Transcript Style in English and Arabic Prof. Walid M. Amer Style in English and Arabic Style! I have no style, I merely wait till.

Style in English and Arabic
Prof. Walid M. Amer
Style in English and Arabic
Style! I have no style, I merely wait
till the mud settles. Goldwin
1.1 Why Style is Important
researchers in natural language
understanding have recognized the
importance of style, a subtle but
significant aspect of language
le is influenced by linguistic choices on all levels:
lexical, syntactic, and semantic. For example,
consider the differences in meaning between the
following two sentences.
(1-1) She is overweight.
(1-2) She is full-figured.
Both sentences have identical meanings on the
surface, but in the first sentence the lexical choice
overweight conveys the additional information that
the author is direct and possibly being impersonal.
In the second sentence, the lexical choice fullfigured, as it is used here, is indirect and suggests
that the author is attempting to be polite
Continued

Differences in style can also be more
subtle, as shown in the following two
sentence fragments.
◦ (1-3) the black cat
◦ (1-4) the cat, which is black

The first fragment is a common
method of expressing the fact that the
cat is black.The second fragment is
less common.The postposing of the
fact that the cat is black in a relative
clause places more emphasis on the
cat than its blackness.
Continued
when a text is written, it is written
for a particular audience.The author
carefully chooses the lexical items,
syntactic constructions, and
semantic content that is appropriate
for an effective communication.
 . One of the questions currently
being studied in the field of
generation is determining what to
say. how to say it.

Continued

Style is intended to mean a mode
of expression that differentiates one
person from the other
Style is of three types:
 the prescriptive
 the descriptive
 and goal-directed style

1. Prescriptive Style
Prescriptive style is the familiar
\correct" style that is taught in school
and in books of style
 When we were taught English, we
learned rules of usage like \Do not
end a sentence with a preposition"

2. Descriptive Style
 descriptive style accounts for the
style that is actually used by native
speakers of English

3. Goal-Directed Computational Style
 Good writers know that they must
understand their audience in order to write
effectively.
 Knowing the audience allows writers to
modify their style to effectively convey the
content of their labour in a form acceptable
to their audience. For example, a physicist
explaining quantum mechanics to a general
audience would probably choose to write
clearly and simply, in order to be
understandable to the audience.
 The same physicist writing a paper for a
specialized conference would probably
choose to write formally and somewhat
obscurely, in order to appear authoritative.
Branches of Stylistic Description
1. Lexical Style
 Lexical style can be characterized as
diction, a choice between similar words.The
choice could be made on the basis of
appropriateness to a context. For example,
John kicked the bucket would be more
appropriate in a colloquial context and John
passed away would be appropriate in a
more formal context. More often, the
choice will be made on the basis of aspects
that are distinguished in one language but
not the other. English distinguishes
between cot and bed
2 Syntactic Style
 Syntactic style can be characterized as
the choices made in the construction of
a clause or a sentence.The following
examples demonstrate some of the
possible variations.
 (4-1) The lady loves the girl.
 (4-2) The tall nice lady sincerely loves
the short, homely girl.
 (4-3) The lady, tall and nice, loves
sincerely the short, homely girl.
 (4-4) Tall and nice, the lady loves the
short, homely girl sincerely.
The first example is a simple and ordinary
sentence. The second example adds
modifiers to the first, but still leaves us
with an ordinary sentence.
 The third and fourth sentences vary the
positions of the modifiers to produce some
stylistic variation by placing the modifiers
in unusual positions.
 The positioning of tall and nice in the last
two examples places the emphasis on the
lady, and the positioning of sincerely places
the emphasis on love in the third example,
and the girl in the fourth.

3 Semantic Style
 Semantic style is difficult to
characterize as little is known about it.
One possible characterization is as
information flow.Two components
that are useful in describing the
information flow are focus (or
thematization) and argument
structure.
Stylistic asymmetries


Style is very important issue in
translation, it is the vehicle which
conveys the meaning, when the style is
handsome and well built, the
translation will be expressive and
prefect.
English and Arabic are divergent in
style, each language has its own style
which differs from the other.This
mater may impose serious problems
to the translators.
Some of the difference between the two
styles can be summarized as in the
following:
3.2.1 Arabic style tends to scatter the similar
thoughts while English style tends to
gather them e.g:
 In a sentence like:
- The Government and people of Palestine.
 In this sentence English style used the
word people directly after the word
Government. While Arabic translation or
counterpart of this sentence is:
.‫حكومة فلسطين وشعبها‬

3.2.2 In Arabic, the heavy element
comes first. By contrast, English style
puts it later. In a sentence like:
 In his speech on the state of press in
the Gaza strip, the information
minister declared … .
 The Arabic counterpart of this
sentence is:
‫ صرح وزير اإلعالم في حديث له عن أحوال الصحافة‬
.‫في قطاع غزة بأنه‬
 But not ‫في حديث له عن أحوال الصحافة في‬
‫قطاع غزة صرح وزير اإلعالم بأنه‬
3.2.3 Arabic style uses the
conjunction " ‫ "و‬or "‫ "أو‬before each
element of the sentence, English
style on the other hand doesn’t use
this conjunction except before the
final element.
 In a sentence like:
.‫ اشترى علي كتابا ً ودفاتر وأقالم حبر وأقالم رصاص‬
 English translation of this sentence
is:
 Ali bought books, copybooks, pens
and pencils.

3.2.4: The position of adverbs
and adjective in English and
Arabic.
 In English the adverb comes
between the auxiliary and the
main verb, but in Arab it takes
other positions. Consider the
problem has soon ended.
 The Arabic counter part is:
.‫ سرعان ما انتهت المشكلة‬
 One
of the features of English
sentence is that it develops rapidly.
He who reads for Chaucer may find
difficulties in understanding the
language used by Dickens for
example.
 Another feature of English is that it
easily accepts new vocabulary even
those which are colloquial, so we
sometimes find ourselves obliged to
renovate our dictionaries from time
to time.


Arabic, on the other hand, does not have
the same rate in accepting new
vocabulary.This matter may be due to
the fact that Arabic has huge number of
words which allows it to convey any
meaning or express any situation,
relaxably.
Despite this, flexibility is an essential
feature of Arabic. It accepts any new
vocabulary, especially jargons. Many
words entered Arabic and are used
frequently as if they are Arabic original
word. [Nejeeb, 1995]
English style is characterized as:
1.The multi-use of complex sentences.
English has one complex sentence
with two or more simple sentences.
Ex: He visited Egypt so that he might
see the pyramids and enjoy them.
2. English prefers to delay the
predicate to the end of the sentence
just for the purpose of evocation.
- They traveled to London; the
purpose of their traveling was
studying medicine.
3.The frequent use of passive even
when the subject is known.
- The building was designed by a
famous designer who was killed
in an accident.
4. English sentence begins with a
subject followed by finite verb.
Since English word order is SVO
while standard Arabic word
order is VSO.
- Ali studies English.
5.The position of English word in the
sentence identifies or shows its syntactic
function, the subject comes first, then the
verb followed by the complement, however
in Arabic sentence, the function of the
word is identified by inflections come at
the end of the words “overt” "case
assignment nominative, accusative and
genitive".
- Sami cleaned his room, which was untidy.
6. In English three or more adjectives may
describe one thing, also one verb may be
described by two or more adverbs.
(a) The smart, handsome, polite student got
the higher marks.
(b) He runs so quickly and urgently.
7.The frequent use of abbreviations
and idioms.
- He arrived at the USA and visited
the UN building.
8. Subject in English is always overt
since English only accepts SVO
word order.
- Sara cooks the meal.
By contrast Arabic style is
characterized as below:
The Arabic text or paragraph consists
mainly of small units which are called
atoms [Semis languages are called
Atomic languages]. Its sentences
connect together by using some simple
conjunctions like wa "‫"و‬
‫ ثم عاد لمنزله وأخذ يطالع‬،‫لعب الولد الكرة واستمتع بوقته‬
‫دروسه‬
"The boy played football, enjoyed his
time, returned home and began to
revise his lessons".

Unlike English, Arabic tends to use the
predicate directly after the subject.
‫ " سافر علي للدراسة‬Ali traveled to study"
 Arabic style doesn't use the passive
except when the subject is unknown.
‫ " قُتل الرجل‬The man was killed"
 Arabic sentence usually begins with
the verb followed by the subject plus
the object. ‫" قرأ أحمد الدرس‬Ahmed
studied the lesson"


Arabic is pro-drop language,
therefore the subject can be
dropped and referred to
syntactically as small pro, as in:
He went to school. "‫"ذهب إلى المدرسة‬
Thank You