Language Contact as an Educational Catalyst for a native Persian Language Student: Effect of Loanwords Semantic change in the 7th-grade Arabic textbook

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Department of Persian Language and Literature, Farhangian University, Tehran, Iran.

2 Dِepartment of Arabic Language and literature, Farhangian University, Tehran, Iran

10.48310/alle.2025.4509

Abstract

Contact linguistics is a new interdisciplinary field that studies the methods and extent of contact between languages. The most common method of language influence is lexical exchange. According to Thomason & Kaufman's hypothesis Persian and Arabic are at the first level of language mixing. Although they belong to two different language families, they have influenced each other in the area of lexical exchange. Many Arabic loanwords have undergone semantic changes upon entering the Persian language. The purpose of this descriptive study with a quantitative approach was to investigate those Arabic loanwords in Persian that are included in the seventh-grade Arabic language curriculum. The results showed that the frequency of Arabic loanwords in the text, relative to the total of Arabic words in lessons is 16%, approximately ⅕ of the textbook. Accordingly,94% of the loanwords were nouns and 6% were verbs. This research studied the type of semantic changes of loanwords in the textbook. Three methods of borrowing were observed in the curriculum: equivalent to the original meaning (95.5%), semantic narrowing (3.7%), and semantic widening (2.3%). However, loanwords that had undergone semantic shift were not found in the research corpus. The absence of the latter type of loanword indicates the authors' awareness in selecting words for textbooks to facilitate second language learning

Keywords

Journal of Research in Arabic Language and Literature Education
Volume 7, Issue 2 - Serial Number 2
September 2025
Pages 104-123

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