Exclamation in English and Arabic: A Contrastive Study
DR. Nadia Amin Hasan
Department of English Faculty of Arts- Assiut University
Abstract
Exclamation is considered till now one of the challenging topics, particularly its semantics. Studies on exclamation abound. Many studies on exclamation have compared different languages to English. Languages covered by these studies include English, Italian, Paduan, Brazilian Portuguese, Turkish, French, German, Setswana, Korean, Catalan, Vietnamese and Austronesian languages. On exclamation in Arabic and English little is said. This paper aims at surveying the coding of exclamation in standard Arabic. It aims, following Michaelis (2001) and Rett (2008) to examine the formal and the semantic features which jointly define exclamation in English and contrast them with those of Arabic. The paper is divided into three sections. The first begins with surveying different definitions of exclamations, a review of literature and the method of analysis follow. The second section concentrates on a contrastive analysis of the coding of exclamation in both English and Arabic. Thus, the Arabic material considered is examined according to the bearings of the different definitions of the terms exclamation and exclamatives. Also, an analysis will be conducted on Arabic according to the criteria set by linguists for identifying exclamation. Similarities and differences together with the findings and the conclusion of the analysis will be pointed out in the third section of the paper.
I. Introduction
Collins dictionary defines
exclamation as an abrupt, emphatic or excited cry or utterance. It may also be an interjection or ejaculation. Webster (1989: 330) confirms that to exclaim 'is to cry out in emotion or excitement or to utter under the stress of sudden thought or emotion.'
Trask (1993:96) introduces exclamation as one of the four sentence types of traditional grammar, typically expressing a more or less emotional comment on something and often enhanced by a grammatical distinctive form, or any utterance serving to express emotion regardless of its grammatical form.
Crystal (1997: 142) defines it as a term used in the classification of sentence functions and defined sometimes on grammatical and sometimes on semantic or sociolinguistic grounds.
Huddleston (1984: 351) states that 'exclamation is characterized by a sense of surprise. Exclamatory statements are overlaid by an emotive element. They involve an emotive element'
Quirk et al. (1985) use the term 'exclamation' to refer to the logical or semantic status of an utterance. The term 'exclamative' is often used to refer to a specific sentence/clause type on par with the three clause types declaratives, interrogatives and imperatives. This means that in Quirk et al.‟s terminology, some exclamations are realized by exclamatives, while some are not.
Sadock & Zwicky (1985:162 qtd in Beijir, 2002) state that declarative and exclamatory sentences are similar as they both represent a proposition as being true, but they differ in that in an exclamation, the speaker emphasizes his strong emotional reaction to what he takes to be a fact, whereas in a declarative, the speaker emphasizes his intellectual appraisal that the proposition is true.” Radford (1997: 506 qtd. In Beijir, 2002: 1) defines an EXCLAMATIVE as “a type of structure used to exclaim surprise, delight, annoyance etc. Michaelis (2001: 1039) states that 'Exclamations … are grammatical forms which express the speaker‟s affective response to a situation: exclamations convey surprise. Surprise may be accompanied by positive or negative affect.'