Expression of Words and their Adaptation of Sound - Morphological in Arabic the Biography of Ibn Hisham in the past and the Stories of Gharibeh in the Recent Times

Abstract

The present study investigates the trend of linguistic borrowing in Classical and Modern Arabic in two texts: The Prophet’s Biography by Ibn Hisham (Classical) and the novels of Hashem Gharaibeh (Modern). It aims to highlight the capabilities of Arabic to adapt with other languages and find out the pattern of the morpho- phonological adaptation that applies to the borrowings. In addition, the study aims at figuring out whether the semantic classification of these borrowings is related to a certain style or jargon and identifying the reasons behind linguistic borrowing and its effects on weakening or strengthening the language-specific characteristics of Arabic. To achieve this goal, two types of texts will be examined: The Prophet’s Biography by Ibn Hisham, which represents Arabic in its flourished civilization era; the second is the novels of the Jordanian writer Hashem Gharaibeh, which represents Arabic in a weak civilizational period. It is worth mentioning that both texts are known to have highly eloquent language away from the colloquial. The study concludes that the trend in the past was to fully adapt the borrowings, reproducing them according to Arabic morpho-phonological and semantic rules. As for the modern text, the trend is to keep the borrowing as it was in the source language. The study recommends adapting the borrowing following the rules of the host language in order to preserve the identity and history of Arabic.