Arabic-L:LING:use of ll- responses

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Mon 07 Apr 2008
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
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1) Subject:use of ll- response

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1)
Date: 07 Apr 2008
From: "Benjamin Geer" <benjamin.geer at gmail.com>
Subject:use of ll- response

> The talk of apposition reminded me of another Arabic
> grammatical form I have seen numerous times in the
> Middle East, but never learned in school.  That is the
> use of the particle 'li' to link words, but not in
> normal idafa-like order.  Ex. 'Misr li-tayyaraan' for
> 'Egypt Airlines'.  Should this not be 'tayyaraan
> li-Misr' or just 'tayyaraan Misr'?

Probably ten other people will answer this, too, but it's "miSr
li-T-Tayaraan" (i.e. there's a definite article in there), and it
doesn't mean "Egypt's aviation", but rather something like "The Egypt
Aviation Company".  "Egypt" is in this case the name of the company,
and its purpose (indicated by "li") is aviation.  Company names are
often of the form PROPER NAME + "li" + FIELD, like "ramsis li-t-taSdir
wa-l-istirad" (Ramses Import/Export Co.).  In Egypt, you'll often see
these sorts of names translated into English as "Ramses for Import and
Export".

-- 
Benjamin Geer
Postgraduate student
Department of the Languages and Cultures of the Near and Middle East
School of Oriental and African Studies
University of London

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