آداب الرافدين (Dec 1985)

Similarity in Arabic and English languages: a contrastive-study

  • Abas Rahim,
  • Hasim Huseen,
  • Ali Abas

DOI
https://doi.org/10.33899/radab.1986.165927
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 16, no. 16
pp. 89 – 104

Abstract

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Similar (assimilation) is one of the linguistic phoneme phenomena that were and still play an important role in the development that occurs in languages ​​in general for historical and sometimes contextual reasons. In general, people tend to achieve this phenomenon as a result of their tendency to exert the least muscle effort (least muscular efort) possible while using language in its daily dealings economy in the muscle effort (economy ofeffort). Done by the human speech device. Through extensive study of the Arabic and English languages, we saw that there are points of convergence between the first Arab linguists such as Hebron, Sibawayh, Ibn Geni, and the linguists of the West, especially the modernists, such as Jones, Gimson, Ward, and Abercrombie, to pay attention to this phenomenon and explain its different cases. It is noticed that these two languages ​​are replete with examples that fall within this classification of linguistic phenomena, so we have seen that a corresponding study of this phenomenon in both languages ​​can better illustrate the picture and show the similarities and differences in its many types that we will deal with in detail in our research. The results of our research can also benefit English language learners from Arabic speakers on the one hand, and Arabic language learners from English speakers on the other hand. The study dealt with the definition of the phenomenon as it appeared in the literature of Arab and Western linguists, and specifying its types according to three criteria in permissibility or obligation, the direction of influence, and degree of influence, explaining each type within the scope of one word or in two adjacent words (i.e. in related words and we will review in our analysis of this Examples of similarities and differences wherever they are found, and we hope that this study will be an incentive for linguists to carry out research and opposite studies for other important linguistic phenomena.

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