Relative Clauses Reduction in English and Arabic

Abbas Dawood, Mahmood; Nawfal Saeed Majeed, Dr.

	Relative Clauses Reduction in English and Arabic
Journal of Tikrit University for the Humanities
Article 1, Volume 15, Issue 2, 2008, Pages 549-563
Authors
Mahmood Abbas Dawood; Dr. Nawfal Saeed Majeed
Abstract
ABSTRACT Reduction is used by native speakers to avoid redundancy and achieve cohesive style in both spoken and written forms. Non-native learners are required to develop the skill of employing deletion in speech and writing if they want to show a complete mastery of the language. The study undertaken here contrast English and Arabic relative clauses reduction in order to describe and explain, as far as the available data permits, what similarities and differences these clauses show. The data analyzed for comparison are derived from adequate description of the languages under investigation. The comparative analysis based its techniques on syntactic criteria. Two kinds of reduction are presented in this study: optional and obligatory. Obligatory deletion refers to the removal of an item or items from a structure or else the sentence will be ungrammatical. The second kind is optional which must be known where to apply since its application in some structures may result in ambiguous sentences. The two languages are compared, as far as relative clauses reduction is concerned, as an attempt to get the major points of similarities and differences. Some of the problems of second language learning are ascribed to the phenomenon of transference of the native language structure to the foreign language. It is assumed that the transference often causes difficulty or ease in learning the structure of the foreign language. The findings arrived at can be utilized by classroom teachers, linguists, textbook writers and students of English and Arabic.

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