A syntactic study of negation in selected English and Arabic short stories derived research

Abstract EN

Negation is a linguistic concept which is found in every language in the world.

It differs from one language to another particularly in the syntactic means that express it.

However, this difference is the main concern in this research which investigates the concept of negation syntactically in selected English and Arabic short stories by determining the occurrences of negators depending on their types in these short stories.

To gain the aims of the present research, two short stories are selected.

English short story has been analyzed syntactically based on Quirk et al.

(1992) and Downing (2015) classifications.

The Arabic one has been analyzed syntactically depending on Al Samaraie (2017) and Mamun (2020) classifications.

Results of analysis have shown the occurrences of negators in these short stories concerning their syntactic perspective by numbers and rates.

The main conclusions have revealed that: frequencies of particles of negation are lower in English short story than in the Arabic one; words / nouns of negation are more frequently repeated in English short story under analysis compared to the Arabic one; adverbs of negation are more used in English short story than in the Arabic one under analysis.

Finally, the occurrence of verbs of negation in English short story under analysis is low comparing them into the Arabic one.