POSSESSIVE CONSTRUCTIONS IN SOME ARABIC DIALECTS WITH REFERENCE TO ENGLISH: A COGNITIVE GRAMMATICAL STUDY

Fadhil Albayati, Abbas

	POSSESSIVE CONSTRUCTIONS IN SOME ARABIC DIALECTS WITH REFERENCE TO ENGLISH: A COGNITIVE GRAMMATICAL STUDY
Al-Adab Journal
Article 1, Volume 0, Issue 110, 2018, Pages 83-94
Author
Abbas Fadhil Albayati
Abstract
This study is a syntactic-semantic analysis of possessive constructions in a number of dialects of the Arabic language. The dialects under study include the Iraqi Arabic dialect, some of the Arabic dialects in the Arab Gulf, and the classical Arabic dialect. However, occasional references are made to some other Arabic dialects whenever deemed necessary. Different possessive constructions in different dialects of Arabic are used as non-literal devices for conveying some notions that have nothing to do with 'possession'. The paper analyses the formal aspects involved in the construction of the notion of possession in individual dialects, i.e. the syntactic structure of possessive constructions, together with their semantic and/or cognitive semantic value(s), from a comparative perspective. The approach adopted in the analysis of these phenomena is both linguistic than conceptual. It is supported by the underlying assumption that linguistic possession does not always presupposes notional possession. After comparative description and analysis of the above-mentioned dialects, it appears that different possessive structures are utilized as alternative devices for the construction of otherwise too abstract concepts to understand. Morphosyntactically speaking, there also seems to be a strong tendency in Arabic possessive constructions toward a shift from standardised and synthetic structures to a more dynamic and analytic construction. The analytic markers of the resulting structures are perhaps the result of a substratum and progressive language contact.

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