A contrastive Study of Imperatives

A Contrastive Study of Imperatives in Standard English

and

Colloquial Hijazi Arabic

1992

Shadia Yousef Banjar

Assistant Professor in Linguistics

Department of English

Girls' College of Education, Jeddah

Abstract

Contrastive studies generally give an exaustive account of the differences and similarities between the two languages. Thesee studies contribute to the field of Linguistics and to the learning and teahing of both languages. The present study attempts to contribute to the Arabic Linguistics since contrastive Linguistics is a subdiscipline of linguistics.

Imperatives play a vital role in both English and Colloquial Hijazi Arabic especially in the field of language teaching and translation from and into Arabic. Hence, the study will try to explore this important aspect. It is hoped that conclusions of the present research will be of some help to Saudi learners of English.

In this study, relevant concepts of imperatives are introduced. All Types of imperatives in English and Hijazi Arabic are intensively discussed pointing out the morphological features as well as the syntactic characteristics. Thus, descriptive analysis of imperatives within the frame of structure and function has been explained.

Forms and functions of imperative are contrastively discussed. Hence, Contrastive implications are presented on three levels: the morphological level, the syntactic level, and the functional level. The study ends by elaborating on the contrastive implications of imperatives and providing suggessions for teaching imperatives as well as predictable errors based on language interference.