The semantic range of the verbs of perception in English and Arabic : a contrastive study

الملخص EN

The study investigates what is believed to be a point of disagreement between Arabic and English, that is, the semantic range of the verbs of perception.

It deals with two sets of perceptive verbs in both languages by surveying the range of senses of each verb in the two sets and distinguishing the perceptive senses from the non-perceptive ones.

The main problem of the investigation is that some foreign learners of both languages attempt, in their use of these verbs, to mistakenly generalize especially the main or the commonest senses of these verbs and misuse them where the other senses should be used.

As a result, misunderstanding takes place or even a complete communication failure.

The study aims to enlighten the reader with the semantic range (the set of senses) of each perceptive verb with explanation and illustrative example for each sense so that the reader can have a good image of these verbs in both languages and knows the correct use of them.

The study consists of three sections.

The first one is dedicated for surveying the English verbs of perception with explanation and illustrative example for all their senses.

The second section surveys the Arabic verbs of perception and also provides explanation and illustrative examples for all the available senses.

The third section is the practical part of the study and consists of two tests in the form of tables the first of which is for the English verbs, whereas the second is for the Arabic verbs.

The tests are given firstly to a group of beginner translators to provide their translations, then the tests are given with the translations are submitted to a set of professional translators for assessing the beginners’ trans-lotions and providing their own ones.

Afterwards, an analytic discussion is conducted for each test in order to find out the similarities and differences between English and Arabic as regards the semantic range of the perceptive verbs.

The study arrives at a number of findings the main of which is that there is no identically in the semantic range of the verbs of perception in English and Arabic, and that especially the beginner translators have the problem of generalizing certain senses to the others.