A Contrastive Study of Modulation in English and Arabic

Abstract

Modulation is a term that denotes using modals and other constructions to refer to such functions as ability, obligation, permission and willingness. The present study is descriptive and contrastive. The aim of this study is to describe English and Arabic in terms of modulation as manifested in the four mentioned functions. The study starts with giving a description of modulation in English and Arabic. The following step is making comparisons regarding the four functions successively. The study concludes that this phenomenon is found in both languages with the existence of a number of differences in addition to some similarities.