A CONTRASTIVE STUDY OF ENGLISH AND ARABIC November 1974 DEFENSE LANGUAGE INSTITUTEACKNOWLEDGMENT This study was prepared by the Contrastive Analysis Project, Department of Linguistics, University of Michigan, under Contract #F41609-69-0004 for the Defense Language Institute in 1969. The development team consisted of J.C. Catford, Project Director; Joe Darwin Palmer, Principal Investigator, Emest McCarus, Arabic Consultant, and Editor, and Elizabeth Moray, and Shafica Ahmed Snider, Research Assistants.PREFACE The variety of Arabic described in this study is Modern Literary Arabic, also referred to as "Modern Standard Arabic" and "Contemporary Arabic". It is the language of publications in all the Arab states, as well as the oral language of formal occasions--radio and television, lectures and conferences, discussions on technical topics, etc. Literary Arabic is essentially the same throughout the Arab world, and exists alongside the various colloquial dialects, which do vary from country to country and even from village to village. The colloquial dialects are used to carry on the day-to-day activities of everyday life. The literary language rather than a colloquial dialect has been chosen for this study because of the great universality of its applicability. The phonology morphology and syntax of Literary Arabic are more com plex and more comprehensive than those of any of the dialects; thus, while the literary is not the first language of any Arab, its problems do represent those of all Arabic dialects. If any one dialect were to be chosen to represent all the rest, the range of problems presented would not be substantially different from those presented herein, whereas the particulars of the dialect would be so peculiar to that dialect as to limit the utility of this study to those familiar with that particular dialect. The literary is, in a very real sense, a composite of the features of all the dialects and represents a linguistic common ground for all Arabs. Finally, all formal education in the Arab world is in terms of Literary Arabic, and the educated Arab will tend to transfer into English the patterns of Literary Arabic rather than those of his particular colloquial dialect. iii