Fall 2007

ARA 382C • GRAMMAR OF ARABIC LANGUAGE

Course Description

The course will comprise a systematic, formal analysis of the grammar of Standard Arabic (Fusha), including its more complex syntactic and morphological structures. It will explore, among other topics: syndetism and asyndetism in such constructions as relative clauses, the haal, subordinate clauses, and coordinated structures; anaphora and anaphoric constructions; the semantic classes of verbs; the syntactic properties of a verb and its verbal derivatives, al-mushtaqqaat al-'aamilah; the moods and aspects of verbs and active participles; and the semantic relations in an idaafah, including idaafah ghayr haqiiqiyya. It will further deal with the basic concepts of 'iraab, such as aamil and amal, taliiq etc. Finally, it will examine the discourse structure of Arabic and its stylistic devices such as parallelism, repetition, redundancy, etc. Arabic texts will be analyzed in light of these structures and used as sources for supportive data. All instruction and class discussions will be in Arabic.

Grading Policy

Class participation, reading and research assignments, mid-term paper, and a final research paper. Homework Assignments 50% Papers 50%

Texts

No prescribed textbook. Readings will be given in various grammars in Arabic, such as Abbas Hasan, Dahdah, Ibn Hisham, and in western reference grammars, such as Wright, Vernier, Howell, Reckendorf, and others.

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