An Overview Of Verb Morphology In Arabic

Résumé: In spite of the complexities of the linguistic structures in Arabic when compared with Western languages, its morphology displays logical regularities that have long been observed, first by Arabic grammarians in the first centuries of Islam, and then, much later on, by “Arabists” who attempted to map its structural systems within modern linguistic theories. One field of research that has attracted the attention of many linguists is Arabic verb formation of the various patterns. In this paper, we attempt to have an overall look at how Arabic derivational and inflectional processes allow a wide range of verb morphological variation. As a matter of fact, while English or French verbal morphological operations are only characterized by suffixation, Arabic morphology displays three types of affixation to the verb-root: prefixation, suffixation, as well as infixation. What is interesting in the analysis of root-and-pattern verb morphology in Arabic is that it provides useful applications in computational linguistics which, in turn, enhance the design of computer-based morphological parsers, programmes of translation and automatic treatment of languages.

Publié dans la revue: Revue Maghrébine des Langues