Exploring and categorising the Arabic copula and auxiliary<i>k?na</i>through enhanced part-of-speech tagging

Arabic syntax has yet to be studied in detail from a corpus-based perspective. The copula k?na (‘be’), functions also as an auxiliary, creating periphrastic tense–aspect constructions; but the literature on these is far exhaustive. To analyse within one-million word Corpus of Contemporary Arabic, part-of-speech tagging (using novel, targeted enhancements previously described program which improves accessibility for linguistic analysis output Habash et al.’s [2012] mada disambiguator Buckwalter morphological analyser) applied disambiguate and auxiliary at high rate accuracy. Concordances both are extracted, 10 percent samples (499 instances 387 k?na) analysed manually identify surface-level grammatical patterns meanings. This raw then systematised according more general patterns’ main parameters variation; special descriptions developed specific, apparently fixed-form expressions (including two phraseologies afford expression verbal adjectival modality). Overall, we uncover substantial new detail, not mentioned existing grammars (e.g., quantitative predominance past imperfect construction over other uses k?na). There exists notable potential findings inform enhance only pedagogy first or second/foreign language.