A Comparative Study of Adjective Phrases in Persian and Arabic based on X-bar Theory

Abstract

This paper is aimed at comparing the various adjective phrase categories in Persian and its Arabic equivalent in the light of X- bar theory to identify the similarities and differences of adjective phrases in both languages and to use the findings in teaching Arabic to Persian speakers. Persian adjective phrases and their categories are classified due to the argument that adjective takes in this language, then the equivalent Arabic adjective phrase is analyzed. By carrying out this study in a descriptive- contrastive analysis framework, the most important findings of this research is that X-bar theory is an efficient one when it comes to comparing Persian and Arabic adjective phrases. Furthermore, prepositional phrases play an important role in adjective phrases in Arabic.