EMOTION TERMS IN ARABIC: A STUDY OF ARABIC-ENGLISH CONTACT

Apstrakt

This study investigates the change of emotion words in Classical Arabic as a result of contact with English. 213 English words were selected for this purpose the equivalents of which were checked up in two bilingual English-Arabic dictionaries from two different periods. As is the case in other domains of contact, the processes found to operate in the semantic change of emotions were calquing, loan translation, loan rendition and extension, in addition to what is termed here “descriptive translations”. Descriptive translations are phrases intended to introduce the meaning of an item to users of bilingual dictionaries. What was noted is that some of these phrases ended up being lexicalizations of unfamiliar emotion categories. Loan words, however, were found to be very rare. It was argued that these kinds of change stand behind the development of Modern Standard Arabic.