The Faculty of Arts of the University of Leuven (Belgium) and the 
institute for Living Languages

are pleased to announce the publication of

Variation in Modern Standard Arabic in Radio News Broadcasts,
A Synchronic Descriptive Investigation into the Use of Complementary 
Particles

by  Mark Van Mol

Summary

This study is an empirical investigation into horizontal regional 
variation in the Modern Standard Arabic of radio news bulletins. After 
first determining the position of Modern Standard Arabic within the 
Arabic language setting, which has been described in terms of, among 
other things, diglossia, triglossia and quadriglossia, the consequences 
which these descriptions have on the methodological level are analyzed. 
For this study a corpus-linguistic approach was chosen, requiring the 
compilation of a text corpus of radio news bulletins from 
linguistically very different countries, such as Algeria, Egypt and 
Saudi Arabia. 

The completely transcribed corpus of approximately 320,000 words was 
tagged primarily on the word level, using the traditional, mixed 
grammar as a reference point. Various computer applications were then 
developed to explore the corpus. The emphasis in this study was on the 
synchronic description of the use of complementary particles with 
reference to contemporary Standard Arabic grammar. In general, the 
investigation attests to great uniformity among the three countries on 
the syntactic level, but it also reveals that with particles of a 
similar function an important shift in function has occurred as 
compared to the descriptions of these particles in classical Arabic 
grammar. 

Further information 

 
Series :         Orientalia Lovaniensia Analecta 
Series number :        117 
Year:         2003 
ISBN:         90-429-1158-1 
Pages:        X-323 p. 
Price (Euro) :         60 EURO 
order address:         
http://www.peeters-leuven.be/boekoverz.asp?nr=7397

For more information please visit also our website at:

http://www.kuleuven.ac.be/ilt/arabic/index_en.htm



                     


Mark Van Mol
Institute for Living Languages
Faculty of arts
Dekenstraat 6
B 3000 Leuven
Belgium

tel. + 32 16 32 56 83
fax. + 32 16 32 56 56
E-mail:  Mark.VanMol@ilt.kuleuven.ac.be
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