Contrastive Analysis of Arabic and Malay for Adjective Phrases in Short Stories

Abstract The influence of the Arabic language has permeated into the Malay language. The introduction of Arabic vocabulary into the Malay language resulted in the existence of Malay loanwords derived from Arabic. In addition, the influence of Malay as a mother tongue affects students in mastering Arabic. First language knowledge and experience are often used by students while learning a foreign language. This causes confusion to students in understanding and mastering the structure of Arabic phrases. This is because, the structure of adjective phrases differs between Arabic and Malay. Therefore, this study aims to determine the types of adjective phrases in Arabic and Malay and to study the similarities and differences in both languages based on short stories by Mustafa Lutfi al-Manfaluti and Shahnon Ahmad. The research methodology is through a qualitative approach by document analysis using library research. This study also uses the contrastive analysis approach pioneered by Robert Lado (1957) in his book ‘Lingustic Across Culturse’. This analysis is done systematically by comparing the two languages to determine the similarities and differences in terms of adjective phrases in selected short stories. The findings show that there are similarities and differences of adjective phrases in Arabic and Malay which include elements of single adjective phrases, working phrases as adjective phrases, noun phrases as adjective phrases and conjunctions as adjective phrases.