Lexical and syntactic changes in a bespoke corpus of Saudi and Egyptian Arabic newspaper writing from 1950 and 2018

Abstract

This thesis investigates and categorises lexical and syntactic changes, as key features for understading the development of languages, in Saudi and Egyptian Arabic newspaper writing from 1950 to 2018. A specialised bespoke corpus has been built specifically for this study, the Leeds Diachronic Corpus of Saudi and Egyptian Arabic Newspaper Writing (LDCSENW), that contains rare material from the year 1950 and recent material from the year 2018. Sinclair’s (1991) general methodology of approaching the changes in the data via lexis is followed in this thesis. The research methodology, which includes quantitative and qualitative approaches, differs for every level of the analysis. Three sub-methodologies are followed, one for each linguistic level of investigation in this study: the lexicon, general syntax, and discourse connectors. First, for the level of the lexicon, word frequency lists were generated using Sketch Engine (Kilgarriff et. al., 2014). Then, initial sorting of the lists was done via a Python script to distinguish the non-unique and unique words in each sub-corpus. Manual scanning for instances of change was performed followed by categorisation of the instances of change. Second, for the level of general syntax, the study focused on collocations, metaphors and phrases involving prepositions. Manual selection of instances of change was performed followed by categorising of the changes. Third, for the level of discourse connectors, a sub-area within syntax, the frequency of occurrences, after normalising the frequencies to per-million words, were recorded from the two sub-corpora, 1950 and 2018. The percentage of change was calculated and arranged in descending order according to %DIFF value (Gabrielatos and Marchi, 2011). The results reveal several instances of change across the two sub-corpora, 1950 and 2018; 26 lexical item instances, 28 general syntactic instances, and 95 discourse connector instances. Finally, key research findings, including ‘monosemisation’ and an increase in the usage of feminine and plural markers, are highlighted for future work on diachronic language change.