Modern Arab Language: Compounding In Arabic Language
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Compounding in Arabic
Tasneem Barq
Bethlehem University
Compounding in Arabic
From the beginning of Arabic language many new words have been added to it. Where did these words come from? "Just as a new species can be born into an environment, a word can emerge in a language. Evolutionary selection laws can apply pressure on the sustainability of new words since there are limited resources (topics, books, etc.) for the use of words. Along the same lines, old words can be driven to extinction when cultural and technological factors limit the use of a word, in analogy to the environmental factors that can change the survival capacity of a living species by altering its ability to survive and reproduce."
)Alexander M. Petersen,…show more content… However, it is not very common in traditional Arabic morphology (a reference grammar of modern standard Arabic). Words that are made by combining two or more words together are called compound words, and usually, the total meaning of the compound has nothing to do with the meaning of the compound words.
Compounding is classified to two classes: primary compounds and secondary compounds. Primary means not involving a stem, i.e., involving forms which are bound on the derivational level; secondary means involving one or more stems, i.e., forms which are themselves susceptible of use in inflection.(material)
Types of compounds According to Dr. Walid M. Amer, the associate professor of linguistics, Arabic has forms of compound which are formulated from combinations of different types:
1) Compound particles: حروف مركبة
Which are particles that have different meanings used as adverbials or conjunctions…show more content… It is non-existent in Arabic, and its meaning is usually expressed by verb, basic or derived, e.g: uphold ﺪ / ﻨﺳ sanda/(support) (basic). Undergo ﻞ / ﻤﺤﺗ tahmmala/(suffer) (derived). Those compounds where the verb takes the form of the present or past participle are usually treated in Arabic as compound adjectives (as is actually the case in English) and are formed in the same