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Subject-verb order in spoken Arabic: Morpholexical and event-based factors

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 April 2009

Jonathan Owens ,
Robin Dodsworth  and
Trent Rockwood
Jonathan Owens
Affiliation:
University of Maryland and Bayreuth University
Robin Dodsworth
Affiliation:
North Carolina State University
Trent Rockwood
Affiliation:
University of Maryland
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Abstract

This article explores the relationship between the global functions of variable subject-verb order and morpholexical class of subjects in the spoken Arabic of the Arabian peninsula. Using corpus-based methods, it is shown that lexical class—pronoun, pronominal, noun—definiteness, and the discourse-defined lexical specificity of a noun all correlate significantly with subject-verb or verb-subject word order. The global function of the two orders is explored using an array of measures to show that verb-subject order prototypically presents events, while subject-verb signals available referentiality. Using the quantitatively based study of Anthony Naro and Sebastiao Votre ([1999]. Discourse motivations for linguistic regularities: Verb/subject order in spoken Brazilian Portuguese. Probus 11:75–100.) on Brazilian Portuguese as a point of comparison, a typological framework is developed for understanding languages with variable subject-verb order.

Type
Research Article
Information
Language Variation and Change , Volume 21 , Issue 1 , March 2009 , pp. 39 - 67
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2009

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