Demonstrative Pronouns in Arabic and English a Contrastive Study

Abstract

This research work conducts a contrastive study of demonstrative pronouns in Arabic and English. Contrastive Linguistics is considered to be one of the oldest approaches of Modern Linguistics, and it is one of the most important branches in the field of Linguistics. It is mainly concerned with the study of linguistic systems in different languages, comparing them, and highlighting the similarities and differences between languages. Demonstrative pronouns will be discussed within the theory of parts of speech, describing them in both Arabic and English, demonstrating the common ones, and showing their grammatical functions and uses in both languages. The researcher provides an analysis of some Quranic verses together with their English counterparts in translation in order to show the similarities and differences between the two languages. Finally, the results show the common aspects and the different features of demonstratives in the two languages, recommending expanding the study to cover the theory of reference in future research.