Divergence of Form and Meaning in Comparative Perspective

A striking characteristic of human language is the unexpected prevalence of grammatical similarities between unrelated languages. The study of these similarities and implicational relationships between them sheds light on the universal core of human language grammar and therefore on the foundations of the human capacity for language. This research project contributes to this endeavor by investigating a cluster of semantic similarities in English and Arabic verb phrases and their adjectival derivatives (participles). Similar semantic features are expressed in partially different morphological and syntactic forms in the two languages. The investigation of these dissimilarities in form allows us to separate fundamental from accidental correspondences between form and meaning in the two languages and isolate potential universals in this area. This research project focuses on the cluster of semantic properties expressed by the perfect construction in English and the related passive construction. The English perfect is expressed by the auxiliary have in combination with the same form of the verb that occurs in the passive, though it displays the active syntactic frame. The meaning of the perfect is expressed in Arabic by the active participle in combination with the auxiliary corresponding to English be. In combination with be, the English passive participle is ambiguous between a verbal and adjectival passive. In Arabic, the passive participle expresses only the adjectival passive, while the function of the verbal passive is performed by a dedicated finite verb form. Hence, the same semantic features are allotted to different morphosyntactic formats in English and Arabic, and the comparative examination of these constructions promises to reveal which aspects of the form-meaning correspondence are critical to the expression of these semantic features and which are contingent. Comparative research on the relationship between form and meaning is significant in its potential to uncover grammatical universals. The fact that clusters of semantic properties may manifest themselves in dissimilar morphosyntactic formats across languages potentially obscures universal threads in the structure the human capacity for language. Research that investigates such divergences advances the state of the art in linguistic science by identifying hidden cross-linguistic uniformities relevant to both the theory of language and the study of human cognition broadly.

Superficial differences between languages sometimes conceal deep similarities. This project investigates one such case, specifically the way the perfect construction exemplified by English She has closed the window manifests itself in English and Arabic, focusing on the Syrian dialect. The goal of this comparative analysis is to identify the mechanisms interrelating form and meaning in these languages and to determine whether they are shared, potentially belonging to core human grammatical knowledge, or subject to variation across languages and not grammatically stable.The research resulted in a clear picture of the similarities and differences between the two languages on the relevant points, some of which were surprising and highly significant for a general theory of language. In Arabic, the sentence hiya msakkra -ibb?k corresponds in form to English She [is] closing the-window but corresponds in meaning to what the English perfect construction She has closed the window means. The research revealed that this similarity in meaning is deceptive: the Arabic construction is actually a transitive version of an adjectival passive sentence like the English The window is closed, which asserts that the closing was in the past. The Arabic construction is therefore not the same as the English perfect, but represents an adjectival active construction not found in English. The research determined as well that a perfect construction as such is found in Arabic in the form of the so-called continuous perfect, which describes a state that holds for a specified period up to the present, as in She has lived in Vienna for a year. In the Arabic counterpart hiya il-a bit?? bi-fienna sana (lit. She to-her lives in-Vienna [a] year), the preposition il to with a subject inflection -a her functions as an auxiliary verb. The significant thing about this is that Arabic uses prepositions, among them il to to signify possession, meaning that the Arabic and English continuous perfect constructions both make use of an auxiliary meaning have, pointing to a deep connection between possession and tense interpretation.The primary conclusions are that adjectival constructions are semantically parallel across the two languages but the active/passive parameter is variable. Both the continuous perfect and its connection to possession is parallel across the two languages but the existence of a non-continuous perfect is variable. In these and other points, this project accomplished its goal of separating the shared and variable properties in the interpretation of several tense-related constructions in English and Arabic and made a number of significant new empirical observations in is course.