Arabic-L:LING:Arabic demonstrative queries

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Thu 11 Mar 2010
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1) Subject:Arabic demonstrative queries

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1)
Date: 11 Mar 2010
From:Mai Zaki <maizaki at gmail.com>
Subject:Arabic demonstrative queries

Hi everyone,

First, I want to thank you all for the very nice examples of non-lexicalised concepts. You have been a great help.

Now my first question here appeals to historical and morphological concerns. It is well known that, in terms of etymology, the definite article "the" and the demonstratives "this/that" share the demonstrative morpheme th- whose roots can be traced back to Old English. Now, has there been any mention of a possible parallelism between this demonstrative morpheme th- and the Arabic demonstrative ذا? I mean, at least, is the phonological similarity a matter of coincidence or there is a story behind it? 

Secondly, in Cantarino (1975: 30)* he states that: "all Arabic forms of the demonstrative pronouns were originally elements of interjectional character, which, after the fading of this effect, have become particles of demonstrative determination". Can anyone please expand on this idea, has it been mentioned in any other reference? Does anyone have examples for this 'interjectional use'? 

Here is another question: does anyone have any thought on why Arabic, compared to English, uses more demonstratives in written texts? For example, in a corpus of 20,000 words of English there will be say 100 instances of demonstratives, while in a same-size corpus of Arabic, there will be 200 cases if not more. That can't be just due to the fact that Arabic has more lexical forms for the demonstratives, right?

Thank you.

Mai Zaki
Lecturer in Arabic and Translation Studies
Middlesex University

Cantarino, V. (1975). Syntax of Modern Arabic Prose. Vol II. Bloomington/London: Indiana University Press.

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End of Arabic-L:  11 Mar 2010