Arabic-L:LING:no resumptive pronoun with marra?

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Sat 29 May 2010
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
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1) Subject:no resumptive pronoun with marra?

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1)
Date: 29 May 2010
From:Benjamin Geer <benjamin.geer at gmail.com>
Subject:no resumptive pronoun with marra?

It's been puzzling me that in MSA and Egyptian Colloquial Arabic, in sentences with relative clauses that refer to the word مرة, sometimes no resumptive pronoun (عائد) is used to refer back to مرة.  For example, in التيه, the first volume of the novel مدن الملح by عبد الرحمن منيف, the narrator says (pp. 128-129 in the 2008 edition):

إنها المرة الأولى التي تبدو لهم الأماكن معادية . . . .

وفي المرات القليلة التي حاولوا أن يتكلموا، أن يقولوا شيئاً، كان كلامهم قصيراً مبهماً.

I would have expected this:

إنها المرة الأولى التي تبدو لهم فيها الأماكن معادية . . . .

وفي المرات القليلة التي حاولوا فيها أن يتكلموا، أن يقولوا شيئاً، كان كلامهم قصيراً مبهماً.

Similarly, in Egyptian Colloquial Arabic, I often hear

أول مرة أشوفه.

instead of

أول مرة أشوفه فيها.

A search for المرة الأولى التي in the newspaper corpus on http://arabicorpus.byu.edu suggests that it is more common to use the resumptive pronoun, but there are also examples of sentences without it.

Does anyone know why this is?  I would be interested to hear the reactions of native speakers here: Do you feel that it sounds better or worse to include the resumptive pronoun in these sentences, or does it make no difference?

Also, does this only happen with مرة, or are there other sorts of sentences where resumptive pronouns are not used in relative clauses, contrary to what we are taught?  Is there something special about مرة?

Ben

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End of Arabic-L:  29 May 2010


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