A Descriptive Study of The Semantic Components of Arabic Impact Verbs – Arabic Gulf Variety

This dissertation investigates the semantic components of Arabic impact verbs (henceforth AIVs). While previous studies of impact verbs, such as in English (for example, hit, strike, punch) , classified verbs according to their syntactic distributions, the thesis will argue that the classification of verbs should be mainly based on the semantic components they represent. Given that each verb expresses a distinct, contextually flexible meaning, the investigation will examine the lexical semantics of the various verbs which describe impact events in Arabic. It will analyse how they vary along with domains such as agent, instrument, force, or combined sound and frequency. The investigation will identify and motivate the different semantic components of the AIVs and propose categories that group all these different verbs. The categories will include verbs sharing the same feature of a semantic component. Finally, the investigation will highlight the necessary elements of the impact event and describe their different lexical restrictions via the examples in the Gumar corpus and the questionnaire.
The term ‘Arabic’ includes many different varieties; this study is concerned with the broadly accepted standard known as Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) in its Arabic Gulf Variety (AGV). Data for this variety are based on translating Levin’s work as an authenticated source and on the author’s native intuition to build the base list of the AIVs. Then it will be expanded from three different sources (i) dictionaries, (ii) an Arabic corpus, and (iii) a questionnaire. The questionnaires are specially devised for selecting AIVs and the analysis. The corpus and the questionnaire will be used to investigate the AIVs. Finally, DIN 31635 standards will be used to transliterate the AIVs to English.