How to cite the Modern Standard Arabic (Modern Standard Arabic) dataset
Csilla Kász. 2013. Modern Standard Arabic (Modern Standard Arabic).
In: Hartmann, Iren & Haspelmath, Martin & Taylor, Bradley (eds.)
Valency Patterns Leipzig.
Leipzig: Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology.
(Available online at http://valpal.info/contributions/stan1318, Accessed on 2024-11-05.)
Comments
General comment
Language family: Afro Asiatic > Semitic > Centralsemitic > Arabic
National language in 26 states
In all Arabic speaking communities there is a Diglossical situation with three varieties of Arabic:
Arabic Vernaculars - varieties of Arabic dialects, learned as a native language
Classical Arabic (CA) - the language of the Quran used in liturgical acts
Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) - used as lingua franca in interdialectical comunication, in media, education, street-signs, etc.; acquired as L2 through education
Characterization of flagging resources
MSA is an accusative language and has a three-case system:
nominative, genitive and accusative.
Prepositions govern the genitive in Arabic; this feature isn't displayed in the coding frames in the database:
e.g.: V.subj[E] E-nom min+M
not: V.subj[E] E-nom min+M-gen
Characterization of indexing resources
only subject agreement is marked on the verb.
in the basic word order VSO there is a subject-verb agreement in person and gender not in number. If the subject precedes the verb there has to be a full agreement i.e. in person, gender and number.
subject NPs can be omitted.
pronominal object is expressed by a suffix on the verb
Characterization of ordering resources
MSA is a VSO language with no fixed word order.
Source of the data and generalizations/background of the contributor(s)
Around 90 % of the data is elicited and consulted with two native speakers of
hasaniya (dialect of Arabic in Mauretania) both fluently speaking MSA.
Additional data is gained from naturalistic written texts of modern Arabic
literatur, source: http://arabicorpus.byu.edu/
