Pronouns in English and Arabic: A Contrastive Study

Abstract

Pronouns are defined as being one of the parts of speech that obtain their meaning from other noun phrases in a sentence. This study is descriptive, analytic, and contrastive. It deals with comparing pronouns in English and Arabic by concentrating on the points of difference and similarity between the two languages. This study aims at describing pronouns in both languages and then the comparison is made by defining pronouns, showing their syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic aspects to know to what extent both languages are similar or different in using pronouns. It is hypothesized that the two languages are similar to each other in terms of their syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic aspects of pronouns; pronouns are found in both languages; and there are some points of similarity and difference between the two languages, but the differences outweigh the similarities. English has a clear division of pronouns. Pronouns are dealt with syntactically, semantically and pragmatically. In Arabic the division of pronouns is completely different.