This study presents a corpus-based investigation of how Arab students of English use modality in academic writing. Although the primary focus of the study is on the writing of Arab L2 learners, regular comparisons have been conducted with native-speakers' writing with the aim of delineating the areas of similarities and differences between the two groups (leaners and native speakers). Furthermore, in an attempt to check whether the features characterizing the use of modality in Arab L2 academic writing is part of a general tendency or an idiosyncratic creation that exclusively applies to Arab students of English, results have been frequently checked against some other relevant studies. The study reveals a gap between native speakers and learners in terms of the frequency count of the modals used. Findings also show that many of the modality features used in the learner corpus reflect a general tendency on the part of most L2 learners. Yet, some other features, including the overuse of 'must', 'can' and 'should' and the underuse of the epistemic modals 'may', 'might', 'would', and 'could', are likely to be attributed to both learners' general tendency and L1 rhetoric, where certainty-oriented and collectivistic-oriented styles prevail.

This paper is meant to delineate the syntax of wh-movement in Standard Arabic within the Optimality Theory framework. The scope of this study is limited to examine only simple, relativized and indirect verbal information questions. Further restrictions also have been placed on tense and negation in that only past tense affirmative questions are tackled here.Results show that Standard Arabic strictly adheres to the OP SPEC constraint in the matrix as well as the subordinate clauses. Findings also show that *Prep-Strand violation is intolerable in all types of information questions. Furthermore, the phonological manifestation of the complementizer is obligatory when the relative clause head is present or when the relative clause head is deleted and a resumptive pronoun is left behind.

This study aimed at explicating the use of tense and aspect in the academic writing of Arab L2 learners of English. The scope was restricted to two absolute tenses (simple present and simple past), perfective and imperfective aspects, and verb-form errors arising from the deletion or addition of the third person singular-s besides the omission of copula and auxiliary verbs. The study was conducted on the basis of a comparative, quantitative analysis of the target forms between a learner corpus and a similar-sized native one. In pursuing and achieving the stated objectives, it also concentrated on the types and sources of the tense, aspect and verb form errors in learners’ performance. In addition to the significant disparity between the two corpora in terms of the frequency count and percentage of most of the target forms, the findings confirmed learners’ tendency to use more verbs than native speakers. Results also showed that learners’ use of the preterit (simple past), and perfective and imperfective aspects were largely constrained by their L1 grammar and semantic interpretation of verbs (independent of the target language norm). Moreover, the findings revealed some common inconsistent erroneous forms attributed to the omission or addition of the third person singular-s and the omission of copula and auxiliary verbs. Several main factors were identified as potentially responsible for learners’ errors, that is, inconsistency inherent in L2 rules, learners’ limited exposure to (authentic) L2, overgeneralization, redundancy reduction, and language transfer. The findings suggest the need to introduce appropriate pedagogical methods to best present the target language rules.

This study aims to shed light on the microsyntactic units and discourse grammar of Kam, a language spoken in Guizhou, Hunan and Guangxi Provinces in China. To this end, the paper explores the use and functions of particles and classifiers, and how the discourse grammar elements operate across sentences to create texture, cohesion and convey the sender's communicative intent. The corpus of this study consists of two short stories in addition to some other illustrative examples. Findings show that particles in Kam are used to mark unity and serve pragmatic presuppositions and assertions. Results also indicate that Kam, which features neither wh-movement nor subject-verb inversion in questions, uses particles to express interrogation, aspect and modality. Additionally, the findings reveal that nominal classifiers have less semantic limitations than the verbal ones. Finally, it has been observed that predicates don't require the phonological appearance of their subjects as long as they are understood contextually.

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