Demonstrative Pronouns in English and Arabic: Are they Different or Similar?

Abstract

The present study is a contrastive analysis that delves into the demonstratives in Arabic (Standard Arabic) and English. The aim of the study is to reveal the similarities and differences between the demonstratives of the two languages by delineating their phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic properties. Exposing these differences will specify what language teachers have to teach and what language learners whether Arabic or English learners have to learn.The interesting point found is that both Arabic and English demonstratives share more linguistic similarities than differences. Regarding similarities, both demonstratives are indeclinable in both languages except for the Arabic dual case. The demonstratives' phonemes and their referents are in some way obtained in both languages. English and Arabic languages use demonstratives in several positions within a sentence in consistent with the syntactic function of the demonstrative. Demonstratives in both languages are ambiguous words; their meaning can be defined through their context. As for the differences, English has only two-dimensional deictic points for demonstratives i.e., proximal or distal, but Arabic displays more deictic points i.e., proximal, medial, and distal.

A comparison between English demonstratives and Vietnamese demonstratives in argumentative essays

“…The complicated yet interesting uses of demonstratives in written discourse of different languages have been observed. Some comparative studies have also been conducted to analyze how English demonstratives are different from those of other languages, like Arabic (Rabadi, 2016) and Korean (Hwang & Park, 2019). However, there have been few cross-linguistic studies between English and Vietnamese demonstratives.…”

Acquisition of L2 English spatial deixes by Arabic-speaking children

“…The spatial deixes are demonstratives which are used near the speaker: ‫هنالك‬ ‫هناك،‬ ‫هنا،‬ ‫االء،‬ ‫,,اوالء،‬ and further away from the speaker: ‫االئك‬ ‫اوالئك،‬ ‫.اولئك،‬ For the singular and dual forms, see Tables 2, 3 (Al Aubali, 2015). According to Rabadi (2016), demonstratives in Arabic are divided into two groups which depend on the referent. The first part focuses on the referent recognition in terms of singularity, duality, plurality, muscularity and femininity.…”

“…The demonstratives ‘ this ’ and ‘ that ’ can be used as pronouns (e.g., ‘ what is that? ’), or determiners (e.g., ‘ that book on the right ’; Rabadi, 2016 ; Gonzalez Pena, 2020 ). Demonstrative pronouns and demonstrative adjectives are similar, but they are different in sentence/phrase structure.…”

“…Demonstrative pronouns and demonstrative adjectives are similar, but they are different in sentence/phrase structure. Table 1 shows that the former is used as a pronoun with a demonstrative meaning, while the latter is used as a determiner which followed by a noun ( Rabadi, 2016 ). In other words, the main difference is that the demonstrative pronoun takes the place of the noun phrase, while the demonstrative adjective (often called determiner) comes before a noun.…”

“…For the singular and dual forms, see Tables 2 , 3 ( Al Aubali, 2015 ). According to Rabadi (2016) , demonstratives in Arabic are divided into two groups which depend on the referent. The first part focuses on the referent recognition in terms of singularity, duality, plurality, muscularity and femininity.…”