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12 - Grammaticalization in Arabic

from Part III - Theoretical and Descriptive Studies

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 September 2021

By
Mohssen Esseesy
Edited by
Karin Ryding  and
David Wilmsen
Karin Ryding
Affiliation:
Georgetown University, Washington DC
David Wilmsen
Affiliation:
American University of Beirut
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Summary

This chapter discusses state-of-the-art research in Arabic grammaticalization studies, providing an extensive review of literature, periodizing the growth of research in this field, and outlining research challenges as well as future possibilities. Grammaticalization in Arabic reflects the processes of grammaticalization in general as it refers to the gradual shift and transformation of major parts of speech into particles, function words, or even bound morphemes with little semantic content but important and even necessary syntactic functions. Key questions are raised about the validity and importance of diachronic reconstruction for Arabic, the relation between written and spoken Arabic, the availability of suitable corpora for analysis, and the lack of an overall agreed framework or venue for Arabic grammaticalization research.

Keywords

diachronic analysisdecategorializationgrammaticalizationprepositionsauxiliationsemantic extension
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Handbook of Arabic Linguistics , pp. 277 - 308
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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References

References

arabiCorpus: http://arabicorpus.byu.edu

Tunisian Arabic Corpus: www.tunisiya.org

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Corpora

arabiCorpus: http://arabicorpus.byu.edu

Tunisian Arabic Corpus: www.tunisiya.org

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