Oppositions in Arabic proverbs : a lexicosyntactic perspective

Human beings are claimed to have a strong tendency for structuring their thoughts in terms of binary oppositions (Lyons, 1977). Binary oppositions, both canonical and non-canonical, have cross-linguistically been shown to perform textual functions in language and discourse (Jones, 2002; Davies, 2...

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Main Author: Hassanein, Hamada
Format: Article
Language:en
Published: Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia 2021
Online Access:http://journalarticle.ukm.my/18520/1/44119-172382-1-PB.pdf
http://journalarticle.ukm.my/18520/
https://ejournal.ukm.my/gema/issue/view/1440
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author Hassanein, Hamada
author_facet Hassanein, Hamada
author_sort Hassanein, Hamada
building Tun Sri Lanang Library
collection Institutional Repository
content_provider Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
content_source UKM Journal Article Repository
continent Asia
country Malaysia
description Human beings are claimed to have a strong tendency for structuring their thoughts in terms of binary oppositions (Lyons, 1977). Binary oppositions, both canonical and non-canonical, have cross-linguistically been shown to perform textual functions in language and discourse (Jones, 2002; Davies, 2012; Hsu, 2015; Akşehirli, 2018, among many others). This study examines the discourse functions of oppositions in a dataset of oppositional pairs extracted from a collection of Arabic proverbs. Drawing on a synergy of Jones’s (2002), Davies’s (2012), and Hassanein’s (2018) syntagmatic typologies of antonymy and opposition, it tests the synergised typology on the dataset to quantify and exemplify the discourse functions of opposition therein and prove the interactivity of the syntactic environments. The study has shown ancillary opposition to be the preponderant function with far higher frequency distributions than the remaining ones. Two functions logged in Classical Arabic discourse (Hassanein, 2018) have also been logged in proverbial discourse. One function is subordination (one opposite is hypotactically appended to another) and the other is case-marking (both lexemes play oppositional case roles at syntactic and semantic levels). The analysis has also shown that the syntagmatic classification replicated in this study validates former classifications across languages, most notably English, Swedish, Japanese, Chinese, Serbian, Romanian, Turkish, and Persian. It has also been revealed that the syntactic frames of co-occurring oppositions play significant roles in proverbial categorisation and conceptualisation and support the argument that proverbs tend to pattern cultural units and schemas into parallel structural frames.
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institution Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia
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spelling my-ukm.journal.185202022-04-26T07:55:22Z http://journalarticle.ukm.my/18520/ Oppositions in Arabic proverbs : a lexicosyntactic perspective Hassanein, Hamada Human beings are claimed to have a strong tendency for structuring their thoughts in terms of binary oppositions (Lyons, 1977). Binary oppositions, both canonical and non-canonical, have cross-linguistically been shown to perform textual functions in language and discourse (Jones, 2002; Davies, 2012; Hsu, 2015; Akşehirli, 2018, among many others). This study examines the discourse functions of oppositions in a dataset of oppositional pairs extracted from a collection of Arabic proverbs. Drawing on a synergy of Jones’s (2002), Davies’s (2012), and Hassanein’s (2018) syntagmatic typologies of antonymy and opposition, it tests the synergised typology on the dataset to quantify and exemplify the discourse functions of opposition therein and prove the interactivity of the syntactic environments. The study has shown ancillary opposition to be the preponderant function with far higher frequency distributions than the remaining ones. Two functions logged in Classical Arabic discourse (Hassanein, 2018) have also been logged in proverbial discourse. One function is subordination (one opposite is hypotactically appended to another) and the other is case-marking (both lexemes play oppositional case roles at syntactic and semantic levels). The analysis has also shown that the syntagmatic classification replicated in this study validates former classifications across languages, most notably English, Swedish, Japanese, Chinese, Serbian, Romanian, Turkish, and Persian. It has also been revealed that the syntactic frames of co-occurring oppositions play significant roles in proverbial categorisation and conceptualisation and support the argument that proverbs tend to pattern cultural units and schemas into parallel structural frames. Penerbit Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia 2021-11 Article PeerReviewed application/pdf en http://journalarticle.ukm.my/18520/1/44119-172382-1-PB.pdf Hassanein, Hamada (2021) Oppositions in Arabic proverbs : a lexicosyntactic perspective. GEMA ; Online Journal of Language Studies, 21 (4). pp. 1-20. ISSN 1675-8021 https://ejournal.ukm.my/gema/issue/view/1440
spellingShingle Hassanein, Hamada
Oppositions in Arabic proverbs : a lexicosyntactic perspective
title Oppositions in Arabic proverbs : a lexicosyntactic perspective
title_full Oppositions in Arabic proverbs : a lexicosyntactic perspective
title_fullStr Oppositions in Arabic proverbs : a lexicosyntactic perspective
title_full_unstemmed Oppositions in Arabic proverbs : a lexicosyntactic perspective
title_short Oppositions in Arabic proverbs : a lexicosyntactic perspective
title_sort oppositions in arabic proverbs : a lexicosyntactic perspective
url http://journalarticle.ukm.my/18520/1/44119-172382-1-PB.pdf
http://journalarticle.ukm.my/18520/
https://ejournal.ukm.my/gema/issue/view/1440
url_provider http://journalarticle.ukm.my/