Verb and Noun Number in Spoken British English and Cairene Colloquial Arabic: A Study in Form and Meaning

Abstract

The aim of this research is to conduct a contrastive study about verb and noun number in Cairene Colloquial Arabic and Spoken British English in both form and meaning in order to prove that a thorough understanding of a given language requires a complete understanding of its form and function. That is to say, we need to understand not only the formal structures of utterances, i.e. their linguistic form, but also the relation of these utterances to the situations in which they are used, i.e. their meaning. This is due to the fact that: The emphasis is now on the description of language activity as part of the whole complex of events which together with the participants and relevant objects make up actual situations. (Ezzat 20-1) So the tendency now is to study language in all its aspects, not to concentrate on one aspect and to neglect the others as earlier linguists have done. For instance, Traditional grammarians have concentrated on meaning in differentiating between the different parts of speech but they neglect the form of such parts, although it is through the form of words and sentences that we communicate the meanings we like to convey.