‘And’ and ‘Wa’ : A Contrastive Study

Abstract

This paper aimed at comparing and contrasting the discourse functions of the connectives’ And’ and ‘Wa’ in both English and Arabic written discourses. Both of these connectives share certain functions but differ in others. There is no one-to-one relationship between and and ‘Wa’ since the latter can be used to signal more semantic relations in Arabic discourse. This lack of correspondence between ‘And’ and ‘Wa’ creates problems in translating from one language into the other