Arabic and English Sentence Patterns: A Comparative Guide

2 | P a g e C ONTENTS Contents ............................................................................................................................. 2 INTRODUCTION ....................................................................................................................... 3 1 DEFINITIONs AND TYPES OF VERBS ................................................................................. 5 1.1 ENGLISH .................................................................................................................. 5 1.2 ARABIC ................................................................................................................... 6 2 Tense and time reference: English and Arabic ..................................................... 6 3 Tense and ASPECT ........................................................................................................ 7 3.1 English .................................................................................................................. 7 3.2 ARABIC ................................................................................................................. 11 4 MOOD and MODALITY: ENGLISH AND ARABIC ............................................................... 14 4.1 Modals, MODALITY, and mood ............................................................................. 15 4.1.1 ENGLISH .......................................................................................................... 15 4.1.2 ARABIC .......................................................................................................... 16 5 Charts ........................................................................................................................ 19 5.1 FORMAT AND CONTENT .......................................................................................... 19 5.2 TIME REFERENCE : PAST ........................................................................................ 23 5.3 TIME REFERENCE : PRESENT .................................................................................. 33 5.4 TIME REFERENCE : FUTURE .................................................................................... 41 6 SENTENCE TYPES ......................................................................................................... 55 6.1 ENGLISH ................................................................................................................ 55 6.2 ARABIC ................................................................................................................. 55 7 NOTES .......................................................................................................................... 59 8 Bibliography ............................................................................................................. 68