Appraisal Emotional Adjectives in English/Arabic Translation :

A Corpus Linguistic Approach

Salma MansourLeeds University

Overview• Dictionaries: a serious problem• Powerful/less adjectives in English and

Arabic• Corpus analysis• Results

Dictionaries Vs. CorporaPrinted dictionaries

limited by space information is always partial interpreted (sometimes wrongly) internally inconsistent and contradict each

other out of date

“There are many facts about language that cannot be discovered by just thinking about it, or even reading and listening very intently” (Sinclair, 1995)

“ As language teachers and professionals, we often have strong intuitions about language use…corpus-based research, however, shows us that our intuitions are often completely wrong” (Biber, 2005)

Emotions: In/security (the boy was anxious/confident) Dis/satisfaction (the boy was fed up/

absorbed) Un/happiness (the boy was sad/happy)(Martin and White, 2005: 46-9; Bednarek

2008:15)

Powerful/less adjectives in English and Arabic Strong qawi قوي

Powerful jabar جبار

Tough qas قاس

Weak da‘if ضعيف

Powerless wahin واهن

Tender raqiq رقيق

Examples: weak AMMD 2007

EMD2008

LASD1994

COED2010

WCD2002

العقل ضعيفda‘if al‘aql(mentally weak)

غير – ضعيفقوي(weak, not strong)

Not strong in character

Lacking physical strength and energy

Lacking power or strength

BNC LLS I-EN LLS

physically weak

18.18 hand 13.80

heart 15.81 pulse 12.99

stomach 11.71 stomach 11.79

chest 8.97 muscle 11.70

muscle 8.90 leg 8.20

ankle 7.09 knee 7.39

chin 6.95 heart 7.30

Leg 4.40

body 3.02

eye 1.12

’da‘if/ ‘weak/ ضعيف I-AR LLS

’al-shakhsyah ‘the personality الشخصية 150

’al-qalb ‘the heart القلب 140

al-saqayn ‘the legs’ 75.35 الساقين

’al-basar ‘the eyesightالبصر 22.44

’al-‘aql ‘the mindالعقل 1.89

Top 10 collocates of weak in BNC and I-EN

BNC LLS I-EN LLS

syllable 87.51 spot 133.28

spot 86.21 link 107.04

link 80.91 point 99.54

point 57.05 economy 58.50

interaction 56.71 signal 47.15

position 39.28 tie 40.82

overlap 36.62 acid 33.38

smile 34.19 argument 30.72

nuclear 30.81 immune 23.11

form 28.07 position 18.65

Examples: strong AMMD 2007

EMD2008

LASD1994

COED2010

WCD2002

شديد – – قوي ضخم

شديد – – قوي متين

Having a degree of power, esp. of the body

Physically powerful

Physically or mentally powerful

Strong

LLS of mental, physical, behavioral collocates of strong

Appraised/Thing Appraised/Thing evaluatedevaluated

BNCBNC I-ENI-EN

Mind 3.10 0.47

Arm 93.66 55.75

Character 44.13 34.84

Personality 34.88 58.54

Collocation: a mode of expressing meaning

“You shall know a word by the company it keeps” (Firth, 1957: 12).

“Looking at lexicographic work on Arabic collocation, a rather bleak picture emerges. There is an extremely limited amount of information on collocation in both monolingual (Arabic) and bilingual (Arabic-English/English-Arabic dictionaries. Besides, no monolingual (Arabic) or bilingual (Arabic-English/English-Arabic) collocational dictionary has been compiled as yet” (Bahumaid, 2006:137).

Dictionaries and semantic prosodies

“Lexicographers in the past have not been fully aware of the extent of semantic prosody […]modern corpora provide new opportunities of studying the phenomenon” (Partington, 1998: 68).

Semantic prosodies• Positive Favorable (pleasant)

• Neutral Neutral (No evidence)

• Negative Unfavorable (unpleasant)

Strong smell

AMMD / I-AR BNC

Node: powerful BNC LLS I-EN LLS

tool 143.09 tool 814.27

influence 136.16 force 207.16

force 103.39 nation 186.20

man 90.58 weapon 136.33

weapon 83.64 man 86.53

argument 57.96 influence 77.79

body 55.52 incentive 76.15

position 45.45 message 63.50

voice 44.83 computer 57.08

personality 24.13 way 54.29

Node: strongBNC LLS I-EN LLS

wind 433.66 feeling 372.52

feeling 352:24 support 355.22

sense 326.05 sense 349.23

support 178.31 evidence 338.85

position 163.77 emphasis 305.34

emphasis 151.91 wind 266.76

evidence 129.73 leadership 258.30

link 125.36 commitment

241.05

opposition 122.81 supporter 230.46

argument 108.53 leader 215.36

Halliday (1976: 73):

• Strong (not powerful) tea

• Powerful (not strong) car

powerful vs. strong

Powerless vs. weak

Powerless collocates with:

helpless passive do nothing totally dependent hanging

Weak collocates with:

syllable spot link point economy smile

Collocation Joint Freq LL score powerless to 176 2466407 187.92

powerless against

12 54759 18.16

powerless . 63 4722093 16.85

powerless group

6 53516 7.10

Powerless in 10 185185 0.20

powerless position

4 27442 5.24

powerless people

6 115476 4.92

powerless and 22 2615080 2.43

powerless ; 5 203952 2.43

powerless as 7 521522 1.77

powerless when

4 207566 1.55

powerless by 4 504964 0.37

tender & tough(a) tender

Thing evaluated English Arabic

year inexperienced ناضج غير

people, behavior gentle, nice رقيق - لطيف

food easy to chew المضغ سهل

part of the body sensitive حساس

offer generous سخي

feeling, emotions, love

romantic رومانسي

(b) toughThing evaluated English Arabic

time hard عصيبة أوقات

people rough, stiff شكس – - جلف قاس

decision, choice, question, competition

difficult صعبة

opponent stubborn, obstinate عنيد

Same but different!

قوي .jabar ‘powerful’ vs جبارqawi ‘strong’ vs. قاس qas ‘tough’(1) Positive jabar (great)juhd /effort/, ’mal /work/, mashru’ /project/ …

God

(2) Negative jabar (stubborn, unfair/unjust)malik /king/, hakim /judge, commander, leader/

(3) Neutral jabar (No indication)

(1) Positive qawi (strong)fariq /team/, jaysh /army/, ’iqtisad /economy/e.g. ’iqtisad qawi /strong economy/ (not jabar/ not qas)

(2) Negative qawi (destructive)zilzal /earthquake/

(3) Neutral qawi ta’thir /influence/, shakl /form/

(1)Negative qas (difficult)rajul /man/, waqi‘ /reality/, shay’ /something/

(2) Positive qas (No indication)

(3) Neutral qas (No indication)

/raqiq /tender رقيق • Negative raqiq(weak)ghisha’ /membrane/, jild /skin/

• Positive raqiq (nice)uslub /style/, shakhs /person/, sawt /voice/, ihsas

/feelings/, thawb /garment/shakhs raqiq (nice person)shakhs da‘if/wahin (weak person)

Thank you for your attention