The Power of Adjectives in English and Arabic: A Comparative Corpus Linguistic Analysis

1. Appraisal Emotional Adjectives in English/Arabic Translation: A Corpus Linguistic Approach Salma Mansour Leeds University

2. Overview • Dictionaries: a serious problem • Powerful/less adjectives in English and Arabic • Corpus analysis • Results

3. Dictionaries Vs. Corpora Printed dictionaries • limited by space • information is always partial • interpreted (sometimes wrongly) • internally inconsistent and contradict each other • out of date

4. “There are many facts about language that cannot be discovered by just thinking about it, or even reading and listening very intently” (Sinclair, 1995) “ As language teachers and professionals, we often have strong intuitions about language use…corpus-based research, however, shows us that our intuitions are often completelywrong” (Biber, 2005)

5. Emotions: • In/security (the boy was anxious/confident) • Dis/satisfaction (the boy was fed up/ absorbed) • Un/happiness (the boy was sad/happy) (Martin and White, 2005: 46-9; Bednarek 2008:15)

6. Powerful/less adjectives in English and Arabic • Strong qawiقوي • Powerfuljabarجبار • Tough qas قاس • Weak da‘if ضعيف • Powerless wahinواهن • Tender raqiq رقيق

9. Examples: weak

11. ضعيف /da‘if/ ‘weak’

12. Top 10 collocates of weak in BNC and I-EN

13. Examples: strong

14. Strong

15. LLS of mental, physical, behavioral collocates of strong

16. Collocation: a mode of expressing meaning • “You shall know a word by the company it keeps” (Firth, 1957: 12). • “Looking at lexicographic work on Arabic collocation, a rather bleak picture emerges. There is an extremely limited amount of information on collocation in both monolingual (Arabic) and bilingual (Arabic-English/English-Arabic dictionaries. Besides, no monolingual (Arabic) or bilingual (Arabic-English/English-Arabic) collocational dictionary has been compiled as yet” (Bahumaid, 2006:137).

17. Dictionaries and semantic prosodies “Lexicographers in the past have not been fully aware of the extent of semantic prosody […]modern corpora provide new opportunities of studying the phenomenon” (Partington, 1998: 68).

18. Semantic prosodies • Positive Favorable (pleasant) • Neutral Neutral (No evidence) • Negative Unfavorable (unpleasant)

19. Strong smell AMMD / I-AR BNC

20. Node: powerful

21. Node: strong

22. Halliday (1976: 73): • Strong (not powerful) tea • Powerful (not strong) car

23. powerful vs. strong

24. Powerless vs. weak Powerlesscollocates with: • helpless • passive • do nothing • totally dependent • hanging Weak collocates with: • syllable • spot • link • point • economy • smile

27. tender & tough(a) tender

28. (b) tough

29. Same but different!

30. جبارjabar ‘powerful’ vs. قوي qawi ‘strong’ vs. قاس qas ‘tough’ • Positive jabar(great) juhd /effort/, ’mal /work/, mashru’ /project/ …God (2) Negative jabar (stubborn, unfair/unjust) malik /king/, hakim /judge, commander, leader/ (3) Neutral jabar(No indication)

31. (1) Positive qawi (strong) fariq /team/, jaysh /army/, ’iqtisad /economy/ e.g. ’iqtisad qawi /strong economy/ (not jabar/ not qas) (2) Negative qawi (destructive) zilzal /earthquake/ (3) Neutral qawi ta’thir /influence/, shakl /form/

32. Negative qas (difficult) rajul /man/, waqi‘ /reality/, shay’ /something/ (2) Positive qas(No indication) (3) Neutral qas(No indication)

33. رقيق raqiq /tender/ • Negative raqiq(weak) ghisha’ /membrane/, jild /skin/ • Positive raqiq (nice) uslub /style/, shakhs /person/, sawt /voice/, ihsas /feelings/, thawb /garment/ shakhs raqiq (nice person) shakhsda‘if/wahin (weak person)

34. Thank you for your attention