engleski

A contrastive analysis of negation in English and Arabic

Negation is a fundamental feature of human language. This common linguistic phenomenon has been discussed by a number of linguists in English and Arabic. However, a contrastive analysis such as the one between Modern Standard Arabic and English has not interested many linguists or/and bilinguals. This analysis of negation shows different aspects of negation in both the English and Arabic languages ; types of negation and negative words, negative correlatives and how local negation works can be clearly seen. Our analysis falls into four main parts discussing negation of negative clauses, clauses with local negation and negative correlatives, and our last part explains the areas of similarities and differences between the two languages. Within the analysis, we can observe the tendency in both languages towards the negation of elements of the clauses, and it proves that Arabic sticks frequently to the negation of one or two elements, while the English language tends to negate clauses. The morphological type of local negation has also been found more frequently in the English language, whereas the syntactic type is dominant in the counterpart. In addition, the realization of some aspects of negation has indicated the variance in use between the two languages as for instance the Arabic language tends towards the frequent use of negative correlatives whereas the English language does not ; instead it prefers conjunctions such as ‘and’ or ‘or’. In the light of these findings, the study is concluded with some remarks regarding the systems of negation in both languages.

negative words; local negation; English; Arabic

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