Year: 2025
Type: article
Abstract: Purpose For the past few decades, Kana words were labeled as pseudo-verbs, incomplete verbs, untrue verbs, copular verbs and particles. These labels resulted from investigating different aspects of Kana words. However, previous research on the morphology of Kana words, such as Alanbari (1886), Bahloul (1993) and Mohammad (1998), only included some examples while overlooking other morphological realizations of the words. Such conclusions representing a whole morphological category may have resulted from the tendency to equate these words with verbs. In addition, studies such as Koskenniemi (1983) and Ratcliffe (1990) analyzed Arabic morphology while highlighting the nonconcatenative nature of the structures; they neglected that the inflectional elements are transfixed and not infixed. This created a gap that can be filled by answering the following questions: What is the morphological process that explains the inflection of Kana words? How similar are Kana words to verbs in Arabic? To answer these questions, different inflections of Kana words were considered utilizing McCarthy’s (1981) approach to nonconcatenative morphology to demonstrate the interweaving of morphemes with the root structure. Also, to indicate how the roots of the Kana word are related to the inflected forms, the Eisele and Bisele (2002) approach to morphological rule writing was utilized. After meticulous investigations of the morphology of Kana words, the present study confirmed that they show similar morphological patterns to verbs when different parts of the affixes are interweaving within the root in a tansfixational pattern. The present study enhances the understanding of the morphological aspect of Kana words. Looking into Kana words from syntactic and semantic perspectives will provide a better understanding when comparing Kana words with verbs in Arabic. As the present study follows a meticulous analysis of Kana words, it demonstrates in part how Kana words work when referring to the first person and when in the indicative mood. This leaves space for future plans to consider the second and third persons in addition to the imperative mood. The significance of this research lies in addressing this gap by demonstrating that transfixation is the predominant process shaping Kana words. Unlike infixation, which simply inserts morphemes into a root, transfixation involves the interweaving of morphemes with the root structure, creating complex morphological patterns. This study builds upon Kaye’s (2003) distinction between infixation and transfixation, applying it specifically to the morphological analysis of Kana words. Design/methodology/approach In MSA, the morphology of Kana words aligns closely with that of verbs, as previously noted by scholars such as Alanbari (1886), Bahloul (1993) and Mohammad (1998). These researchers presented samples of Kana words to illustrate their linguistic behavior in comparison to MSA verbs, highlighting that they share notable structural similarities. By analyzing naturally written data from Arabic books and utilizing methodologies such as McCarthy’s (1981) autosegmental approach, this research further establishes that Kana words exhibit the derivational and inflectional characteristics typical of Arabic verbs. In this respect, it challenges traditional classifications that have often labeled Kana words as pseudo-verbs or incomplete verbs. This study analyzed 8,000 Arabic books from the Alshamela library, focusing on Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) linguistics from the past five decades. Approximately 6,000 relevant books yielded results for the morphological behavior of one-word Kana words, excluding two-word forms to avoid irrelevant tokens. Seven Kana words were examined, excluding the negation particle ليس (laisa). Each word’s 42 derived forms were analyzed for person, gender, number, tense and mood, specifically the first person and indicative mood. The study utilized McCarthy’s autosegmental representation to explore derivations and compared these with related content verbs using Eisele and Bisele’s derivation rules.
Author: Maisarah M. Almirabi
Institution: King Khalid University
Language: English
Subfield: Language and Linguistics
Field: Arts and Humanities
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: diamond
OpenAlex ID: W4409502894