Writers” (1961). Altoma, in a lecture at the Women’s Club of the
Pen Association in Washington, D.C., viewed Nazik Al-Mala’ika as the most
prominent poetess in the Arab World, referring to the rebellion, perplexity, and
melancholy that saturated her poetry.
Yet these studies cannot be considered adequate if Nazik Al-Mala’ika is to
be justly judged. They ignore the comparative streaks that willy-nilly permeate
her poetry. By referring to Keats or Arab Emigrant Literature, they are
oblivious to the Western nature of her poetry which further makes her akin in
themes and imagery to Tennyson’s21 fairytale world (as shall be explained
below) and Shakespeare’s elegies. Nazik Al-Malai’ka’s poetry is the corollary
of a prodigy (being a child-poet who composed verse at the age of seven) and
a highly educated woman. Despite her exceptional ability as a poet, she won
insufficient acclaim, not being a poet of the wide public (cf. Dictionary of
Oriental Literatures, 1974).
The problem with Nazik Al-Mala’ika’s poems is that they more often than
not verge on confessional poetry, then suddenly, on a second reading, turn out
to be impersonal. It is that dilemma which has called for a double-standard
treatment—namely, the sharp distinction between overtones and undertones. It
is also the same dilemma that has necessitated a profound look into other
poems, though belonging to different poetic trends, as well as other poetic
structures. As such, it is the aim of the present study to reach a seeming

21Alfred Tennyson, 1st Baron Tennyson, (1809 –1892) was Poet Laureate of Great Britain during
much of Queen Victoria's reign and remains one of the most popular British poets.
Tennyson was first a student of Louth Grammar School for four years (1816–1820) and
then attended Scaitcliffe School, Englefield Green and King Edward VI Grammar School,
Louth. He entered Trinity College, Cambridge, in 1827, where he joined a secret society
called the Cambridge Apostles. At Cambridge, Tennyson met Arthur Henry Hallam and
William Henry Brookfield, who became his closest friends. His first publication was a
collection of "his boyish rhymes and those of his elder brother Charles" entitled Poems by
Two Brothers published in 1827.
Tennyson excelled at short lyrics, such as "Break, Break, Break," "The Charge of the
Light Brigade," "Tears, Idle Tears" and "Crossing the Bar." Tennyson also wrote some
notable blank verse including Idylls of the King, "Ulysses," and "Tithonus." During his
career, Tennyson attempted drama, but his plays enjoyed little success.
 Introducing the Stylistic Notions Overtones and Undertones 1 91

accommodation between the two extremes: a balance has to be struck, so to

say, between the overtones, the apparent or surface intertextual references, and
the philosophy which permeates the poems investigated here.

EXPLORING THE STYLISTIC NOTIONS ‘OVERTONES’

AND ‘UNDERTONES’

English dictionaries define an ‘overtone’ as something ‘harmonic.’ They

also define an ‘undertone’ as ‘subdued tone.’ The two definitions point to
important facts: first, it is harmony which best characterizes an overtone, just
because overtones represent the feature which meets the reader’s eyes so
readily that he/she may deem it the dominating force behind the literary work.
Second, the ‘subdued tone’ is what appears later on, in the course of
lucubration or meditation, and may affect, nimbly notwithstanding, the
interpretation of the literary work. With the two ‘tones’ collaborating, the
poem, any poem, comes to be recognized as ‘poetic.’ However, the distinction
made earlier should not imply that there is, all the way through, a rigid
dichotomy exemplified by form and content. The Bedford Glossary of Critical
and Literary Terms is very specific about the term ‘form’:

“Either the general type or the unique structure of a literary

work. When used synonymously with general type, or genre, it refers
to the categories according to which literary works are commonly
classified…and may imply a set of conventions related to a particular
genre. Form can also be used generally to refer to rhyme or patterns,
metrical arrangements, and so forth… The term is often used more
specifically, however, to refer to the singular structure of a particular
work; in this case, form involves the arrangement of component parts,
such as the sequence of events, parallelism, or some other organizational
principle” (131-132).

The last phrase is the stepping-stone: it clearly distinguishes between the

overtones and undertones of a literary work: parallelism is, to some extent,
similar to the overtone, while the ‘organizational principle’ is well-nigh the
undertone. Thus, form comprises the overtones and undertones which have the
interplay of effects that renders a work literary. They refer to something more
profound than just the content.
92 Amr M. El-Zawawy

By rethinking our first statement above, we can say that confessional

poetry (aka Romantic poetry) has the advantage of departing from the
rigidification of form in its crude sense: rhythmic patterns usually preside over
and even drown out rhyme patterns, resulting in what are recognized as cross-
genres. Nazik Al-Mala’ika’s poetry may be cast in that queer but recurrent
mould which lays stress on certain emotional cataclysms. Thus, her poetry
verges on the two types of tones.

UNDERTONES
Let us start with the undertones. What attracts anyone’s attention in
discussing her poetry is the fact that she focuses on alien subject-matters.
Nazik Al-Malai’ka’s poetry resembles, in that particular aspect, the Arabic
‘Emigrant Literature.’ In one of his poems, Abu Madi, a renowned emigrant
poet, seems to be questioning his identity and existence insofar as Nazik Al-
Mala’ika wraps her poem ‘I Am’ in mystique. Abu Madi’s speaker is baffled:

I came, I know not whence, yet came this way;

I saw a path—along it made my way;
I must go on—or say I yea or nay!
How have I come? How did I find the way?
I do not know.

This typically reminds the reader of Al-Malai’ka’s:

The night asks me who I am.

I am its impenetrable black, its unquiet secret
Its lull rebellious.
I veil myself with silence
Wrapping my heart with doubt
Solemnly, I gaze
While ages ask me
who I am.

While Abu Madi sees that it is difficult to unravel the mystery of man’s
existence, Al-Mala’ika interestingly tries to redefine that existence; and by so
doing, she redefines man’s identity along with the identity of a poet. The
following stanza from ‘I Am’ shows this obviously:
 Introducing the Stylistic Notions Overtones and Undertones 1 93

The wind asks me who I am

Its bedeviled spirit.
I am denied by Time, going nowhere
I am journey on and on
Passing without a pause
And when reaching an edge
I think it may be the end
Of suffering, but then:
the void.

What is at work here is the idea that man feels lost: he/she is torn because
of the multifarious and emotive moments they experience. Moreover, in the
case of the poet (being an inherent part of the human community), there is
always an attempt at transcending the concept of time through poetry—the
same notion Shakespeare has explored in one of his sonnets:

So long as men can breathe, or eyes can see,

So long lives this, and this gives life to thee.

Undoubtedly, ‘this’ refers to Shakespeare’s poetry or sonnets, and the

same idea reverberates in Al-Shaby’s lines:

Here, inside my heart, deep, roomy,

Death and spectra dance!
Here, the horrors of nights blow fiercely;
Here flutter dreams flowery.
Here call the echoes of dying!
Here is played the immortality composition.

Al-Shaby means by the ‘immortality composition’ of his poetry, as the

quoted lines belong to a poem called ‘The Bard’s Heart.’
The idea of undertones also incorporates the hidden effects of other poems
on Al-Mala’ika’s poems. She typically lives through her poetry like
Shakespeare’s beloved. Moreover, her ‘Moon Tree,’ a lengthy poem full of
effusions clad in story form, is reminiscent of Tennyson’s ‘Lady of Shalott.’ It
may be enlightening, therefore, to zoom in on the two poems in order to
discover the ‘comparative undertones.’
In the ‘Lady of Shalott,’ Tennyson portrays a very queer, imaginary
world, full of barley and verdure. But, upstream lies a strange island that
contains a tower in which the Lady of Shalott, a fairy, dwells secure. She is
94 Amr M. El-Zawawy

prohibited by a curse to peep out of the tower; and to passher time, she
continues to weave flaxen images of whatsoever passes by through her spindle
and tapestry. However, one day, a graceful, charming young man passes by,
and she feels very much attracted to his reflected image on her mirror. She
quickly looks outside, and so the curse befalls her. She dies on her punt in the
river, and only then does the young knight recognize her beauty. In Al-
Mala’ika’s ‘The Moon Tree,’ a boy dreams of capturing the moon, and
virtually does so! The villagers try to search for the moon, and eventually find
it reasonable to ransack the boy’s cottage. However, they do not find it, and
the entire story turns out to be some ‘summer’s dream.’ In fact, the poem was
dedicated to Mayson, the poetess’s daughter, but it also functions at the real,
poetic level as well.

Tennyson opens his poem with:

On either side of the river lie,
Long fields of barley and of rye,
That clothe the wold and meet the sky;
And thro’ the field the road runs by
To many-towe’d Camelot;
And up and down the people go,
Gazing where the lilies blow
Bound an island there below,
The island of Shalott.

It is a pictorial image, so to say: the fields of rye and barley encompass the
land, and help create a peaceful settlement, full of hard-work and green. The
island of Shalott, on the other hand, is a dreamy world, never occupied by
workers or buildings. Only the lady of Shalott warbles by night:

Only the reapers, reaping early

In among the bearded barley,
Hear a song that echoes cheerly
From the river winding clearly,
Down to tower’d Camelot.

And when the curse strikes, everything is thrown topsy-turvy, and the
atmosphere of omen and fear pervades the whole scene:

The stormy east-wind straining

The pale yellow woods were waning,
 Introducing the Stylistic Notions Overtones and Undertones 1 95

The broad stream in his banks complaining,

Heavily the low sky raining
Over tower’d Camelot;
Down she came and found a boat
Beneath a willow left afloat,
And round about the prow she wrote
The Lady of Shalott.

In a similar vein, Al-Mala’ika opens her poem with:

On one top of the northern mountains, pine-covered,

Clad in velvety scopes, and ambergris-smothered,
There butterflies landed to spend the night,
And by its well-springs, stars washed themselves clean.

When the boy succeeds in pouncing on the moon, Al-Mala’ika paints the
following picture:

And the boy returned him: with seas of brightness, a cup of softness,
With those lips which preoccupied every old vision:
He hid him in his hut, at it unboringly looking:
Is that a dream? How? Has he the moon hunted?!

He laid him in ambergris cradles

And wreathed him with songs, his own eyes and daffodils!

It seems, therefore, that Al-Mala’ika is much influenced by the dreamy

world of moons and stars insofar as Tennyson is fond of the imaginary tales of
King Arthur and his knights. This inherently stresses the notion of the
comparative undertone mentioned above.

OVERTONES
The two poems also display almost clearly the idea of artistic
‘harmony’—or the overtone. By ‘artistic,’ I mean the evocative image each
poem contains as well as the purpose behind such images. In Tennyson’s
poem, pastoral imagery prevails and even extends till the end. The very first
line reveals much about the rustic atmosphere of Camelot and the seclusion of
96 Amr M. El-Zawawy

the island. In line 19, ‘willow-veil’d’ is per se a metaphor in the sense that
willows are compared to veils covering a lady’s face; and the mention of a
‘lady’ inherently brings to mind the lady of Shalott herself. In part iii, line 10,
the ‘bridle’ of the charming knight is metaphorically likened to a lode-star,
‘glittering’ freely in the scope. Similarly, in the same part, line 98, the same
image is sustained by stressing the fact that a comet is often seen at night over
the island of Shalott. In ‘The Moon Tree,’ Al-Mala’ika succeeds in outwitting
Tennyson, however: she dexterously employs certain images that sustain the
dreamlike world of the poem. In part i, line 17, ‘the delicious light’ that passes
upon the lad’s lips quenches his thirst: obviously enough, the light is
metaphorically compared to a kind of wine or sweets, and a few lines later, ‘a
cup of softness’ stresses the same notion. Also evocative is the phrase ‘cloudy
cuffs,’ which is used to describe the moon. It is vivid and, amazingly, realistic,
as the moon is at times clad in clouds, especially in winter. These are some of
the tropes that attest to Al-Mala’ika’s vivid imagery as compared to
Tennyson’s.

OVERTONES AND EPITHETS

The idea of overtones still merits discussion: it is not adequate to treat it in
that seemingly superficial way. I am here tempted to resort to Potebyna’s
theory of ‘epitheton orans’ (cf. Bely, 1979). It states that ‘every adjective is an
epithet in a certain sense; every epithet is essentially similar to one or another
more complex form (metaphor, metonymy, synecdoche).’ I shall explicate this
theory in relation to the above-quoted figures of speech. In Tennyson’s poem,
‘willow-veil’d’ is said to be a metaphor. It can be analyzed in the following
fashion:

A- Willow- (a1) tall, (a 2) bending

B- Veil- (b 1) long, (b 2) bending willow-veil’d

In other words, we can say that ‘the veil is a willow.’ Conversely, though
still on the verge of a metaphor, it can be said that ‘the willow is a veil.’ In ‘ a
gemmy bridle glitter’d free,’ the same is detected:

A- Gem- (a1) complex, (a 2) hard gemmy bridle

B- Bridle- (b1) interconnected, (b2) controlling
 Introducing the Stylistic Notions Overtones and Undertones 1 97

It is a metaphor, too, but it can be viewed in a different way:

A- Bridle- (a1) concatenation, (a2) controlling

B- Glitter- (b1) many rays, (b2) from similar sources Bridle glittter’d

In Al-Mala’ika’s images, the same process seems to be at work, and ‘the

doubt-knife’ can be analyzed as follows:

A- Doubt- (a1) piercing, (a2) threat

B- Knife- (b1) sharp, (b2) an object of threatening Doubt Knife

This schema again produces a metaphor, as we can say ‘doubt is a knife.’

The two notions of overtone and undertone have to be combined in
dealing with Al-Mala’ika’s other poems. The two notions are interrelated, and
what the overtones may hypostatize what is actually the net result of what the
undertones have once given extra emphasis to. This entanglement is clear
when we tackle ‘An Elegy on a Valueless Woman.’ Al-Mala’ika stresses the
valueless of the woman at issue by finding an ‘objective correlative.’ Consider
the following line:

Night surrendered nonchalantly to morning.

The adverb ‘nonchalantly’ is the hub and heart of the line, having
operational undertones within. It connotes that nothing is of value: there is
nothing to care for, so everything is done carelessly or inadvertently. In this
way, the ‘valuelessness’ of the woman finds a similar echo in the actions of
the night and morning. The ‘battle of life,’ so to posit, is also shadowed or
adumbrated in the ‘forays’ of stones launched by boys, along with the winds
‘fumbling with the roof-doors.’ More strikingly, the speaker of the poem spells
it out:

In a state of semi-deep forgetfulness.

Moreover, the overtones of ‘forgetfulness’—being a word made up of four

syllables—appear in the boredom invested by the ‘-ness’ suffix. Boredom is
further mixed with the atrocious shock occasioned by the sudden stroke of
death. The speaker of the poem seems baffled:
98 Amr M. El-Zawawy

She passed away—no pale cheeks, no trembling lips;

Nor did doors hear her death-story retold and retold.
No blinds were drawn up, dropping sorrow and sadness,
To follow the coffin staringly to its deadness
Till it becomes the remains of a frame stirred by reminiscence.

CONCLUSION
As such, it seems that the discussion of the duality of tone in this chapter
has proved to be somewhat valid. What is suggested by the undertones, being
the yardstick for adumbration and, at times, fantasization, is concurrently
echoed in the overtones, which, if counted upon in the very beginning, may be
misleading, though they, by way of circumlocution, might reveal a vestige of
the strident undertones. It can be said that Nazik Al-Mala’ika’s poetry is too
subtle to guess at or interpret at face value. It is a complex, interlayed structure
of different levels of tonality.
Chapter 11

POETIC PERSONA AND OVERTONES IN

ABUL-QASIM AL-SHABY’S POETRY

INTRODUCTION
Unlike Nazik Al-Mala’ika, Al-Shaby22 is a poet of ‘orotund undertones.’
This initial statement may sound paradoxical or ambivalent, but it is capable of
being thoroughly explored. Not that Al-Shaby’s verse is imbued with a
tincture of didacticism; rather it is ‘supra-didactic,’ so to speak, for what meets
the eye is a path towards higher levels of connotations that cannot be
explicated via educated guesses. For one logical thing, Al-Shaby is by no
means a master of architectonics, yet his architectonics cannot be overlooked:
there are moments in his poetry when the underlying meaning is by far more
imposing than the structures that flow naturally and storm violently.
In this study, the diverse undertones and strident tones in Al-Shaby’s
poetry are examined, bearing in mind some of the political events that helped
shape the unconventionality in his texts. This may necessitate finding the
affinity between his verse and other poets,’ especially modernists. Moreover,
the stylistic devices and rhetorical figures employed are examined in an
attempt to arrive at a comprehensive appraisal of his poetry.

22Abul Qasim Al-Shaby (1909 - 1934) was a Tunisian poet. He was born to a judge. He obtained
his attatoui diploma (the equivalent of the baccalauréat) in 1928. In 1930, he obtained a law
diploma from the University of Ez-Zitouna. He was interested in modern literature, and
translated romantic literature, as well as old Arab literature. His poetic talent manifested
itself at an early age and this poetry covered numerous topics, from the description of nature
to patriotism. His poem To the tyrants of the world became a popular slogan.
100 Amr M. El-Zawawy

POETIC PERSONA AND OVERTONES

Al-Shaby’s poems inherently assume that someone other than the author is
addressing the reader. However, the ideas entertained by Al-Shaby cannot be
dissociated from the ones expressed by the persona he introduces. In his ‘The
Bard’s Heart,’ as a prominent example, Al-Shaby never uses the pronoun ‘I,’
though making shrewd use of ‘my.’ Consider the opening of the above-
mentioned poem:

All that whiffs, treads,

Sleeps, or hovers on Earth
Of birds, roses, smells,
Springs, branches heavy,
Seas, caves, tops,
Volcanoes, valleys and deserts
All survives by my heart, free…

This elongated opening is overwhelming: Al-Shaby attacks the reader

with a flood of successive images, ranging from whispered movements to the
essence of human life. It is clear that he tries to impress us, and the deep
queries of Al-Mala’ika’s verse are not echoed here. Al-Shaby attempts a
deeper vision by examining the recesses of the poet’s heart unlike Al-Mala’ika
who relates the existence of the poet to time and space. Consider the following
extract from the same poem:

Here, inside my heart deep and roomy,

Death and spectra dance!
Here, the horrors of nights blow fiercely;
Here flutter dreams flowery.
Here call the echoes of dying!

It is entirely made up of oppositions; and the result is that the poet’s heart
is construed of as life itself, for it combines what is good and what is bad at the
same time. The rhetorical device oxymoron in those lines focuses on creating
an overtone of sadness and jubilation at once. Other poems also create a
bizarre overtone. Consider the two following extracts:

So I asked the Night,

Which was gloomy, monstrous,
 Poetic Persona and Overtones in Abul-Qasim Al-Shaby’s Poetry 101

Beauteous and strange,

Gazing at it:
‘Are the Thunder’s song whining
And Nostalgia crooning,
Beside the sad Existence?’

Here, again, oppositions exist: nighttime is described as ‘gloomy’ and

‘beauteous.’ This can be taken as an echo of the poet’s heart, which is capable
of giving rein to contradictory things. It is also noticeable that in the extract at
issue, there is no reference to personal experience, and the pronoun ‘I’ is used
only once. It is not a subjective poem, though the question of the poet or the
speaker brings about the end of the poem:

But the Night stood unmoving,

Silent like Bleakness’s gurgling,
With no echo!

The same idea of introducing a persona is found in other Arabic poems,

namely Shoosha’s in ‘Time to Catch Time’ (1997):

Night is bleak,
Empty,
Ever-gloomy
And opaque-faced.
Will its eyes allow one tears,
And tears incur loss?23

In Shoosha’s ‘Shawqi,’ there is also the same veiled identity speaking:

O Shawqi!
Who else could kindle the fire of vengeance,
Publicly vindicate the name of verse,
Masterfully compose the tune of death
And mourn the loss of our Andalusia? 24

At first sight, it appears that a poet is addressing another, but later the
speaker concedes his inability to compose poetry like Shawqi, and all this

23
This extract was translated by M. M. Enani.
24
This extract was translated by M. M. Enani.
102 Amr M. El-Zawawy

conducive towards considering the speaker like the readers: an average person
admitting the poetic mastery of Shawqi.
Further, Al-Shaby can be related to a more remote poet, namely Blake25.
Both poets cloak their poems in nebulosity and try to delve into the recesses of
the human mind. Blake tries to explore the religious aspect alongside the
material aspect by being typically human, as his questions in ‘The Tyger,’ his
famous song of experience, evince a very weary mind, much like that of teens:

Tyger Tyger, burning bright,

In the forests of the night;
What immortal hand or eye,
Could frame thy fearful symmetry?

In what distant deeps or skies.

Burnt the fire of thine eyes?
On what wings dare he aspire?
What the hand, dare seize the fire?

The last two lines seem blasphemous as most critics have pointed out, but
still there is something opaque: Blake, like Al-Shaby, attacks his readers in
order to involve them in the thinking process. Also hard to conceive are Al-
Shaby’s questions: ‘Are the Thunder’s song whining/And Nostalgia crooning,
/Beside the sad Existence?’ How can a song express whining? What is meant
by the singing of homesickness? Is it a kind of sadness or of being very close
to one’s home? Why is existence sad, since nostalgia croons? Blake reaches
the nadir of comprehensibility (and maybe blasphemy from a Christian point
of view) when he writes:

I saw a chapel all of gold

That none did dare to enter in
And many weeping stood without
Weeping mourning worshipping

I saw a serpent rise between

The white pillars of the door
And he forc’d & forc’d & forc’d
Down the golden hinges tore

25
William Blake (1757 - 1827) was an English poet and painter. Blake is now considered a
seminal figure in the history of the poetry and visual arts of the Romantic Age. He is also
considered the forerunner of Romanticism.
 Poetic Persona and Overtones in Abul-Qasim Al-Shaby’s Poetry 103

And along the pavement sweet

Set with pearls and rubies bright
All his slimy length he drew
Till upon the altar white

Vomiting his poison out

On the bread & on the wine
So I turn’d into a sty
And laid me down among the swine.

The poem is quoted in full here to show that Blake follows the same line
of thought adopted by Al-Shaby. Blake sets a general overtone through
describing a particular scene, then calls the reader’s attention to some seminal
fact or question, in which the hub and heart of the whole poem can be
explored. As such, Blake involves the reader in the action just as he does in
‘The Tyger’ through a shocking exclamation of the tiger running in a
tenebrous jungle. Al-Shaby does so, as he either involves the reader through an
internal scene or through an external description. In ‘The New Morn,’ for
instance, he opens the open with: ‘Clam down wounds/Shush sad pangs!’ It is
an exclamation, and in ‘The Song of Thunder,’ there is: ‘In the still of Night,
when/The Earth hugged Piety, /And hopes’ voices disappeared/Behind the
scopes of slumber.’ Then, he poses his baffling questions, leaving everyone
confused.
The sudden jerks of emotions, as is expressed in the exclamation marks,
resemble those exploited by Wordsworth, the proponent of Romanticism. Is
this reminiscent of the query as to whether Al-Shaby’s poetry is Romantic
or not? To do him justice, one can assume that it verges on the brink
of Romanticism. For he usually channels his own feelings to a different
destination: he is often preoccupied with the tribulation of his homeland under
the brunt of colonialism. He may start by expressing his innermost feelings as
in ‘The Bard’s Heart’:

All that whiffs, treads,

Sleeps, or hovers on Earth…
All survives by my heart, free…

Then, he ends his poem in an oblique intimation:

Here, a thousand adversaries belligerent,

Immortally revolving, unknown to boundaries.
104 Amr M. El-Zawawy

However, it may be counter-argued that this is not a valid generalization.

In ‘Paradise Lost,’ Al-Shaby breaks free from political disputes, and ruminates
on childhood days. He composes a whole poem on his own lost childhood, or
perhaps his country’s? He opens his poem with:

How many eras are there, pellucid and on the valley’s bank
flourishing,
Silver-dawned and golden in afternoons and mornings,
And more tender than flowers and birds’ twitterings…

Those lines appear, at first sight, Romantic, but the reverse is true. The
whole setting, accompanied by the dominant sensation of nostalgia, attests to
the opposite: Al-Shaby tries to comingle homesickness with the need to see the
self-same valley again. He longs for the day when he can see the same place
verdant and shimmering with silver and golden beams. At a more complex
level, the same scene may be related to liberating his country from French
occupation. Thus, it seems that it is difficult to cast Al-Shaby’s poetry in a
fixed mould.
Still, Al-Shaby can be considered both a pessimist and an optimist. In
‘The Song of Thunder,’ he proposes to relate his own emotions to those of the
ambient objects—night, earth, thunder, etc. He, as usual, sets the locale, then
keeps on posing abstruse questions: is the lilt of thunder a whining song?
Alternatively, does nostalgia warble in that sad universe? Before even leaving
the reader to ponder, he comes up with a new, befuddling question: is it some
force moving in a serpentine manner, full of injustice and rigmarole sounds,
denoting torment? Al-Shaby may be preoccupied with something supernatural
that can shake away colonialism. Although Al-Shaby offers a crass way of
dealing with the matter, the whole process turns out to be another jerk of an
unachieved ambition:

But Night stood unmoving,

Silent like Bleakness’s gurgling,
With no echo!

At a symbolist level, night may refer to injustice and colonialism—a well-

known metaphor in Arabic--- and the simile of likening it to bleakness stresses
the same idea. Yet the word ‘gurgling’ provides an oxymoron: how can
bleakness include water? The final three-word line is also baffling: it
underlines the oxymoron above, but the oxymoron is related to bleakness, not
 Poetic Persona and Overtones in Abul-Qasim Al-Shaby’s Poetry 105

night, which is motionless and is not described as having any sound. It can be
assumed that Al-Shaby attempts aporia and poetic wonders. He is thus a
pessimist.
On the other hand, he is an optimist. This is clear in his ‘New Morn,’ a
lengthy, yet ambitious, poem. In this poem, the grief and injustices of the
present find an outlet in his ‘hell’s inferno.’ Escaping the dreary present is a
strong possibility, for the poem terminates in:

Farewell! Farewell!
Mounts of misery!
You, grief fogs!
You, hell’s inferno!
I’ve slipped my canoe
Through the vast sea,
And I’ve unfurled the sails…
Farewell! Farewell!

The repetition of the vocative ‘farewell’ stresses the notion that the
speaker is an escapist; however, it remains arguable to where he will escape.
Again, the poem poses a question, and then deviates from it almost bluntly.
The speaker opens his lines with an invocation to ‘wounds’ to grow less sour
and to pains to stop arising. Then, he explains how he has interred pains and
dispersed tears; how he has used life as a ‘musical instrument’ to sing out his
tunes; how he has heated ‘grief’ up into a liquid amongst the beauties of
‘existence’; and how he has goaded his heart into an oasis. Moreover, he uses
the same opening line as a refrain for an unknown chorus. Does he refer to
himself as the speaker and the chorus at the same time? Such a strange poem
can be thought of as a vision, an optimistic one; and its dreamy appeal lies in
the contrasting feelings of pain and hope. In combining such levels of analysis,
Al-Shaby succeeds in coping with the moderns, where the psyche is the main
theme. He defamiliarizes the idea of the dream by bringing together the desire
to end colonialism and the weird dream buried in the psyche of a poet. Thus,
the reader is asked to refer to reality in order to comprehend the connotations
of escapism.
106 Amr M. El-Zawawy

Al-Shaby also adopts contrasting formal patterns26. While attempting to

stir free from the formal shackles of traditional Arabic poetry, he remains
faithful to the regular Arabic rhyme scheme, and further makes best use of the
pithiness of rhyming couplets. For example, in ‘To the World Tyrants,’ the
fluid, uncontrolled emotions of rage are conducive towards a mixture of
couplets and tristichs. The Arabic original can be read as two couplets and a
third rhyming line, or three successive rhyming lines. Consider, for instance,
the following translation:

O, you the oppressor, the unjust,

The darkness lover, the life-foe!
You’ve ridiculed the pains of a weak people,
And your palm’s suffused with its gory hue.
You’ve trampled on the existence charm,
And on its top sown thorns of sorrow.

In another poem, Al-Shaby sticks to a certain pattern throughout the

versified lines with an effect where the reader is lured into believing that it is
traditional Arabic verse. In ‘Beauteous Tunisia,’ the rhyme scheme harps on ‫هـ‬
and the effect is the achieved through underlining the vastness of the poet’s
love for it.

CONCLUSION
It is difficult to venture on with a comprehensive reassessment of Al-
Shaby’s poetry, not because it is modernist, but the fact is that his lines are
passion-loaded and highly poetical. In his verse, what appears first as a tone of
desperation turns out to be a vociferous call for optimism. More baffling still,
the titles of his poems are reminiscent of certain emotions, much of which are

26Rhetorical or stylistic devices are adeptly employed by Al-Shaby. I have tried to preserve this
in my translation. In ‘The Bard’s Heart,’ the anaphora of lines 19-23 shows that the sense
proceeds smoothly. In ‘The Song of Thunder,’ isocolon is employed. Consider the
following:
Recited a song Thunder
Repeated by all beings
The same number of words in the two successive lines is preserved. This underlines the power of
thunder as set against the acquiescence of ‘all beings.’ Similarly, in ‘Paradise Lost,’ there
are several lines which exhibit the same stylistic device:
When Life floored our paths with flowers’ foliage,
And days elapsed, carrying us, like birds’ flocks.
 Poetic Persona and Overtones in Abul-Qasim Al-Shaby’s Poetry 107

pertinent to special undertones. The sanctity suggested by the diction vies with
the drunkenness of phrases such as ‘sukr al-sho’our’ (i.e., ‘soberly drunken’),
to give just one example. These contrasts leave his verse as rich and
kaleidoscopic as modern poetry purports to be.
Chapter 12

THE STYLISTICS OF W.B. YEATS’S POETRY

INTRODUCTION
Most of the critical accounts written about Yeats27 focus on certain poems,
and drift into hard-to-prove issues such as necrophilia and polyvalency. It will
be tantalizing as well as confusing to start this essay with a list of the critical
works on Yeats’s poetry: my beginning shall be the possible impressions,
which inherently entail sensible effusions, so to speak, and the imaginative
potential of Yeats as manifested in his stylistic capabilities. The fact is always
that Yeats encompasses his poems with a shamanistic aura, and the reader is
left to confront the obscure manifestations of the text at issue. But, is it
possible to transcend that obfuscating aura, and venture on a reasonable
exegesis of the poems chosen herein? A bold claim.
The present study will make use of Yeats’s own introduction to his poetry,
with all its oppositions and complexity. The various connotative overtones and
undertones, as viable stylistic devices, will be investigated in his poems as
compared to some Arabic and English poems as an exercise in comparative
stylistics.

27William Butler Yeats (1865 –1939) was an Irish poet. In 1923, he was awarded the Nobel
Prize. William Butler Yeats was born in Sandymount, Ireland and educated there and in
London; he spent his childhood holidays in County Sligo. He studied poetry in his youth
and from an early age. His first volume of verse was published in 1889. He remained
preoccupied with physical and spiritual masks, as well as with cyclical theories of life.
110 Amr M. El-Zawawy

WISDOM, POETIC PERSONAE AND SYMBOLISM

Thwaite (1957) once observed that:

“…we must not assume that it is the calm wisdom of a contented old
man. Rather, Yeats implicitly understood Blake’s maxim that ‘The road
to excess leads to the palace of wisdom.” (31)

With this pithy remark, Thwaite boils down a whole amalgam of critical
works, and the central word here is ‘wisdom.’ To attempt a deconstructionist
interpretation, this can be best based on The Concise Oxford Dictionary (2011)
adapted definition:

“Being wise, (possession of) experience & knowledge together with

the power of applying them critically or practically, sagacity, prudence,
common sense; wise sayings, etc.”

The entry is truncated. If the deconstructionist effort is even doubled, the

most crucial word, viz. ‘practically,’ can be picked up as the central one in the
definition. This word fits in with the context of Yeats’s understanding of
Blake’s adage. What Yeats (in West, 1980) proves in poem after poem is that
the notion of wisdom is a practical realm. He boldly wrote:

“I wanted to write in whatever language comes most naturally when

we soliloquize, as I do all day long, upon the events of our own lives or
of my life where we can see ourselves for the moment.” (33-34)

Here, the idea of wisdom clearly recurs, especially in the last couple of
lines. A wise man usually ruminates over the doings of others, and comes up
with new insights. The same is true of Yeats: he is a sagacious man, yet bold
and impulsive. In a sense, his wisdom is a mixture of youth and infirmity, the
fusion of seemingly two opposites. And the problem arises forthwith: how can
he bring the two together in his poems?
The versification strategy, another viable stylistic device chosen by
Yeats, is the core issue. But, like many modernists, he skates around that
device by resorting to a persona. Selden (1990) discusses three types of
persona: a propria persona, a dramatis persona, and a midway type. Propria
personae are used in direct and indirect expressions (i.e., composions),
whereas dramatis personae adopt a different voice, often detached from the
 The Stylistics of W.B. Yeats’s Poetry 111

poet, and are of two subtypes: one is organized from a point of view; the other
relatively autonomous. The third type of persona is, however, not consistent
with all forms of poetry: it appears in Browning’s poetry, where the poet’s
voice is disguised in a veneer of a speaking agent. With all this in mind, Yeats
carefully constructs a persona having the qualities of the three types at once. In
‘A Dream of Death,’ the pronoun ‘I’ is not a referent of the poet, of course,
and the whole scene is tinged with the tincture of wishy-washy tendencies:

And left her to the indifferent stars above

Until I carved these words:
She was more beautiful than thy first love,
But now lies under boards.

Why does he leave her? To write the above lines? The more the reader
delves into the poem, the more confused s/he grows. The very first words set
the scene of a dream, so were those lines composed in a dreamy trance? There
is the possibility of having two opposites: being dreamy and being wide-
awake, and the two vie for supremacy in the reader’s mind. Better still, it
might be a reverie. Yet all these interpretations are mere suggestions based on
groundless assumptions.
Other interpretations persist. The problematic choice of the word ‘carved’
is highly significant. Does the speaker of the poem, i.e., the persona, ‘carve’
the words on the beloved’s tomb or on his paper? If it was a night dream, how
would he ‘carve’ the words on an imaginary grave? The answer can be the
recourse to symbolism, not because it the only legitimate outlet, but because it
is one of Yeats’s (qtd in West, 1980) preeminent poetic features:

“…metaphors are not profound enough to be moving, when they are

not symbols, and when they are symbols they are the most perfect of all,
because the most subtle, outside of pure sound, and through them one can
best find out what symbols are” (16).

It is clear now that the death of the girl is a symbol of something else. It is
possibly a metaphor for the death of beauty or innocence without even being
discovered or blurted out. Sufficient evidence proves the appetency for that
notion in the poem, since the girl dies near ‘no accustomed hand.’ ‘The
peasants’ are the masses rather than the multitude: they do not comprehend the
incident, and assign her a run-of-the-mill pile of sand. This last point may
bring to mind Nashe’s poem about the death of the beautiful, yet Yeats’s is
112 Amr M. El-Zawawy

more subtle. It describes the stars, the girl’s counters, as ‘indifferent’: they do
not take heed of the deceased girl because she has been all her life an object of
oblivion. The wisdom detected in the poem is thus excessive, for the idea of
having a grave of innocence and charming beauty is an indictment of the
death of unblemished objects or even purposeless intentions. It connotes
romanticism, but is a self-pitying one. It is also reminiscent of the Arab poet
Shawqi’s ‘They Deceived Her’28, where a lover woos his beloved. It also
points to another poem by Yeats, namely ‘Wandering Aengus’:

Though I am old with wandering

Through hollow lands and hilly lands.
I will find out where she has gone,
And kiss her lips and take her hands;
And walk among long dappled grass…

Nevertheless, symbolism persists even further. Yeats distinguishes

between two types of symbols: emotional and intellectual. The first type
evokes certain emotions, while the second stirs related ideas. Although Yeats
restricts the first to sound-symbols (e.g., patterns of rhythm and meter), it can
be assumed that that they can be found in other manifestations, especially
words. In ‘A Dream of Death,’ ‘strange,’ ‘no accustomed,’ ‘above her face,’
‘solitude,’ ‘mound,’ ‘indifferent,’ among other phrases, all evoke distinct
levels of emotiveness (cf. Galperin 1975). ‘Strange’ and ‘not accustomed’
substantially color the attitude of the reader from the outset: there is a sense of
alienation and severance. ‘Above her face’ and ‘solitude,’ to select a
seemingly unrelated couple, stir an emotion of concealment and confinement;
for a girl’s innocence remains unknown all through her short life. Finally,
‘indifferent’ and ‘mound’ project a detestable image of the surrounding
objects: the stars are insensitive just as the masses make a shapeless heap of
sand covering the corpse.
Intellectual symbols, in contrast, are detected through the persona. The
cypress-tree stands for timelessness and ever-beautiful transformations.

28Ahmed Shawqi (1868–1932) (The Prince of Poets ), was one of the greatest Arabic poets
laureate. He was born to a family that was prominent and well connected with the court of
the Khedive of Egypt. He obtained a degree in translation, and was then offered a job in
the court of the Khedive Abbas II.
After a year working in the court of the Khedive, Shawqi was sent to continue his studies in
Law at the Universities of Montpellier and Paris for three years. In 1927, he was elected by
his peers as Amir al-Sho’araa’ (literally, "The Prince of Poets") in recognition of his
unsurpassed contributions to the literary field.
 The Stylistics of W.B. Yeats’s Poetry 113

Cypress-trees are strong, ever-green and coniferous. By placing one beside the
girl’s tomb, the persona succeeds in evoking the above-mentioned ideas,
which are simultaneously mixed with the other associations of innocence and
beauty--- sc. love, happiness, admiration.29
Such subtlety echoes Al-Shaby’s ‘New Morn,’ where the notions of
escape are reshuffled. Both Yeats and Al-Shaby share the backdrop of
multivalent symbolism: they present the readers with clear-cut lines, yet the
denotation is far from being clear. Al-Shaby’s propria persona escapes
something intolerable with an unknown destination. Similarly, the description
of the deceased girl as ‘more beautiful than thy first love’ may be taken to
purport a wish to escape death, just as Al-Shaby’s persona’s destination is
imminent death.

EMOTIVE WORDS AND WAVERING

RHYTHMICAL PATTERNS
Yeats’s imaginative potential thus does merit some exploration. He uses
words such as ‘wavering, meditative, organic rhythms, which are the
embodiment of the imagination.’ This cumbersome phrase has, first of all, to
be analyzed word for word. ‘Wavering’ connotes an indeterminate linchpin,
i.e., the absence of a recurrent pattern. In ‘The Four Ages of Man,’ for
instance, the following rhythmic pattern can be discovered:

He with body waged a fight,

x | x /| x / | x/
But body won; it walks upright.
x / |x / | x / | /| x
Then he struggled with the heart;
x | x / | x x | x/
Innocence and peace depart.
|/x x | x / | x/

The rhythmic pattern is inconsistent, since it is interspersed with spondee.

Because it is ‘wavering,’ it brings about meditation; and because it is
‘meditative,’ it evokes a ‘wavering’ reaction. Thus, Yeats clothes meditation

29 Note how the opposite just happens in Yeats’s ‘The Mask,’ a poem about outward deception
and the inability to dispense with it.
114 Amr M. El-Zawawy

in doubt, and this draws him nearer to the modernists with all their stress-
timed poems. Yet his verse is ‘organic.’ In its simplest sense, organicity is
integral recurrent patterns that associate the part with the whole in order to
form a meaningful set.
Yeats’s, however, relies on traditional themes that may be opposed to his
call for meditation. The division of man’s life into discrete parts is not new. It
is more akin to Shakespeare’s ‘The Seven Ages of Man’ (a speech from As
You Like It), not because of the title but because of the fact that Shakespeare,
like Yeats, is much interested in emotional symbols of sympathy. Consider the
following excerpt from Shakespeare’s:

And one man in his time plays many parts,

His acts being seven ages. At first, the infant,
Mewling and puking in the nurse’s arms.
Then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school

‘Mewling’ and ‘whining’ depict the querulous infant and further integrate
with ‘puking’ and ‘shining’ in order to add other connotations. Moreover, the
reader senses that there is a fatherly aura in the lines, unlike the detached,
callous depiction of Yeats. The lines are also slightly more humorous in
contradistinction to Yeats’s ‘impulsive’ wisdom.
There are similarities, though. The altercation between the body and
the soul of man, as reported in Yeats’s poem, is the same as the infant
in Shakespeare’s. The infant tries to express himself through crying and
wriggling--- a possible fight with his slim body in order to assert his own
existence, to usher his extant soul. ‘But body won!’ This is the same as the
‘creeping’ pupil of Shakespeare: the boy relies on his body as a means of
sailing through the storms of life, of achieving his target, but for a while the
influence of the soul falters. Then the most crucial stage commences: man
begins to ‘struggle’ with the heart. He tries to use it as a subterfuge to attract a
beloved or a ‘mistress’; and this forms the first step of losing ‘innocence’ and
‘peace’ of mind, since the professed lover will attempt a romantic relationship
full of insincere emotions. Afterwards comes the ramification--- the desire to
‘trail’ an imposed feeling.
 The Stylistics of W.B. Yeats’s Poetry 115

‘PASSIONATE’ SYNTAX
Yeats further tackles the idea of ‘passionate syntax.‘ He observes that (qtd
in West, 1980):

“Because I need a passionate syntax for passionate subject-matter I

compel myself to accept those traditional meters that have developed with
the language.” (34)

Yeats is, in fact, a poet of passionate syntax. One prominent feature of this
type of syntax is the use of ‘immanent pronouns’: one pronoun may govern the
interpretation of a line or two without recurring in any. A valid instance is the
effect of the pronoun ‘they’ on the fourth, fifth and sixth lines of ‘A Dream of
Death.’ Here are the lines annotated with my addendum in brackets:

The peasants of that land,

Wondering to lay her in that solitude,
And [they] raised above her mound…

The same is detectable in the ninth and twelfth lines. Another feature of
‘passionate syntax‘ is the omission of the copula in order to preserve the flow
of the lines:

What hurts the soul [is]

[What] My soul adores…

Also deleted is the connector ‘so’ in:

Then he struggled with the heart;

[so]Innocence and peace depart.

As such, Yeats’s syntax is unusual: it is the reflection of the emotive

structure of the poem.
116 Amr M. El-Zawawy

CONCLUSION
It is useful to recapitulate what has been discussed thus far by quoting
Thwaite’s (1957) comment:
“Yeats’s philosophy…was a hotch-potch, in many ways, of
stoicism, mysticism and nonsense, culled from omnivorous reading and
his own frustrations and doubts…Yet out of all this rag-bag of half-
digested and spurious knowledge, of human mistakes and vanities, came
the greatest, and some of the wisest, poetry of this century.” (46)
 GLOSSARY OF RECURRENT TERMS

Atmosphere: The mood created by the aura.

Aura: The evocations of a poem or piece of literature that point to the
predominant mood.
Broken Plural: In Arabic, a type of pluralization that does not follow the
standard rules of Arabic inflectional morphology.
Coinage: Inventing new words to be introduced into a particular language
and be used later.
Connective; connector: Any part of speech that can be used to connect
two words or sentences or more in a piece of discourse.
Diction: The words used by a particular author in a poem or piece of
literature.
Discourse: Written or spoken output ready for stylistic analysis.
Epithet: An adjective that is constantly related to a particular entity to
designate it.
Isocolon: In poetry, a stylistic device that stipulates the same number of
words in two successive lines.
Noema: From the Greek word νόημα meaning thought. Husserl used
noema as a technical term in phenomenology to stand for the object or content
of a thought, judgment, or perception, but its precise meaning in his work has
remained a matter of controversy.
Overtone: The poetic features that readily attract the reader’s attention,
being akin to form.
Pharyngealization: A phonetic feature for the articulation of consonants
or vowels where the pharynx or epiglottis is constricted.
Unbestimmtheitsstellen (Spots of indeterminacy): Places in a text left
unclear for the reader in order to elicit different responses from him/her.
118 Amr M. El-Zawawy

Undertone: The subdued tones that unite a piece of literature providing a

well-organized whole.

Transliteration Symbols

Arabic Letter Code

‫ء‬ ’, ?
‫ا‬ a, ā
‫ب‬ b
‫ت‬ t
‫ث‬ th
‫ج‬ j, g
‫ح‬ ḥ
‫خ‬ ḳ,x, kh
‫د‬ d
‫ذ‬ ḏ
‫ر‬ r
‫ز‬ z
‫س‬ s
‫ش‬ š, sh
‫ص‬ s
‫ض‬ ḍ
‫ط‬ t
‫ظ‬ z
‫ع‬ ‘
‫غ‬ ġ
‫ف‬ f
‫ق‬ q, ‘
‫ك‬ k
‫ل‬ l
‫م‬ m
‫ن‬ n
‫ه‬ h
‫و‬ w u, ū, o,
‫ي‬ y, ī, i
‫ة‬ ah, at
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AUTHOR’S CONTACT INFORMATION

Dr. Amr M. El-Zawawy

Doctor of Linguistics and Translation
Department of English
Faculty of Education
Alexandria University
amrzaway@yahoo.com
 INDEX

28, 29, 31, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 41, 44,
A 45, 46, 47, 49, 51, 52, 53, 55, 68, 69, 70,
71, 72, 75, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 84, 85, 90,
abstraction, 64
92, 101, 104, 106, 109,112, 117, 118,
access, 59
119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125
accommodation, 91
Articulation, 7, 8, 11, 27, 117
Acronyms, 25
Asia, 123
Adaptation, 22, 29, 120
assimilation, 26
Adaptations, 24, 25, 27
atmosphere, 88, 94, 95
aesthetic, 123
Austin, 85
age, 15, 76, 88, 90, 99, 109
authenticity, 47
Agent, 35, 37, 38, 61, 62, 111
authorities, 25
Alatis, 3
awareness, 69, 82, 83
Al-Batal, 69, 78, 119
Awwad, 50, 51, 53
alienation, 112
awzan, 31
Al-Jarf, 18, 34, 120
Allophone, 13, 14
Al-Ma’arri, 79, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 87, B
88
Alomoush, 26, 27 Baker, 25
Al-Shaby, 79, 93, 99, 100, 102, 103, 104, ban, 26
105, 106, 113 banks, 95
Altoma, 89, 90 base, 25, 36, 60, 65
amalgam, 110 Bauer, 17, 18
annotation, 119 beams, 104
Antepenultimate, 13 behaviors, 16
anxiety, 86 Bely, 96
Arabic, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, Ben-Anath, 57
16, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, bending, 96
130 Index

benefits, 44 Comparative, 16, 79, 89, 90, 93, 95, 109,

Bilabial, 8, 9, 10, 26 123, 124
Blevins, 16 competition, 46
Bolinger, 41, 121 complexity, 31, 65, 109
Borrowing, 21, 22, 24, 25, 82, 121, 124 complications, 34
breakdown, 17 composition, 47, 69, 93
Brno, 122 Compounding, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, See
compounds
Compounds, 17, 18, 19, 20, 38, 76, 120
C comprehension, 60, 86, 121
computer, 25, 29
Cairo, 10, 25, 71, 119, 120, 121, 123, 124
Concise, 110, 122
caliber, 23
configuration, 61, 63, 64
candidates, 43
confinement, 112
Cantarino, 36
conjunction, 70, 71, 76
capsule, 28
connectives, 57, 68, 69, 70, 76
categorization, 78
connectivity, 57
Centering, 64, 67
consciousness, 83
Centers, 4, 61, 65, 67, 86, 121
consensus, 25
charm, 69, 106
Consonants, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, 13, 14, 18, 19,
Chicago, 125
27, 36, 117, 120
Chierchia, 43
constituents, 49
childhood, 16, 81, 104, 109
construction, 37, 69, 88, 121
Chomsky, 32, 121
contour, 62
cities, 74
Contrastive analysis, 3, 4, 5, 6, 31, 119, 120,
Clarke, 88
125
classes, 6, 16, 20, 42
Contrastive Analysis Hypothesis, 3, 4, 5
classicism, 85
Contrastive linguistics, 3, 123, 124
classification, 52, 56, 70
coordination, 16
Code switching, 22
corruption, 45, 69
Cognition, 62
covering, 96, 112
Cognitive, 42, 57, 58, 60, 64
criticism, 4, 86
Coherence, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 64,
Cruse, 41, 49, 50, 52, 53, 121
65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 78, 123, 124
Crystal, 49, 121, 122
Cohesion, 55, 56, 57, 68, 69, 70, 78, 122,
culture, 75
123
current limit, 64
Cohesive, 56, 57, 69, 78, 119
Czech Republic, 122
Coinage, 117
collaboration, 57
color, 51, 112 D
commander-in-chief, 17
common sense, 17, 43, 110 Daher, 22
community, 22, 93 dance, 93, 100
deaths, 88
 Index 131

decay, 41, 46, 83

decentralization, 19
F
degradation, 46
factories, 60
Department of Defense, 119
families, 21
depth, 87
fear, 83, 94
Derivation, 15, 16, 18, 19, 20, 29, 121
feelings, 86, 103, 105
derivatives, 18, 20
femininity, 28
destiny, 83
films, 28
detectable, 68, 115
fish, 74
Devoicing, 26
flame, 63
dichotomy, 80, 91
flowers, 84, 87, 104, 106
Diphthongs, 7, 10, 11, 12, 14
fluid, 106
Discourse, 31, 33, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 64, 65,
force, 62, 79, 80, 91, 104
67, 69, 70, 78, 88, 117, 122, 123, 124,
foreign language, 6, 51, 52
125
formation, 18, 29, 38, 60, 120
discourse comprehension, 57
fragments, 63
Disjunctives, 76
Frank, 17
disposition, 61
freedom, 15
distribution, 22, 73
friction, 7
doctors, 28
friendship, 15, 16
dream, 94, 95, 105, 111
functionalism, 121
duality, 98
fusion, 110
Dudley, 67, 68, 81

G
E
Gadamer, 85
Egypt, 36, 71, 112
Gajzlerová, 23
Eliasson, 22, 122
Gender, 28
emotion, 43, 62, 112
Genitive, 19
employment, 16
genre, 91
English, 3, 6, 7, 8, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16,
Grammar, 3, 22, 24, 44, 69, 90, 120, 122,
17, 18, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28,
124
29, 31, 32, 33, 34, 37, 38, 41, 43, 44, 46,
Grammarians, 44, 45, 47, 51, 53, 70
47, 49, 51, 52, 53, 55, 57, 65, 70, 71, 77,
Great Britain, 90
78, 79, 80, 81, 91, 102, 109, 119, 120,
Greek, 18, 24, 117
121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 127
Greeks, 24
epiglottis, 117
grouping, 87
equality, 63
evidence, 29, 46, 111
exercise, 70, 109 H
exercises, 86
extinction, 86 Hafez, 22, 26, 27
extracts, 100 hair, 50
132 Index

Hall, 18 Inferencing, 56, 59, 63

Hamid, 11 Infixes, 16, 20
happiness, 113 Inflectional, 18, 28, 70, 117
harmony, 70, 80, 91, 95 infrastructure, 52
Harris, 42, 47, 122 initial state, 99
Hartmann, 31 injury, 52
Hasan, 44, 56, 57, 69, 89 innocence, 111, 112, 113, 114
healing, 24 insertion, 16, 77
Herbert, 79, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 87, 88, 121, integration, 22, 122
125 integrity, 22
Hermeneutic, 82, 124 intentionality, 69, 82
Hermeneutical, 81, 82 interference, 4, 6
high school, 17 internalization, 5
history, 24, 55, 102, 119 intonation, 14
Hobbs, 56 Intransitive, 29, 34
homophones, 42 Iraq, 89, 123
Hong Kong, 123 Ireland, 90, 109
host, 26 Israel, 121
House, 119 issues, 3, 14, 69, 79, 81, 109, 122
hub, 97, 103
hue, 106
Hughes, 5
J
human, 35, 60, 63, 86, 93, 100, 102, 116
James, 3, 81
humanism, 15
Jordan, 71
hypocrisy, 81
hypothesis, 4, 5, 6, 60, 125
K
I Kearns, 43, 123
Khafaji, 33
Ibrahim, 17, 19
Klein, 4
identification, 8
Knott, 55, 56
identity, 4, 37, 43, 61, 92, 101
Kuwait, 71, 89
Idiomatic, 49, 50, 51, 52, 123
Idioms, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 120, 123
image, 80, 94, 95, 97, 100, 112 L
imagery, 80, 90, 95
imagination, 84, 113 language acquisition, 43, 123
imitation, 84, 85 language processing, 122
immortality, 93 languages, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 10, 14, 18, 21, 22,
impulsive, 110, 114 24, 31, 41, 42, 46, 47, 49, 53
India, 23 Latin, 18, 24, 72, 73, 75
individuals, 57, 58, 59 learners, 4, 5, 6, 14
Inference, 64 learning, 4, 5
 Index 133

Lebanon, 71, 119 mythology, 85

lexemic, 17, 50
light, 11, 12, 27, 32, 43, 51, 52, 53, 55, 61,
82, 96
N
linen, 50
native-language, 14
linguistics, 3, 6, 16, 51, 57, 68, 119, 120,
Nazik Al-Mala’ika, 80, 89, 90, 92, 98, 99
121, 122, 123, 124, 125
Netherlands, 123
Loanwords, 13, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27,
Networks, 63, 64, 66, 67, 70
28, 29, 45, 120, 122, 125
neutral, 62
love, 59, 106, 111, 113
Nida, 42
Lyons, 32, 42
Nobel Prize, 109
nodes, 63
M Nominal, 52, 53
nonconcatenative, 15
machinery, 15 nostalgia, 102, 104
majority, 5 nucleus, 19
mass, 24 Number, 28
materials, 62, 71 Numerals, 20
matter, 33, 44, 69, 73, 104, 115, 117
measurements, 31, 62
media, 37
O
medical, 52
objectivity, 86
melt, 88
obstruction, 7, 11
membership, 58
omission, 34, 115
memory, 60
opacity, 50
metaphor, 50, 96, 97, 104, 111
operations, 60, 62, 63, 78
meter, 112
optimism, 80, 106
methodology, 123
organize, 60, 61
Mexico, 63
overlap, 42
microstructures, 57
Overtone, 80, 91, 95, 97, 100, 103, 117
Middle East, 124
oxygen, 63
military, 52
models, 55, 58, 65, 78, 122, 123, 124
modernism, 81 P
modifications, 80
Moon, 93, 94, 96 Pacific, 123
Morphemes, 12, 15 paints, 95
Morphology, 3, 15, 18, 19, 20, 22, 117, 120, palate, 10
125 Palmer, 33, 49, 50, 53, 124
mother tongue, xi parallelism, 91
MSA, 19, 52 Paret, 84
music, 25 participants, 64
Mustafawi, 22 Participle, 20, 34, 35
134 Index

Passive, 15, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, questioning, 92
39, 123, 124
Passivization, 31, 32, 33, 34, 38
patriotism, 99
R
peace, 113, 114, 115
radar, 26, 63
Penultimate, 12, 13, 26
radio, 26
permit, 27
reading, 16, 80, 90, 116, 123
pessimism, 79, 81
reality, 42, 105
petroleum, 25
recalling, 61
Pharyngealized, 10
reception, 61, 120
pharynx, 117
recession, 120
phenomenology, 117
recognition, 62, 112
phonemes, 11, 26
recommendations, iv
phonetic, 82, 117
recovery, 64
Phonology, 3, 7, 14, 22, 25, 122, 124, 125
recurrence, 63, 86
Phrasal, 52
relaxation, 12
physics, 17
religion, 83
poetry, 68, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 84, 85, 86, 88,
researchers, 70
89, 90, 92, 93, 98, 99, 101, 102, 103,
response, 123
104, 106, 109, 111, 116, 117, 120, 121,
restrictions, 35, 50
125
rhythm, 8, 14, 45, 81, 82, 112
poison, 103
romantic relationship, 114
police, 8, 65, 76
Romanticism, 102, 103, 112
Poplack, 22
Root, 15, 18, 19, 20, 24, 28, 29, 34, 36, 37,
predicate, 57, 59
84, 85, 86
Prefixes, 16, 20
roses, 100
preservation, 41
rules, 12, 14, 20, 24, 60, 64, 74, 76, 81, 117
prior knowledge, 61
Ryding, 19, 24, 35, 37, 69, 70, 75, 76, 78,
probability, 63
124
problem-solving, 63
Processing, 55, 60, 61, 64, 65, 122, 123
professionalism, 47 S
project, 80, 112
pronunciation, 14 sadness, 98, 100, 102
proposition, 60 Saudi Arabia, 71, 120
psycholinguistics, 18 scent, 87
psychology, 18 schema, 97
purity, 24 school, 13, 114, 121
schwa, 11
science, 119
Q scope, 4, 34, 36, 96
scripts, 57
quantification, 65
second language, 4, 6
query, 103
seed, 24
 Index 135

self-expression, 17 symbolism, 111, 112, 113

Selinker, 3, 124 symmetry, 102
semantic information, 60 sympathy, 114
semantics, 3, 6, 49, 69, 121, 123, 125 Synonymy, 41, 44
sensation, 104 Syntactic, 6, 31, 49, 50, 51, 52, 64
senses, 61, 114 syntax, 3, 49, 70, 115
shape, 62, 68, 99
shock, 97
silver, 104
T
Singapore, 125
Taboada, 67
skin, 83
talent, 99
social reality, 73
target, 33, 114
society, 90
teachers, 3
solitude, 112, 115
telephone, 25
solution, 47
territory, 81
speech, 7, 11, 38, 68, 96, 114, 117, 122
textbook, 49
speech sounds, 7
textuality, 69
spelling, 6, 11
tonality, 98
spindle, 94
tones, 91, 92, 99, 118
stars, 95, 111, 112
traditions, 79
state, 35, 38, 50, 58, 61, 62, 64, 82, 97
traits, 62
states, 5, 42, 50, 58, 61, 65, 85, 96
Transformations, 31, 32, 34, 38, 112
stem, 15, 17, 24, 29, 31
Transitive, 29, 31, 34, 35
Stockwell, 5
Translation, 6, 19, 20, 52, 53, 80, 106, 112,
storms, 114
120, 123, 124, 127
stress, 7, 11, 12, 13, 14, 26, 92, 114
Transmorphemization, 27, 28
Stress placement, 12
Trask, 49
strictures, 6, 88
treatment, 32, 69, 80, 90
stroke, 97
structure, 3, 4, 6, 17, 21, 22, 31, 32, 33, 35,
38, 51, 56, 57, 64, 68, 83, 87, 88, 91, 98, U
115, 122, 123, 124
student teacher, 17 unconventionality, 99
style, 25, 43, 61, 70, 71, 74, 82 Undertones, 80, 81, 90, 91, 92, 93, 95, 97,
Stylistic, 79, 80, 89, 91, 99, 106, 109, 110, 98, 99, 107, 109, 118
117 UNESCO, 25
subjectivity, 86 uniform, 38
substitution, 22, 26 universality, 86
substitutions, 27 universe, 104
Suffixes, 12, 16, 18, 20, 27, 28, 70, 97
supernatural, 104
V
surface structure, 32
Syllabic, 8, 14, 26 valueless, 97
136 Index

van Dijk, 57, 58, 59, 60 Washington, 56, 90, 119

variations, 15, 18, 31 water, 10, 23, 83, 104
vein, 85, 95 Watson, 10, 11, 12
Verbal, 52, 53 weakness, 4
vibration, 8 wealth, 60, 78
vision, 81, 95, 100, 105 weeping, 102
Voice, 15, 31, 32, 34, 36, 38, 88, 110, 124 wholesale, 50
Voiceless, 8, 9, 10, 26 Wisconsin, 89
Voicing, 7, 8, 9, 26, 27 withdrawal, 76
Vowels, 7, 8, 10, 11, 14, 15, 18, 26, 27, 36, workers, 94
37, 117, 120 working memory, 64

W Y

Wadia, 85 Yeats, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115,

war, 26 116
Wardhaugh, 5, 6 yield, 23, 42