1. Purpose

The purpose of this thesis is to show the meanings and the functions of definite and indefinite noun phrases in Arabic.

What I have examined in this study are actual and natural texts of Arabic, which include different kinds of written and spoken texts both in Standard Arabic and Arabic dialects: such as novels, children books, newspaper accounts, cassette tapes, comics, transcribed texts in dialects like jokes, conversations and ethnographical speech, and so on, though I did not attempt to cover all the dialects.

The target variants are:
1) Standard Arabic (al-FuSHaa), 2) Egyptian dialect, 3) Maltese, 4) Buxara dialect, 5) Moroccan dialect, and others.

By giving consideration to the contexts of the texts the study makes clear that the definite-indefinite construction correlates with the theme of the whole text and that forms of the noun phrase are markers of the point of view, and that there is strict correlation between using a particular kind of definite noun phrase and the way in which the stories develop. Text analysis accounts for what a single sentence without context means.

2. Contents

This thesis consists of Introduction, Chapter I-VI, Conclusion, and Appendix.

Chapter I

1) This chapter surveys (in)definiteness in languages and makes clear that the distinction of definiteness and indefiniteness is not only a problem of noun phrase forms. We list up features which decide definiteness of a certain noun phrase based on the previous studies and introduce notions like "familiarity" and "inclusiveness" as the criteria of definiteness.

2) Definiteness is considered in view of information structures, especially giving weight to the notion of "familiarity." We compare it with four other information structures: old- and new-information, theme and rheme, contrast, and reference. Through this comparison we find that the category of definiteness is independent from the other structures, although it correlates with them.

a) Old- and new-information is a structure which can be judged objectively but definiteness is subjective structure depending on a writer/speaker's assumptions.

b) Theme-rheme structure is strategy on the sentence level though definiteness is on the noun phrase level.

c) Contrast structure chooses one correct item from a finite number of the items. Definiteness of each item is a secondary thing in this structure.

d) Familiarity is a concept which can be applied to what a noun phrase means even if it is unreferential and does not have any referent in the world.

3) Some previous studies of noun phrase hierarchies and the way of putting a viewpoint at the time of utterance are introduced. These studies are concerned with how the forms of (in)definite noun phrases are used properly in actual discourse.

Chapter II considers whether concepts like "familiarity" and "inclusiveness" can be applied to definiteness in Arabic or not based on the Arabic (Standard Arabic, Egyptian Arabic and Maltese) translations of the examples which were referred to in Chapter I.

1) Those concepts can be applied to Arabic, too, but some difference may be found between dialects, or between English and Arabic. For example, the sentence "The man drove past our house in a car." must be translated as "The man drove past our house in the car." in Egyptian Arabic. If you say "in a car" in this sentence it means that the car does not belong to the man. On the other hand, if you say "in the car" in Maltese in this sentence a hearer cannot understand which car it is.

2) Maltese has null forms, though concepts extended to an abstract direction are expressed with noun phrases accompanied with a definite particle in other dialects.

3) But we could not find other features than familiarity, identifiability and inclusiveness as far as we examined in this section as in Chapter I only single sentences out of context either before or after them.

Chapter III

This chapter deals with each kind of Arabic definite noun phrase.

1) Arabic traditional grammarians have discussed the degrees of definiteness in Arabic definite noun phrases. Generally speaking, pronouns are said to be the most definite, and nouns with the definite particle "al-" are said to be nearest to indefinite noun phrases. This hierarchy can also be supported from the cognitive viewpoint.

2) We investigate the individuation/salience hierarchies of Semitic noun phrases (Khan 1984) to consider the ways of expression of definiteness in Buxara dialect which has almost lost a definite particle because of the influence of Turkish and Iranian languages on it.

Chapter IV examines how definite noun phrases are used in the beginning of texts, that is, in a situation which does not contain either situational or contextual information.

1) Children's books use definite noun phrases text-initially to refer to something new but deeply related to their themes or their settings. Such definite noun phrases also have an effect on arousing readers' interest.

2) We also found the same phenomenon in novels.

3) By contrast, newspaper accounts present new information in good order on the basis of the readers' existing knowledge. Thus it is not general for newspaper accounts to refer to something new and related to the theme with definite noun phrases to arouse the readers' interest.

4) But headlines often use such techniques as in the children books and the novels.

5) Spoken text does not use such a technique, which imposes a heavy burden on the hearer but presents new information in order on the basis of his existing knowledge. In addition, topic-comment construction is used in spoken texts instead of definite-indefinite contrast as it is difficult to introduce a topic with a definite form.

6) A speaker may introduce a topic with a definite form to explain some ethnographical matters to a foreigner who does not share cultural knowledge, though he selects an agent like "we" or "people" acquainted with the hearer as a subject of verbs.

Chapter V analyses the Egyptian short play "cArafa Kayfa Yamuutu" by Tawfiiq al-Hakiim to show how definite noun phrases are used in discourse, and we found that the following features decide the usage of definite noun phrases:

1) where a speaker locates his point of view,

2) how much the speaker feels convinced of an issue, and

3) how much the speaker puts importance on the object.

The result tells us that the structure of definiteness and indefiniteness is not only defined through hearersﾕ or readers' state, but also that definiteness can be employed actively or subjectively by the speaker/writer. Definiteness is one independent information structure and a device which can be used actively by writers/speakers to send their message to others.

Chapter VI

1) The Koranic text was examined to see the effect of using different definite forms in narratives. The examples which do not conform with the definiteness hierarchy suggested by Hinds (1984) were investigated. It was found that the mark of a change of the scenes or narrative current is the re-identification of an object previously referred to by a pronoun with a proper noun. Also other categories such as voice, aspect and tense often correlates with changes of the noun phrases forms.

2) In spoken texts even an object which has already become a topic is not referred to with a pronoun except after a while. Sometimes the topic shifts to another object before changing to a pronoun. On the other hand, zero anaphora is often found in interview texts because the topics are always clarified by the questions.

3) Some distinctive features of each dialect: are as follows:

i) Standard Arabic
This means written variety in this study.
Readers can accept information difficult to process in written texts. This allows techniques such as introducing a new object in a text with a definite form, and so on.

ii) Egyptian dialect
No significant difference is found in this dialect since there is no language which has given strong influence upon it except a little effect of Coptic. A further reason may be the Standard Arabic informants were Egyptians.

iii) Moroccan dialect
Some nouns connote both definite and indefinite meaning without a definite particle, though most of them are not derived from Arabic.
We find many examples of a definite particle used as a partitive article in this dialect.

iv) Maltese
Italian has influenced not only on its vocabulary but also on its syntax in contrast to other Arabic dialects. Some examples of the influence on the syntax are: usage of the relative pronoun and the construction of relative clauses; usage of the definite particle when an adjective modifies a definite noun; nouns which have null article, and so on.

v) Buxara dialect
It has almost lost a definite particle because of influence of Turkish and Iranian languages on it, so its usage is limited to several idioms. In addition to that, the unmarked word order in this dialect is SOV, and sometimes an anaphoric conjunct pronoun which refers to an object is added to a verb, as is related to individuality and prominence of the object.

The Conclusion summarizes the results of each chapter and the Appendix includes some related explanations and tables.

3. Future Directions

1) To analyze more texts.
It is needed to learn and acquire Arabic dialects to analyze the materials.
It is also necessary to collect raw materials of spoken Arabic through fieldwork.


2) To investigate other languages which influence upon Arabic.

3) To consider noun phrases at large, including expressions of possession and definite noun phrases other than those which do not involve al-.

4) To clarify relations between definiteness and other kinds of grammatical features.

(The dissertation itself is written in Japanese.)