A Contrastive Study between English and Arabic Prepositional Phrases - Essay Example

A Contrastive Study between English and Arabic Prepositional Phrases Prepositional Phrases A Prepositional phrase is a 'non-headed' construction in English since no one constituent functions as the center of the phrase, the center on which the other elements depend. Instead, the structure is divided into two functional components - the preposition followed by its complement. In general, a prepositional phrase expresses a relationship between the complement of the preposition and some other constituent of the sentence (Daniel: 1995). In English, a prepositional phrase is constructed by linking a proposition usually with a noun phrase so as to form a single unit of meaning. Examples are , and . Other possible complements are nouns and pronouns. These types of phrases are adpositional where the preposition is the head and precedes the complement. English is thus a headfirst language as opposed to a head-final language characterised by postpositional phrases. The constructions can also be described as exocentric because neither the proposition nor the complement can be a substitute for the whole phrase (SIL, 2004). Furthermore, they function as either adjectival or adverbial modifiers, as in . The Arabic term for a preposition is harf al-jarr and when used to form a prepositional phrase, its complement is said to become majrúr. However, they deserve attention “as parts of multiword complexes … [in order to] take into account the diachronic development of prepositions into new functions in syntax, semantics and discourse … [instead of as] a static closed class of words” (Esseesy, 2010, back matter). In phrases such as fiy al-ghurfah (in the room), khalf al-bayt (behind the house) and ‘ala al-kursi (on the chair), it can be noted that the preposition precedes the noun. The prepositional phrase can then form part of a nominal sentence. As mentioned earlier, there are fewer prepositions in Arabic than in English, and they are used to denote spatiotemporal relations. Background and Problem Statement Arabic speaking learners of the English language especially, face a number of communication problems in all four languages skills (Rabab’ah, 2005). This includes difficulties related to pronunciation (Al-Saidat, 2010), various reading difficulties (Patil, N.d.), and so on. This study will be concerned with difficulties encountered in translating prepositional phrases. The preposition is a key component of the prepositional phrase so the difficulty in translating the latter is often due to difficulty with the preposition itself. The difficulty of translating prepositions from English into Arabic can be illustrated by the contrast between and . Whereas suggests a position, suggests a movement, but in Arabic, would be used in both cases, so Arabs may find it difficult to differentiate between them. The Arabic thus has a much wider domain for its usage, and it can also be used for expressing , , , etc. On the other hand, Arabic prepositions are purely spatiotemporal prepositions whereas English prepositions actually function as either proper prepositions, substantive-derived locative (directional) adverbs, or as particles (Lindstromberg, 2010, p. 23). Hence, the English concept of a preposition is wider in scope than in Arabic. The nature of the errors tends to be errors of omission, substitution, or redundant usage. Prepositions also pose a problem for machine translations in translating English noun phrase into Arabic (Shaalan et al., 2004) so the problem is not unique to human translation. Also, the problem is by no means peculiar to Arab students. English prepositions are notorious for being problematic for many EFL students. As Pittman (1966 in Mickiewicza, 1993, p. 181) remarked, “Among those who teach or learn the English language, prepositions have earned a reputation for difficulty if not downright unpredictability”. The main reason for the difficulty seems to be the fact that English usually has many more prepositions than in the speaker’s native language and their usages differ. This is true in comparison to Arabic as it is to many other languages as well. The problem arises when translators try to map the English system onto their native one when a one-to-one correspondence does not exist. In other words, they try to impose their own understanding of structures and patterns for the foreign language based on their own native language. It is also compounded in the case of idiomatic usages and by their highly conceptual nature. Significance of the Study |This problem also has pedagogical implications, as a better understanding of the problems faced by students during translation can enable teachers to better address the problem. This study could therefore prove useful in the field of language education, particularly for teaching EFL to Arab students. Ho-Abdullah & Hasan’s (2009) study also examined issues concerning English prepositions when translated into Arabic and vice versa. However, it was concerned solely with the preposition explaining how its translation reflects the use of different conceptual mapping domains. Moreover, this study only involved 75 Iraqi secondary school students, so it was focused on the translation difficulties faced by Arabic speaking students when translating from English into Arabic. In Habash’s (1982) earlier study on the use of English prepositions by Arab students, the errors made in using prepositions were categorised according to their number of occurrences. While this is useful, again the focus was on teaching English to Arabic students in order to improve their English. Moreover, the analysis of translations was based on existing and formal written work rather than under experimental conditions. Purpose Statement This study attempts to compare and analyze English and Arabic prepositional phrases in terms of their functions, uses, order and meanings. It also attempts to illustrate similarities and differences between English and Arabic prepositional phrases as not every prepositional phrase has an exact equivalent in Arabic in order to account for possible deviations. English prepositional phrases form a problem when translated from English into Arabic and vice versa. It also tries to identify what characteristics English and Arabic have in common. Nature of the Study This is an experimental study in which the subjects will be fifteen native speakers of Arabic junior students in the Department of English at UJ and fifteen native speakers of English who are taking a grammar course in Arabic. A questionnaire will be distributed to the students. The researcher will ask the Arab subjects to translate some prepositional phrases from English into Arabic and the English students to translate from Arabic into English. The researcher predicts that there are similarities and differences between English and Arabic prepositional phrases, and differences make the process of learning prepositional phrases difficult. Moreover; the influence of Arabic is clear when translating some English prepositional phrases into Arabic, as the preposition is omitted. For example, consider the sentence . This sentence includes a prepositional phrase in English (for Nadia) while in Arabic it does not. On the other hand, when translating some Arabic prepositional phrases into English, the preposition is often omitted. For example, consider the sentence , which when translated into Arabic, includes a prepositional phrase. This may be considered a problematic area when learning for learners of these two languages. References Aarts, Jan.1982. English Syntactic Structure: Oxford University Press. Brazil, D. 1995. A Grammar of Speech: Oxford University Press. Batstone, R. 1994. Grammar. Oxford University Press. Bornstein, D. 1979. Reading in the Theory of Grammar:Cambridge. Massachusetts . Daniel, K. 1995. Modern English Grammar: dupage. Available at http://papyr.com/hy2010 [Accessed 4 February 2011]. Esseesy, Mohssen. 2010. Grammaticalization of Arabic prepositions and subordinators: a corpus based study. Studies in Semitic languages and linguistics, 59. Brill. Habash, Zeinab A. Salam. 1982. 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Arab World English Journal, Vol. 1, No. 1, pp. 3-23. Pittman, G.A. 1966. Activating the Use of Preposition. London: Longman, Green and Co., Ltd. Pittman, G. A. 1966. Activating the use of English prepositions. London: Longman Publishers. In Hamdallah, Rami & Tushyeh, Hanna. A contrastive analysis of selected English and Arabic prepositions with pedagogical implications. In Mickiewicza, Adam. 1993. Papers and Studies in contrastive linguistics, volumes 28-29. Adam Mickiewicz University. Rabab’ah, Ghaleb. 2005. Communication problems facing Arab learners of English. Journal of Language and Learning, Vol. 3, No. 1, pp. 180-197. Al-Saidat, Emad M. 2010. Phonological analysis of English phonotactics: a case study of Arab learners of English. The Buckingham Journal of Language and Linguistics, Vol. 3, pp. 121-134. Shaalan, Khaled; Rafea, Ahmed; Moneim, Azza Abdel & Baraka, Hoda. 2004. Machine translation of English noun phrases into Arabic. International Journal of Computer Processing of Oriental Languages, Vol. 17, No. 2, pp. 1-14. SIL. 2004. What is a propositional phrase? SIL International. Available at http://www.sil.org/linguistics/GlossaryOfLinguisticTerms/WhatIsAPrepositionalPhrase.htm [Accessed 5 February 2011]. Read More