English "necessary" in Arabic translation
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"Arabic Translations of the English Adjective 'Necessary': A Corpus-Driven Lexical Study." Alhedayani, Rukayah et al. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications 12, no. 1 (August 18, 2025): 1345.
Abstract
Modal adjectives of non-epistemic necessity are very common in language corpora. However, such adjectives are expected to behave differently in context, and thus differences between them should be highlighted in dictionaries. Nevertheless, there are a few studies that have examined modal adjectives with respect to their associated constructions and meanings in English. More importantly, studies on equivalent Arabic modal adjectives are scarce. Hence, the present study is quantitative and corpus-driven utilizing monolingual (i.e., the arTenTen18 and the enTenTen18) and parallel (i.e., Open Parallel Corpus or OPUS for short) corpora. Further, it is based on construction grammar and frame semantics to explore Arabic and English words of necessity.
Using distinctive collexeme analysis, covarying-collexeme analysis, and LogDice as an association measure, the results reveal that the English necessary has various senses but occurs more significantly in predicative and extradosed constructions. Further, the Arabic words ḍarūrī and lāzim are more associated with necessary as translations, and each is commonly used in a unique construction to evoke certain semantic frames. More specifically, the word ḍarūrī associates with the extraposed construction to evoke semantic frames of cognitive processes, while the word lāzim is attracted to attributive constructions with nouns denoting procedures and intentional acts. They are considered to be cognitive synonyms, and hence they do not alter the truth value of the expressed proposition, and they have at least one sense in common. Based on such results, it is recommended that lexicographers exploit monolingual and parallel corpora for the purpose of creating more accurate dictionaries.
The idea of "necessary" or "necessity" is hard enough to define in one language, let alone match its nuances across languages as different as Arabic and English. Nonetheless, doing so enhances our understanding of the words in each of the comparanda.
Selected readings
- "He must can parse" (6/13/09) — you must not miss the comments for "needs must" and other modal delights
- "Is there no / any longer a reason / need to learn a foreign language?, part 2" (7/28/23)
[Thanks to Ted McClure]
J.M.G.N. said,
August 25, 2025 @ 6:55 am
It'd also be hard to translate it into 'Romance'…
https://quest.ms.mff.cuni.cz/cgi-bin/elixir/index.fcgi?mode=lookup
What type of necessity though?
http://web.archive.org/web/20200712234117/https://www.oed.com/oed2/00156288
Gokul Madhavan said,
August 25, 2025 @ 7:58 am
Another historically important word that is touched upon only lightly in this is wājib, which was used by Avicenna to express the idea of the necessarily existent (wājib al-wujūd).
Chas Belov said,
August 25, 2025 @ 2:15 pm
I've noticed significant differences between use of already in English versus Cantonese. Cantonese uses already more often.
For example, if I send an email saying please do X, and they did X before I sent the email, in English and Cantonese, they would respond using already.
But if they did X after I sent the email, in English they wouldn't use already, but in Cantonese they would.
This unfortunately carried over to at least one L1 Cantonese speaker who speaks English as L2. Fortunately, I was aware from my Cantonese studies of this difference, and was able to clarify with them when they did X, which I needed to know to solve a particular program bug.
ohwilleke said,
August 25, 2025 @ 7:00 pm
The abstract would benefit from a few concrete examples.
Philip Taylor said,
August 26, 2025 @ 4:13 am
Certainly in Britain, Chas (I have no idea about elsewhere), Jewish people are often caricatured as using "already" virtually as a filler — see, for example, Eddie Summer's Enough, Already !.