<b>Modern Arabic</b> : Structures, functions and varieties. By Clive Holes (Longman linguistics library.) London: Longman, 1995. Pp. xiii, 343.

Introduction: where is Arabic spoken? varieties of Arabic aims of this book. Part 1 A brief history of Arabic: Arabic as a Semitic language Arabic at the dawn of Islam the spread of Arabic middle Arabic, the modern dialects and the evolution of modern standard Arabic the contemporary linguistic situation. Part 2 Phonology: the phonology of MSA the phonology of the dialects phonological variation in the dialects phonology and script. Part 3 Verb morphology: general principles root and morphosemantic patterns - MSA morphosyntactic patterns of these finite verb - MSA verbal affixes morphophonological adjustments dialectal verb morphology. Part 4 Noun morphology: the verbal noun participles other categories of the singular noun number case and definiteness gender. Part 5 Beyond root and pattern - pronouns and deictics: personal pronouns demonstratives interrogatives. Part 6 Syntax (I) - phrase structure: the noun phrase the verb phrase negation. Part 7 Syntax (II) - sentence structure: word order clause order and type. Part 8 Lexical, semantic and stylistic developments: foreign borrowing into Arabic the language academies the language of the media repetition and parallelism. Part 9 Language level in Arabic: introducion language levels in Cairo level switching co-occurrence phenomena and level dialogue and dialect in literature and journalism.