Diversity in Language: Contrastive Studies in English and Arabic Theoretical Applied Linguistics
The Arabic and English languages have developed along separate lines over the centuries. Thus, it is no surprise that even apart from purely cultural elements, there are distinctive characteristics of the two languages that pose particular problems to native speakers of one language attempting to learn the other.
While the demand for Arabic classes and preparation programs for Arabic language teachers has increased, there is a notable gap in the field of linguistic research on learning Arabic as a second language. Arabic Second Language Acquisition of Morphosyntax presents a data-driven and systematic analysis of Arabic language acquisition that responds to this growing need.
A Linguistic History of Arabic presents a reconstruction of proto-Arabic by the methods of historical-comparative linguistics. It challenges the traditional conceptualization of an old, Classical language evolving into the contemporary Neo-Arabic dialects. Professor Owens combines established comparative linguistic methodology with a careful reading of the classical Arabic sources, such as the grammatical and exegetical traditions.
Rhetoric is the flesh and blood of the Arabic language. It is a linguistic means to a pragmatic end. It is a discipline that aims to sharpen up the linguistic skills of speaking and writing. Rhetoric in Arabic illuminates the bridge between syntax and semantics and shows how linguistics, pragmatics, and aesthetics overlap.