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A Comparative Analysis of the Arabic and English Verb Systems Using the Qur’An Arabic Corpus

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A Comparative Analysis of the Arabic and English Verb Systems Using the Qur’An Arabic Corpus A Comparative Analysis of The Arabic and English Verb Systems Using the Qur’an Arabic Corpus A corpus-based study Jawharah Saeed Alasmari Submitted in accordance with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Leeds School of Languages May, 2020 I The candidate confirms that the work submitted is her own and that appropriate credit has been given where reference has been made to the work of others. This copy has been supplied on the understanding that it is copyright material and that no quotation from the thesis may be published without proper acknowledgement. The right of Jawharah Alasmari to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. © 2020 The University of Leeds and Jawharah Saeed Alasmari II Publication Chapters two, three, and five of this thesis are based on the following jointly-authored publications. The candidate is the principal author of all original contributions presented in these papers, the co-authors acted in an advisory capacity, providing feedback, general guidance and comments. Alasmari, J., Watson, J. C. E., and Atwell E. (2018). A Contrastive Study of the Arabic and English Verb Tense and Aspect A Corpus-Based Approach. PEOPLE: International Journal of Social Sciences, 3(3), pp. 1604-1615. Alasmari, J., Watson J. C.E., and Atwell, E. (2017). A comparative analysis of verb tense and aspect in Arabic and English using Google Translate. International Journal on Islamic Applications in Computer Science and Technology, 5(3), pp. 9-14. Alasmari, J., Watson, J. C.E. and Atwell, E. (2017). Using the Qur’anic Arabic Corpus for comparative analysis of the Arabic and English verb systems. International Journal on Islamic Applications in Computer Science and Technology, 5(3), pp. 1-8. Alasmari, J., Watson, J. C.E. and Atwell, E. (2018). Investigating the Rate of Agreement and Disagreement of Tense and Aspect of Qur’anic verbs in Arabic to English Translations: Experimental Results and Analysis. International Journal on Islamic Applications in Computer Science and Technology, 6(1). Poster WEKA for the Machine Learning of Qur’an Verb Aspect and Tense in Arabic to English Translation, at International Corpus Linguistics Conference 2019. Chapter four and five is based on this poster. III Acknowledgements Praise is due to almighty Allah whose compassion and mercifulness has helped me to complete my research studies. Firstly, I would like to offer my sincerest gratitude to my supervisors Professor Janet Watson and Professor Eric Atwell for their continuous support throughout my PhD study. I sincerely thank them for their patience, motivation, enthusiasm, and immense knowledge. Their guidance, encouragement, insightful comments have assisted me over the course of the analysis and writing of this thesis. I could not have imagined having better advisors and mentors. I would also like to extend my deepest gratitude to my family: my parents without whose love, prayers, help and sacrifices I could never have completed this doctoral degree. My deepest thanks and gratitude to my husband (Mohammed) and my children (Osama and Rand) for their love, understanding, prayers and continuing care that support me during this journey. Also, I express my deepest gratitude to my sisters and brother, for their support and valuable prayers. My words of gratitude go to my friends Hala Alsharani, Khuzama Arrdaini, Amira Zoaoui, and Abeer Aldosari, who have inspired and encouraged me during hardships and deadlines and shared this enjoyable journey of four years with me. Our restless nights in the office would never be forgotten. I would also like to thank my fellow postgraduates Hamad Aldosari, Majdi Alzahrani, Bashar Almaani, and Huwaida Jaber for their immense support during my study. I offer my gratitude too to my friend and fellow postgraduate Nujud AlAnazy and all my lovely friends in Leeds and Portsmouth. I would also like to thank Abdulrahman Alosaimi, School of Computing, University of Leeds for his help and support. I am thankful to Professor Albandri (Princess Nurah University) for the keen support during my study in the UK. I also would like to thank LCS school staff at the University of Leeds and Arabic department at Princess Nurah University for their guidance on this academic journey. Last but not least, my sincerest gratitude goes to the Saudi Embassy in the UK, for believing in me and IV granting me an award for excellent work and publication among other fellow Saudi students. Without the help of the above and many others, the writing of this thesis would not have been possible. V Dedication I dedicate this thesis to Allah for His productive help to finish this thesis, as well as my family, and also to myself. VI Abstract This thesis explores the Classical Arabic verb system as it appears in the Qur’an and seven of its English translations. Research on tense and aspect morpho-syntactic features of the Classical Arabic verb in the Qur’an and its representation in the renderings of the Qur’an into English from a corpus-based perspective is a prominent area of research in both Arabic linguistics and translation studies, yet it has not been explored in detail in the previous literature (Eisele, 1990; Gadalla, 2006). Tense refers to the time at which an action happened, and aspect expresses whether the action is complete, repeated, or continuous. The definition is taken from [https://dictionary.cambridge.org]. The present study explores the Classical Arabic verb aspect in the Qur’an and investigates its translation in English tense and aspect. The rationale for focusing on the Qur’an lies in its stylistic uniqueness, the fact that it is a closed corpus, and that it is the source of Classical and Modern Standard Arabic grammar. Firstly, it uses a corpus-based method and a compiled corpus from the Qur’anic Arabic Corpus (QAC), which is composed of the occurrences of the Arabic verb in the Qur’an, to identify the functions of the aspect of the Classical Arabic verb. It then uses a contrastive approach to compare the use of the verb when indicating tense and aspect, as seen in the English translations. In the first step, a qualitative analysis was conducted through a close reading of the data to determine the features of the Arabic verb aspect. Then, quantitative data analysis was employed via SPSS and Kappa in SPSS to investigate the differences between the Arabic and English verbal systems in their indication of tense and aspect, and to find out what are the main strategies should be considered by translators in the translating of tense and aspect. After that, data mining using Waikato Environment for Knowledge Analysis (WEKA) software was applied in an experiment to quantitatively classify the English translations of the Arabic verb in the Qur’an. Findings of this research confirm previous claims by scholars (e.g., Gadalla, 2006) that perfect and imperfect aspects in the Classical Arabic verb are usually translated into multiple tenses and aspects in English. The research provides evidence of the effective use of the decision tree function in WEKA as a data analysis tool to analyse the language of the Qur’an. In addition, it offers insights on the challenges of translating the Classical Arabic verb aspect and suggest that translators apply the same method in this research to improve the quality of their translations. Finally, this research provides several linguistic VII resources that can be used for future corpus-based studies on other translations of the Qur’an. VIII Table of Contents PUBLICATION ............................................................................................................................................ II ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ....................................................................................................................... III DEDICATION .............................................................................................................................................. V ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................................. VI TABLE OF CONTENTS .........................................................................................................................VIII LIST OF TABLES ........................................................................................................................................ X LIST OF FIGURES ................................................................................................................................... XII BACKGROUND: ARABIC LETTERS AND PARTICLES ................................................................XIII CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION ................................................................................................................ 1 INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................................... 1 1.1. AIMS OF THE RESEARCH ............................................................................................................... 2 1.2. RESEARCH QUESTIONS ................................................................................................................. 2 1.3. RESEARCH CONTRIBUTIONS ......................................................................................................... 3 1.4. INTRODUCING THE VERBAL-SYSTEM IN CLASSICAL ARABIC ....................................................
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