Résumé:
It is scientifically stated that English belongs to the Indo-European family of languages with no etymological connection with Arabic whose origin is held to be Semitic. However, recent studies have duly questioned this conventional linguistic belief by evidencing the Arabic basis of English lexis in general. Accordingly, the aim of this study is to investigate EFL students’ perceptions of English irregular adjectives as Arabic-based at the department of English. The study explores the Arabic meaning embedded in English adjectives by means of Cross-linguistic Etymo-morpho-phonological Analysis (CLEMPA) to analyse English irregular adjectives and measure the change in students’ perceptions expected to characterize their post-CLEMPA responses. Therefore, it is hypothesized that the CLEMPA of English adjectives will change students’ perceptions in favour of the Arabic meaning embedded in the underlying root. Hence,a two-part ‘questionnaire test’ evaluating EFL students’ semantic perceptions before and after CLEMPA was administered to 55 Master 1 students at the department of English. As predicted,the results demonstrated that the advocated analysis (CLEMPA) considerably affected the participants overall perceptions, whose value was 68.04%. This means that their linguistic awareness was raised in favor of the Arabic basis of English irregular adjectives. The findings underscore the significance of recommending that CLEMPA technique be incorporated in teaching EFL to disclose semantic connections with Arabic roots.
