LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 15:5 May 2015
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
Editors: B. Mallikarjun, Ph.D.
         Sam Mohanlal, Ph.D.
         B. A. Sharada, Ph.D.
         A. R. Fatihi, Ph.D.
         Lakhan Gusain, Ph.D.
         Jennifer Marie Bayer, Ph.D.
         S. M. Ravichandran, Ph.D.
         G. Baskaran, Ph.D.
         L. Ramamoorthy, Ph.D.
         C. Subburaman, Ph.D. (Economics)
         N. Nadaraja Pillai, Ph.D.
Assistant Managing Editor: Swarna Thirumalai, M.A.

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The Arabic Origins of English and Indo-European "Military Terms":
A Radical Linguistic Theory Approach

Zaidan Ali Jassem, Ph.D.
Qassim University

Abstract

This paper traces the Arabic origins of English, German, French, Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit "military terms" from a radical linguistic theory perspective. The data consists of 193 such terms like arms, army, arrow, ballistic missile, battle, bomb, ceasefire, disengagement, fight, military, soldier, troop, war, atomic/nuclear weapon, and so on. The results clearly indicate that all such words have true Arabic cognates, with the same or similar forms and meanings, whose differences are all found, however, to be due to natural and plausible causes and different routes of linguistic change. In addition, the most important and interesting finding is that almost all modern English military terms are names of old Arabic weapons that have undergone lexical shift. Therefore, the results support the adequacy of the radical linguistic theory according to which, unlike the Comparative Method and/or Family Tree-model, Arabic, English, German, French, Latin, Greek, and Sanskrit are dialects of the same language or family, which have been recently called Eurabian or Urban family, with Arabic being their origin all for sharing the whole cognates with them and for its huge phonetic, morphological, grammatical, and lexical capacity, variety, and wealth. Furthermore, they indicate that there is a radical language from which all human languages stemmed and which has been preserved almost intact in Arabic as the most conservative and productive language, without which it is impossible to interpret such linguistic versatility, fertility, and productivity.

Key words: Military terms, Arabic, English, German, French, Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, historical linguistics, radical linguistic theory

1. Introduction

In thirty-nine studies thus far, Jassem (2012a-f, 2013a-q, 2014a-k, 2015a-e) has conclusively demonstrated the tightly-knit genetic relationship between Arabic, English, German, French, Latin, Greek, Sanskrit, and the so-called Indo-European languages in general phonetically, morphologically, grammatically, and semantically or lexically, which can all be regarded as dialects of the same language. More precisely, the Arabic origins of their words have been successfully traced in twenty four lexical studies in key semantic fields like numerals, religious, love, medical, and democratic terms (Jassem 2012a-e, 2013a-q, 2014a-k, 2015a-e); in three morphological studies on inflectional and derivational markers (Jassem 2012f, 2013a-b); in nine grammatical papers like pronouns, verb 'to be', wh-questions, and case (Jassem 2012c-e, 2013l, 2014c, 2014h-I, 2015d); and in one phonetic study about the English, German, French, Latin, and Greek cognates of Arabic back consonants (Jassem 2013c). Finally, two papers applied the approach to translation studies (Jassem 2014e, 2015b).

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Zaidan Ali Jassem, Ph.D.
Department of English Language and Translation
Qassim University
P.O. Box 6611
Buraidah
KSA
zajassems@gmail.com
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