Modern Standard Arabic (Modern Standard Arabic)

Contributors

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 2024-03-19.)

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/

Coordinates WGS8427°58'N, 43°51'E
27.96, 43.85

Glottocode stan1318
ISO 639-3 code arb
FamilyAfro-Asiatic
RegionEurasia
Verb form Verb Meaning Basic coding frame Comment
Coding frame Type Comment
Coding set # Coding frames # Verbs # Microroles Comment
Alternation Type Description
# Primary text Analyzed text Gloss Translation Comment Details