Comparative Grammar of Arabic Varieties

This grammar reference provides a detailed parallel and comparative study of a number of Arabic language varieties spanning the major regions of the Arab world. Special focus is paid to their syntactic and morphological properties and there is also attention to other linguistic properties such as phonetics, phonology and discourse. It will be of keen interest to the fields of computational linguistics, Arabic language teaching, and descriptive and theoretical linguistics. In terms of dialects covered, the focus will be on Standard Arabic, Egyptian Arabic, Kuwaiti Arabic, Jordanian Arabic, and Moroccan Arabic.

Chapter 1. Overview of the Arabic language, its history and diversity. Chapter 2. Background on the five varieties under study (Moroccan, Egyptian, Levantine, Gulf, and Standard Arabic). Chapter 3. Verbal and Nominal Morphology of the five varieties (verbal and nominal paradigms, their features and distributions). Chapter 4. Tense , Aspect, and Modality in the five varieties. Chapter 5. Agreement and Concord in the five varieties. Chapter 6. Negation and Negative Constructions in the five varieties. Chapter 7. Nominal Constructions in the five varieties. Chapter 8. Relative Clauses, Questions, and Conditionals in the five varieties. Chapter 9. Verb classes and verbal alternations in the five varieties. Chapter 10. Prepositions and Particles in the five varieties. Chapter 11. Morpho-syntax of Diglossic discourse. Chapter 12. Diachronic issues in the five varieties and their historical relations with each other. Chapter 13. Acquisition of Arabic as First Language, Second Language, and Heritage Language.

Elabbas Benmamoun is a Professor of Linguisticsin the Department of Linguistics as the University of Illinois at Urbana-Campaign. He previosuly studied at University College London and the University of Southern California, Los Angeles.