Journal of Basra researches for Human Sciences

This paper investigates the perception and interpretation of English sentence intonation by Iraqi learners at the university level. Forty subjects participated in an experiment to perceive and interpret the tones of five pairs of sentences. Intonation was the only aspect that differentiated each pair. The analysis of the results reveals the poor knowledge of the learners in perceiving the tones and in realising the meanings associated with each tone. The study suggests that emphasis should be placed on the teaching of intonation in real life situations to increase the students' sensitivity to this important aspect of language.

This study aims at investigating the speech act of refusal performed by Iraqi speakers speaking English (ISSE) and American native speakers (ANS) with respect to linguistic devices and cultural differences. To this aim, the following questions should be answered:1. What strategies do Iraqi speakers speaking English and American native speakers use when they refuse offers, requests, suggestions, and invitations? 2. Is the choice of refusal strategies affected by culture? 3. How the use of refusal strategies is affected by the interlocutor status? 4. Regarding the Iraqi subjects responses, is there any evidence of pragmatic transfer? The discourse completion test (DCT) developed by Beebe et al (1990) is used for this purpose. Twenty participants, ten Iraqis and ten Americans take part in this test. The findings indicate that there are many differences among the Iraqis and the Americans in making refusals. The differences can be attributed to cultural differences between Iraqi and American cultures.

ِA non-finite clause is one kind of subordinate clauses whose meaning is not complete unless it is attached to a main clause. The appearance and the meaning of non-finite clauses are very ample and diverse. That is why the translation of non-finite clauses can, to some extent, be problematic if the translator fails to grasp their meanings. In this study, the translation of non-finite clauses (which include infinitival, gerundial and the past and present participial clauses) into Arabic will be studied. The primary source is Hemingway's novel "The Old Man and the Sea" which has been translated into Arabic many times. A comparative study between four translations of the novel is conducted to find out what different translation strategies can be used to translate non-finite clauses from English into Arabic and what the most common translations are.
Results showed that English non-finite clauses can be translated into Arabic in various ways and that the choice of one specific way is determined by the neighboring structure that the translator has chosen to use. This multiplicity of workable translation choices introduces Arabic as a pretty flexible language in regard to the translation of English non-finite clauses. Nominal, verbal and prepositional clauses as well as verbal nouns are the translators' tools to translate English non-finite clauses into Arabic.
Despite the variety of choices at the hands of the translators, some of them appeared sometimes helpless and failed to provide a translation of non-finite clauses. They skipped translating some of the non-finite clauses not because of a failure in Arabic language to find equivalents to such clauses but it is because of their inability to comprehend them.