The grammatical gender of personal pronouns in English and Arabic: A contrastive perspective

Abstract

The manuscript adeptly demonstrates that all human languages utilize grammatical gender as a pivotal characteristic. Nonetheless, the extent of this differentiation is not uniform across languages. For instance, some natural languages classify two genders, specifically masculine and feminine, by employing proper nouns or personal pronouns, which may function to signify the grammatical gender of various terms within the scope of this study. There are robust arguments positing that gender differentiation in communication may engender particular stylistic subtleties that reflect the sociocultural backgrounds of the speakers of those languages. This study aspires to establish a comprehensive methodology for analyzing the grammatical genders of personal pronouns in both English and Arabic, taking advantage of a contrastive framework. Both languages offer grammatical descriptions of these pronouns. A significant aspect of this paper involves a comprehensive presentation of the similarities and disparities through various examples that encompass the entire spectrum of personal pronouns across different grammatical categories. Additionally, a structured contrastive analysis of personal pronouns in the selected languages is offered, to uncover fundamental concepts related to intracultural linguistic variation. The study also provides valuable insights for scholars studying English and Arabic.