Thematic Structure and Para-Syntax: Arabic as a Case Study [1° ed.] 0367367505, 9780367367503

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Thematic Structure and Para-​Syntax: Arabic as a Case Study

Thematic Structure and Para-​Syntax: Arabic as a Case Study presents a structural analysis of Arabic, providing an alternative to the traditional notions of theme and rheme. Taking Arabic as a case study, this book claims that approaches to thematic structure propounded in universalist linguistic theories, of which Hallidayan systemic functional linguistics is taken as an illustrative example, are profoundly wrong. It argues that in order to produce an analysis of thematic structure and similar phenomena which is not undermined by its own theoretical presuppositions, it is necessary to remove such notions from the domain of linguistic and semiotic theory. The book initially focuses on Sudanese Arabic, because this allows for a beautifully clear exposition of general principles, before applying these principles to Modern Standard Arabic, and some other Arabic varieties. This book will be of interest to scholars in Arabic linguistics, linguistic theory, and information structure. James Dickins is Professor of Arabic at the University of Leeds.

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Routledge Studies in Arabic Linguistics Series Editor: James Dickins, University of Leeds, UK

Routledge Studies in Arabic Linguistics is a state-​of-​the-​art series presenting high quality research on the linguistics of Arabic. Titles in the series range from reprinted classics to innovative studies in the field and cover both research monographs and edited volumes. Thematic Structure and Para-​Syntax: Arabic as a Case Study James Dickins For more information about this series, please visit: www.routledge.com/ Routledge-​Studies-​in-​Arabic-​Linguistics/book-​series/RSAL18

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Thematic Structure and Para-​Syntax: Arabic as a Case Study James Dickins

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First published 2020 by Routledge 2 Park Square, Milton Park, Abingdon, Oxon OX14 4RN and by Routledge 52 Vanderbilt Avenue, New York, NY 10017 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group, an informa business © 2020 James Dickins The right of James Dickins to be identified as author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. Trademark notice: Product or corporate names may be trademarks or registered trademarks, and are used only for identification and explanation without intent to infringe. British Library Cataloguing-​in-​Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-​in-​Publication Data Names: Dickins, J. (James), author. Title: Thematic structure and para-syntax: Arabic as a case study / James Dickins. Description: London; New York: Routledge, 2020. | Series: Routledge studies in Arabic linguistics | Includes bibliographical references and index. Identifiers: LCCN 2019043687 (print) | LCCN 2019043688 (ebook) | ISBN 9780367367503 (hardback) | ISBN 9780429351150 (ebook) Subjects: LCSH: Arabic language–Syntax. | Linguistics–Philosophy. | Linguistic analysis (Linguistics) Classification: LCC PJ6151 .D53 2020 (print) | LCC PJ6151 (ebook) | DDC 492.7/5–dc23 LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019043687 LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2019043688 ISBN: 978-​0-​367-​36750-​3 (hbk) ISBN: 978-​0-​429-​35115-​0 (ebk) Typeset in Times New Roman by Newgen Publishing UK

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This book is dedicated to M.A.L. Lamb, the originator of extended axiomatic functionalism.

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Contents

List of figures  List of tables 

ix x

1

Introduction 

1

2

Signs, syntax, para-​syntax, theme and rheme  2.1 Introduction 5 2.2 Signs 5 2.3 Grammar (morphology and syntax) as sign-​level analysis 7 2.4 Syntax and para-​syntax 7

5

3

Issues in defining ‘theme’  3.1 Introduction 25 3.2 Theme as starting point of the utterance 25

25

4

Recursion  4.1 Introduction 29 4.2 Recursion 29

29

5

Summary of arguments so far 

38

6

Traditional Arabic grammar analysis of Arabic clause structure  6.1 Introduction 40 6.2 Traditional Arabic grammar analysis of Arabic clause structure 40

40

7

Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema analysis of Standard Arabic  7.1 Introduction 49 7.2 Application of Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema analysis to Standard Arabic 50

49

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viii Contents 7.3 Comparison with Baker’s (2011) analysis of Standard Arabic 57 7.4 Nuc/Rhema-​markers and Peri/Thema-​markers in Standard Arabic 59 7.5 A comparison with Arabic dialects and other languages 87 8 Phrase-​structural para-​syntax in Arabic: beyond theme and rheme  8.1 Introduction 89 8.2 Initiality as non-​thematic discourse marker in Arabic 89 8.3 Initiality as non-​thematic discourse marker: Standard Arabic compared to other languages 92 9 Phrase-​structural para-​syntactic notions vs. (real) semantic notions  9.1 Introduction 93 9.2 The necessity of separating phrase-​structural para-​syntactic from (real) semantic notions 93

89

93

10 Distinguishing syntax from para-​syntax  10.1 Introduction 97 10.2 The necessity of distinguishing syntax from para-​syntax in Standard Arabic 97

97

11 Conclusions 

98

Technical appendix: endnotes  References  Index 

100 143 151

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Figures

2 .1 7.1 TA.1 TA.2 TA.3

Signs and their realisations: a basic model Hierarchy of markedness of themes in Standard Arabic Extended axiomatic functionalism: signum ontology Extended axiomatic functionalism: system ontology Extended axiomatic functionalism: complete model (system ontology and signum ontology) TA.4 Position classes for attributive adjective coordination in English A.5 Position classes for attributive adjective coordination in T English: alternative representation TA.6 Position class for bipartite clauses in Arabic

6 66 101 103 106 121 121 122

x

newgenprepdf

Tables

2 .1 Indefinite and definite phrases in Sudanese Arabic 6.1 Indefinite and definite phrases in Sudanese and Standard Arabic

10 42

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1  Introduction

In Dickins (2009b) I presented some ideas for integrating thematic structure into analyses of Arabic. In this book,1 I develop these ideas on the basis of a distinc��tion at the abstract level between syntax and para-​syntax,2 where para-​syntax is defined as including all grammatical features – among them phrase-​structural features – which go beyond the basic level of syntax. In Chapters 2–5, I focus on Sudanese Arabic, because this provides beautifully clear examples of key analytical notions developed in the book. From Chapter 6 onwards I apply, and develop, these notions, mainly in relation to Modern Standard Arabic, i.e. the modern version of the formal written-​based language, whose pre-​modern counterpart is Classical Arabic – Modern Standard Arabic and Classical Arabic together constituting Standard Arabic. However, I also consider material from Classical Arabic and a range of Arabic dialects, where these illustrate relevant points. I draw a distinction between the abstract level, including syntax and para-​syntax, and the concrete level, where, I argue, features (notions) such as theme and rheme properly belong. I further argue that even at this concrete level, it is necessary to go beyond traditional notions of theme and rheme in order to adequately account for the relevant phenomena in Arabic and other languages. On these bases, the book provides a critique of the Hallidayan approach in particular to theme/rheme and given/new analysis, and offers an alternative analysis, as applied to Arabic, to the Hallidayan account. However, it is, by extension, a critique of all theories which adopt a universalist approach to notions such as theme and rheme, arguing that such putative universal notions do not belong in linguistic theory proper, and that their presence in it necessarily distorts linguistic analysis. The theory underlying this work is extended axiomatic functionalism (e.g. Dickins 1998, 2009a, 2014a, 2016), a theory which itself grew out of ‘standard 1 I thank Dina El Zarka, Sam Hellmuth, Barry Heselwood, Jeremy Munday, Tsveta Pashova and Janet Watson for making extremely useful comments on a draft version of this book, which have very considerably helped improve the final version. 2 In some works (e.g. Gardner 1985) utilising an axiomatic-​functionalist framework, what is referred to here as ‘para-​syntax’ is referred to as ‘parasyntax’ without a hyphen between ‘para’ and ‘syntax’.

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2 Introduction axiomatic functionalism’, proposed by Jan Mulder and Sándor Hervey (e.g. Mulder 1989). However, (i) this theory is intended to be common-​sensical, (ii) the fundamental notions are therefore intended to be accessible, when presented in non-​technical form, to readers who are not specialists in the theory, and (iii) not all readers will be interested in the technical details of the theory. Accordingly, I have placed all technical information relating to the theory in endnotes in a Technical Appendix at the end of the main text. Those readers who wish to explore further the theoretical principles underpinning the notions developed in this book can consult the Technical Appendix, while those who do not can ignore it. In order to allow the reader to easily distinguish footnotes from endnotes, references to the endnotes in the Technical Appendix are marked with Roman numerals and footnotes are marked with Arabic numbers. Chapter 2 of this book establishes a basic semiotic (sign-​based)i framework (Section 2.2) for grammar (morphology and syntax) (Section 2.3) and para-​syntax, introducing the notions predicand and predicate as traditional syntactic features of Arabic, and arguing, on the basis of Dickins (2010b), for an ‘equative’ analysis of bipartite clauses in Sudanese Arabic, and by extension other Arabic varieties (Section 2.4). I argue that a conjunction of accent and ‘meaning prominence’ constitutes valid evidence for a para-​syntactic semiotic entity (sign) (an analysis which will, however, be later revised in Chapter 7, and particularly in Chapter 8). The intonational bifurcation primary accent – secondary accent/‘unaccent’ is also argued to apply recursively (Section 2.4.1). Section 2.4.2 considers theme and rheme, and given and new as real-​world (realisational) informational (semantic) notions, and what I term Peri/Thema and Nuc/Rhema (rhyming with ‘merry dreamer’, and ‘puke streamer’, respectively) as abstract phrase-​structural para-​ syntactic notions. Section 2.4.3 considers para-​syntax in relation to word order, arguing that word order is not in itself a (phrase-​)structural matter. Chapter 3 further considers theme and rheme as real-​world (realisational) informational (semantic) notions. It also argues that the Hallidayan semantic definition of ‘theme’ and ‘rheme’ is uninterpretable and as such not acceptable. Chapter 4 considers recursion. Section 4.2 argues that an analysis involving recursion is always simpler than, and therefore to be preferred to, one not involving recursion, thereby opening the way to a recursive analysis of complex para-​syntactic structures in Arabic. Section 4.2.1 considers prosodic recursion viewed as a purely formal, expression-​side para-​phonotactic phenomenon within phonology, arguing that this maximally simply reflects para-​phonotactic recursion of the type discussed in this book (in Section 2.4.1). Section 4.2.2 considers phrase-​structural para-​syntactic recursion in relation to Sudanese Arabic. Chapter 5 summarises the argument so far. Shifting the focus to Standard Arabic, Chapter 6 shows that key princi� ples established for Sudanese Arabic also apply to Standard Arabic, and in particular: 1. Primary accent does not have to be associated with an indefinite element; 2. Primary accent does not have to occur on the final (second) element in a bipartite clause; it may also occur on the first; 3. Primary accent, and by extension secondary

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Introduction 3 accent/non-​accent, function independently of both definiteness and word order, i.e. that they are independently functional of other factors in the grammatical system, not merely reflective (realisational) of other grammatical features. Chapter 6 then considers clause/sentence analysis in traditional Arabic grammar, particularly (i) the distinction between nominal and verbal clauses/ sentences, and (ii) the traditional recursive analysis of S-​V structures (including S-​V-​O structures and other post-​verbal extensions of the S-​V structure), such that a post-​subject verbal phrase is itself analysed in traditional Arabic grammar as a verbal clause/sentence. This provides a point of comparison for the para-​syntactic analysis of Standard Arabic clauses which I shall put forward in Chapter 7. Chapter 7 develops and investigates the Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema analysis of Standard Arabic. Section 7.2 applies the current model to both simple and complex clauses in Standard Arabic. Section 7.3 compares the current Peri/Thema-​ Nuc/Rhema analysis with the Hallidayan-​based theme-​rheme analysis in Baker (2011), arguing that the quite different analyses which Baker arrives at for an English text and its Arabic translation are a function, not of the nature of texts, but of the inadequacies of the model which Baker adopts, and showing that the model proposed in this book overcomes these inadequacies. Section 7.4 considers Peri/ Thema and Nuc/Rhema markers in Standard Arabic, showing, first in relation to predicand-​predicate structures, that in ammā … fa-​structures, ammā is a ‘theme-​ introducer’, coming at the start of the overall Peri/Thema, while fa-​ is a ‘rheme-​ introducer’ coming at the start of the Nuc/Rhema. This analysis is extended to other initial adverbial phrases/clauses, including sentences which lack a ‘theme-​ introducer’, but have a ‘rheme-​introducer’. Section 7.4.1 considers the notion of markedness, arguing that ‘markedness’ is a semantic matter as well as a matter of realisational frequency, and presents a putative hierarachy of potential markedness for different types of clause structure in Arabic. Section 7.4.1.1 proposes five functions of marked themes in Arabic. Section 7.4.1.1.1 compares the five functions in Section 7.4.1.1 with categories put forward by other writers on Standard and Colloquial Arabic, arguing that there is significant commonality. Section 7.4.1.1.2 considers the relationship between ‘given’ and ‘new’ and the functions in Section 7.4.1.1, showing that as there is no full match between them, the two cannot be equated. Section 7.4.2 considers historical changes in Standard Arabic, arguing that in Classical Arabic, initial adverbial Peri/Themas were realised as more marked than in Modern Standard Arabic. I note that in Modern Standard Arabic nominal clauses/sentences are becoming more common, and verbal clauses/sentences less common, suggesting that nominal clauses/sentences are becoming less marked. This does not involve a change in the phrase-​structural para-​syntactic structures, but rather in the semantic correlates (realisations) of these structures. Section 7.5 considers Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema structures in Arabic ­dialects and Standard Arabic, contrasting dialects in which nominal clauses/­sentences are becoming generalised with dialects where both verbal and nominal

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4 Introduction clauses/sentences remain widely used. I also compare Arabic with ‘verb-​second’ Germanic languages. Noting that the notions discussed in sections 7.4–7.4.1.1 already strain traditional definitions of theme and rheme, Chapter 8, Section 8.2 looks at semantic phenomena in Standard Arabic related to Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema structures which are clearly incompatible with traditional notions of theme and rheme, particularly the use of V-​S word order in event-​oriented/events-​based/narrative sentences, and of S-​V word order in topic-​oriented/concept-​based sentences in Standard and Colloquial Arabic. Section 8.3 shows how some semantic realisations of V-​S and S-​V word orders in Arabian Peninsular Arabic are the converse of those in Brazilian Portuguese, and that there are also striking differences between Arabic and Romani. I argue that this presents very serious problems for a Hallidayan analysis of theme and rheme. Chapter 9 argues that it is necessary to separate phrase-​structural para-​syntactic notions from (real) semantic notions. Theories, such as the Hallidayan, which fail to do this, thereby also adopting a universalist approach to (real) semantic notions, prejudice their analysis of the data, imposing on it notions which the theory requires it has. Chapter 10 demonstrates that because a Peri/Thema in Standard Arabic may be either a predicand or an adverbial, it is necessary to have separate levels of syntax and para-​syntax. Chapter 11 states the main conclusions of the book.

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2  Signs, syntax, para-​syntax, theme and rheme

2.1 Introduction This chapter establishes a basic semiotic (sign-​based) framework (Section 2.2) for grammar (morphology and syntax) (Section 2.3) and para-​syntax, introducing the notions predicand and predicate as traditional syntactic features of Arabic, and arguing, on the basis of Dickins (2010b), for an ‘equative’ analysis of bipartite clauses in Sudanese Arabic, and by extension other varieties (Section 2.4). It argues that a conjunction of accent and ‘meaning prominence’ constitutes valid evidence for a para-​syntactic semiotic entity (sign) (an analysis which will, however, be later revised in Chapter 7, and particularly in Chapter 8). The intonational bifurca�tion primary accent – secondary accent/‘unaccent’ is also argued to apply recursively (Section 2.4.1). Section 2.4.2 considers theme and rheme, and given and new as real-​world (realisational) informational (semantic) notions, and what I term Peri/Thema and Nuc/Rhema (rhyming with ‘merry dreamer’, and ‘puke streamer’, respectively) as abstract phrase-​structural para-​syntactic notions. Section 2.4.3 considers para-​syntax in relation to word order, arguing that word-​order is not in itself a (phrase-​)structural matter.

2.2 Signs This book adopts a Saussurean-​based, and more specifically Hjelmslevian-​based, view of the sign as an entity which is a bi-​unity of expression and content. The sign itself, its expression and its content are all abstract entities, which are realised (‘made real’) in actual speech by real sounds (in the case of expression), real meanings (in the case of content), and real utterances (as bi-​unities of real sounds and real meanings) in the case of signs. Thus, as well as phonetic realisations (of phonological entities) and utterance realisations (of grammatical entities: morphemes, words, phrases, etc.), one can talk about semantic realisations, i.e. real meanings which realise abstract meanings, and, more indirectly, abstract grammatical features, including – as will be argued in this book (Section 2.4 and

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6 Signs, syntax, para-syntax, theme and rheme Sign

Abstraction

Expression

Content

Sound (phonetic element)

Meaning

Reality (Realisation) Utterance

Figure 2.1 Signs and their realisations: a basic model

following sections) – features of para-​syntax.1 This situation can be represented as in Figure 2.1. Figure 2.1 provides only a very partial account of the relationship between sign (etc.) and utterance (etc.) under the current approach (for such an analysis see Dickins 2016). It is, however, sufficient as a starting point for this book.i

1 The use of ‘realise’ to mean roughly ‘make [more] real/concrete’ (and of ‘realisation’ to mean roughly ‘making [more] real’) in the current approach thus contrasts with its use in many other approaches, such as Hallidayan systemic functional linguistics, where the term ‘realisation’ is used to describe the proposed ‘directional relationship’ of linguistic features from meaning at one end through grammar to phonology, and ultimately to phonetics (e.g. Berry 2017: 46). In systemic functional linguistics, for example, phonology is said to realise (lexico-​)grammar, and phonetics to realise phonology – both of which notions are terminologically fairly compatible with those of the current approach. (Lexico-​)grammar, however, is said to realise semantics – while under the current approach, semantics can be said roughly to realise grammar (grammar is, roughly, realised by semantics, as well as by phonology). For an overall account of the current approach, see Dickins (2016).

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Signs, syntax, para-syntax, theme and rheme 7

2.3 Grammar (morphology and syntax) as sign-​level analysis Signs may be simple; i.e. they may be basic entities which cannot be further analysed into other entities. Or they may be complex; i.e. they may be entities (signs) which can be further analysed into smaller constituent signs. Thus, ‘sad’ in English is a simple sign, consisting of the sign ‘sad’ only, while ‘sadly’ is a complex sign, consisting of the signs ‘sad’ and ‘ly’ (signs of this kind bear an obvious similarity to morphemes in traditional grammar). I have argued elsewhere (e.g. Dickins 1998, 2006, 2016) that ‘grammar’ is a sign-​level phenomenon, i.e. that (i) grammatical entities are bi-​unities of expression and content, and (ii) grammatical analysis (‘grammar’) involves the establishment (or identification) of simple signs, and the analysis of their combination into complex signs. ‘Grammar’ here subsumes morphology and syntax – as understood in a sense which is roughly compatible with traditional grammar (albeit that traditional grammar is itself a vague notion).ii (Cf. also Dickins 2013, for a discussion of two rather different uses of the term ‘syntax’ in the current approach.)

2.4 Syntax and para-​syntax In Sections 2.4–2.4.1, I attempt to establish that there is grammatical phrase-​ structural organisation in Sudanese Arabic going beyond syntax, in what I shall call para-​syntax (this section). In order to demonstrate this, I show in particular that in relation to intonation: 1. Primary accent does not have to be associated with an indefinite element; indeed, it may be associated with a definite element, even when the other element in a clause consisting of two elements (a bipartite clause) is indefinite; 2. Primary accent does not have to occur on the final (second) element in a bipartite clause; it may also occur on the first; 3. Primary accent, and by extension secondary accent/non-​accent, function independently of both definiteness and word order, i.e. they are independently functional of other factors in the grammatical system, not merely reflective (realisational) of other grammatical features. In these sections I consider only crucial examples of very simple bipartite structures, because these provide foundational analyses which will taken forward in later parts of this book. I am not concerned with intonational melody/tune (this constitutes a further area of semiotic analysis, falling outside the purview of the book).iii This work does not, therefore, attempt to provide a detailed analysis of Sudanese Arabic intonation, but rather simply identifies those key elements of Sudanese intonation which are relevant to subsequent analysis in the book. The current approach provides for a para-​syntax, i.e. aspects of analysis of signs (as bi-​unities of expression and content) which go beyond syntax.iv The

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8 Signs, syntax, para-syntax, theme and rheme distinction between syntax and para-​syntax can be illustrated by an example from Sudanese Arabic. In Dickins (2010b) I argue that the basic syntactic structure of Sudanese clauses (i.e. the core structure ignoring peripheral, e.g. adverbial, elements) is equative: what might be represented as A=B or equally B=A. An example of this kind of clausal structure is niḥna masākīn2 ‘we are wretched’ (niḥna ‘we’, masākīn ‘wretched’). Here niḥna can be identified as the A element and masākīn as the B element. An alternative realisation of this equative syntactic structure is with masākīn first: masākīn niḥna ‘wretched are we’ in which the B element comes first. Since this is a novel way of looking at Arabic syntax, I will amplify the arguments for this view in the following paragraphs. The fundamental argument of Dickins (2010b) is that syntactic equativeness extends beyond traditional equative structures in Sudanese Arabic, i.e. beyond forms which consist of NOMINAL+ADJECTIVAL such as al-​walad zaʕlān ‘the boy is angry’ (literally: ‘the-​boy angry’; cf. niḥna masākīn ‘we are wretched’; literally: ‘we wretched’), or NOMINAL+NOMINAL, e.g. al-​walad tarzī ‘the boy’s a tailor’ (literally: ‘the-​boy tailor’), or NOMINAL+ADVERBIAL, e.g. al-​walad fī al-​bēt ‘the boy is in the house’ (literally: ‘the boy in-​the-​house’), and encompass cases such as NOMINAL+VERBAL, e.g. al-​walad ziʕil ‘the boy got angry’ (literally: ‘the-​boy got~angry’). I show this by arguing that there is a parallelism between NOMINAL+ADJECTIVAL, e.g. al-​walad zaʕlān ‘the boy is angry’ (literally: ‘the-​boy angry’) and NOMINAL+VERBAL, e.g. al-​walad ziʕil ‘the boy got angry’ (literally: ‘the-​boy got~angry’), which can be seen not only in these basic forms, but in other related forms, such as: 1. forms with further dependent elements on the ADJECTIVAL/VERBAL, such as NOMINAL+ADJECTIVAL, such as al-​walad zaʕlān minn-​ak ‘the boy is angry with you (m.sg.)’ (literally: ‘the-​boy angry from-​you’) and NOMINAL+VERBAL, e.g. al-​walad ziʕil minn-​ak ‘the boy got angry with you (m.sg.)’ (literally: ‘the-​boy got~angry from-​ you’); and 2. forms with inversion of the NOMINAL+ADJECTIVAL/VERBAL structure, e.g. zaʕlān (minn-​ak) al-​walad ‘the boy is angry (with you (m.sg.)’

2 In this book, I have used the following transliteration system, covering both Sudanese Arabic and Standard Arabic. For the consonants I have used: ‘b’ for ‫‘ ;ب‬m’ for ‫‘ ;م‬w’ for consonantal ‫‘ ;و‬f’ for ‫ ;ف‬ṯ for ‫ ;ث‬ḏ for ‫‘ ;ذ‬ḏ̟ ’ for Standard Arabic interdental ‫‘ ;ظ‬d’ for ‫‘ ;د‬t’ for ‫‘ ;ت‬z’ for ‫‘ ;ز‬s’ for ‫‘ ;س‬ḍ’ for ‫‘ ;ض‬ṭ’ for ‫‘ ;ط‬ẓ’ for Sudanese fricative ‫‘ ;ظ‬ṣ’ for ‫‘ ;ص‬r’ for Standard Arabic ‫ ر‬and Sudanese non-​emphatic ‫‘ ;ر‬ṛ’ for Sudanese emphatic ‫‘ ;ر‬l’ for non-​emphatic ‫‘ ;ل‬ḷ’ for emphatic ‫‘ ;ل‬n’ for ‫;ن‬ ‘j’ for ‫‘ ;ج‬š’ for ‫‘ ;ش‬y’ for consonantal ‫‘ ;ي‬g’ for Sudanese ‫( ق‬voiced, post-​dorso-​velar, stop); ‘k’ for ‫‘ ;ك‬q’ for Standard Arabic ‫( ق‬unvoiced, uvular, stop); ‘ġ’ for ‫‘ ;غ‬x’ for ‫‘ ;خ‬ʕ’ for ‫‘ ;ع‬ḥ’ for ‫ ’’‘ ;ح‬for ‫ء‬ (except word-​initially, where no symbol is used); ‘h’ for ‫هـ‬. The vowels are: ‘a’ for ‫‘ ;ــ َـ‬i’ for ‫‘ ;ــِـ‬u’ for ‫‘ ;ــ ُـ‬ā’ for ‫‘ ;ــ َـا‬ī’ for ‫‘ ;ــِي‬ū’ for ‫‘ ;ــ ُـو‬ay’ for‫ ـ َـ ْي‬as a diphthong; ‘ē’ for ‫ ـ َـ ْي‬as a monophthong (front, mid, unrounded, long vowel); ‘aw’ for ‫ ــ َ ْـو‬as a diphthong; ‘ō’ for ‫ ــ َ ْـو‬as a monophthong (back, mid, rounded, long vowel). The definite particle al-​ has numerous allomorphic variants, such as az-​ before a word beginning with ‘z’, such as zaʕlān ‘angry’, and forms without the initial ‘a’ after a preceding vowel. For simplicity of presentation, the definite article ‫ الـ‬is written al-​in all cases, regardless of whether it assimilates to the following consonant, or whether the initial ‘a’ disappears following a previous

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Signs, syntax, para-syntax, theme and rheme 9 (literally: ‘angry (from-​you) the-​boy’) and ziʕil (minn-​ak) al-​walad ‘the boy got angry (with you (m.sg.)’ (literally: ‘got~angry (from-​you the-​boy’). I further argue that the definite particle al-​ (often termed a ‘definite article’; this section below) can occur not only on nominals and adjectivals, e.g. al-​walad ‘the boy’ (literally: ‘the-​boy’), al-​zaʕlān ‘the angry (one)’ (literally: ‘the-​angry), al-​zaʕlān minn-​ak ‘the one who is angry with you (m.sg.)’ (literally: ‘the-​angry with-​you’), but also on adverbials, e.g. al-​fī al-​bēt ‘the one who is in the house’ (literally: ‘the-​in-​the-​house’) and verbals, e.g. al-​ziʕil (minn-​ak) ‘the one who got angry (with you (m.sg.)’ (literally: ‘the-​got~angry (with-​you’). I also argue that these are the definite counterparts of the corresponding forms without al-​, i.e. walad ‘a boy’ (literally: ‘boy’), zaʕlān (minn-​ak) ‘angry (with you (m.sg.)’ (literally: ‘angry (with-​you)’, fī al-​bēt ‘in the house’; (literally: ‘in-​the-​house’), and ziʕil (minn-​ak) ‘got angry (with you (m.sg.))’ (literally: got~angry (with you)’), these latter forms without al-​being indefinite. This situation can be represented as in Table 2.1, in which I have added further glosses, where appropriate, to bring out the parallelism between the forms with and without the definite particle: On the basis of the above, I argue that clauses in Sudanese Arabic may be of various combinations of definite and indefinite, typically with one definite and one indefinite element. Thus in all of al-​walad tarzī ‘the boy’s a tailor’ (literally: ‘the-​boy tailor’), al-​walad zaʕlān (minn-​ak) ‘the boy is angry (with you)’ (literally: ‘the-​boy angry (from-​you)’), al-​walad ziʕil (minn-​ak) ‘the boy got angry (with you)’, and al-​walad fī al-​bēt ‘the boy is in the house’ (literally: ‘the-​ boy in-​the-​house’), the first element (al-​walad ‘the boy’) is definite, while the second element (tarzī ‘tailor’, fī al-​bēt ‘in the house’, zaʕlān (minn-​ak) ‘angry (with you)’, and ziʕil (minn-​ak) ‘got angry (with you)’) is indefinite. As noted in Table 2.1, to bring out the indefiniteness of the adjectival, verbal and adver�bial here, zaʕlān (minn-​ak) ‘angry (with you)’ might also be glossed as ‘an angry (with-​you) one’, ziʕil (minn-​ak) ‘got angry (with you)’ as ‘a got~angry (with-​you) one’, and fī al-​bēt ‘in the house’ as ‘an in-​the-​house one’.v This contrasts with examples such as at-​tarzī walad ‘the tailor’s a boy’ (literally: ‘the-​tailor boy’), az-​zaʕlān (minn-​ak) walad ‘the one who is angry (with you) is a boy’ (literally: ‘the-​angry (from-​you) boy’), az-​ziʕil (minn-​ak) walad ‘the one who got angry (with you) is a boy’ (literally: the got~angry (from-​you) boy’) , and al-​fī al-​bēt walad ‘the one in the house is a boy’ (literally: ‘the-​in-​the-​house boy’). Here the element walad (which comes second) is indefinite, while the other

vowel. This is easier for the reader than using a very large number of allomorphic variants to represent the definite particle, and partially parallels the form of the definite particle in the Arabic script, where it is written, regardless of the allomorph involved, as ...‫الـ‬, i.e. as the letter ‫ا‬, which can be read (amongst other things) as ‘a’, and the letter. ...‫ الـ‬, i.e ‘l’. Hyphens are used at the end of wa-​transcribing ‫‘ و‬and’; fa-​transcribing ‫(‘ ف‬and) so’; bi-​transcribing ‫‘ ب‬and’, ‘with’; and before suffixed non-​subject pronouns. In the English gloss, a dash – is retained where it is used in the Arabic transliteration. The symbol ~ is used in the English literal translation to connect two English words which correspond to one Arabic word.

10

10 Signs, syntax, para-syntax, theme and rheme Table 2.1 Indefinite and definite phrases in Sudanese Arabic

Nominal Adjectival

Verbal

Adverbial

Indefinite: without definite particle

Definite: with definite particle

walad ‘a boy’ Literally: ‘boy’ zaʕlān (minn-​ak) ‘angry (with you)’ Literally: ‘angry (from-​you)’ Also glossable as: ‘an angry (with-​you) one’ ziʕil (minn-​ak) ‘got angry (with you)’ Literally: ‘got~angry (from-​you)’ Also glossable as: ‘a got~angry (with-​you) one’ fī al-​bēt ‘in the house’ Literally: ‘in-​the-​house’ Also glossable as: ‘an in-​the-​ house one’

al-​walad ‘the boy’ Literally: ‘the-​boy’ al-​zaʕlān (minn-​ak) ‘the one who is angry (with you)’ Literally: ‘the-​angry (from-​you)’ Also glossable as: ‘the-​angry (with-​ you) one’ al-​ziʕil (minn-​ak) ‘the one who got angry (with you)’ Literally: ‘the-​got~angry (with-​you)’ Also glossable as: ‘the got got~angry (with-​you) one’ al-​fī al-​bēt ‘the one who is in the house’ Literally: ‘the-​in-​the-​house’ Also glossable as: ‘the in-​the-​house one’

element (at-​tarzī ‘the tailor’, az-​zaʕlān (minn-​ak) ‘the one who is angry (with you)’, az-​ziʕil (minn-​ak) ‘the one who got angry (with you)’ and al-​fī al-​bēt ‘the one who is in the house’), which comes first, is definite – i.e. the definiteness and indefiniteness of the elements is reversed as compared to al-​walad tarzī ‘the boy is a tailor’ etc. (given above). As noted above, it is possible to say zaʕlān (minn-​ak) al-​walad ‘the boy is angry (with you)’ (literally: ‘angry (from-​you) the-​boy’) and ziʕil (minn-​ak) al-​ walad ‘the boy got angry (with you)’ (literally: got~angry (from-​you) the-​boy’) with INDEFINITE+DEFINITE word order, as counterparts of al-​walad zaʕlān (minn-​ak) ‘the boy is angry (with you)’ (literally: ‘the-​boy angry (with-​you)’) and al-​walad ziʕil (minn-​ak) ‘the boy got angry (with you)’ (literally: ‘the-​boy got~angry (with-​you)’) with DEFINITE+INDEFINITE word order. Similarly, it is also possible to say walad at-​tarzī ‘the tailor’s a boy’ (or ‘it’s a boy that the tailor is’; literally: ‘boy the-​tailor’), walad az-​zaʕlān (minn-​ak) ‘the one who is angry (with you) is a boy’ (or ‘it’s a boy that the one who got angry (with you) is’; literally: ‘boy the-​got~angry (from-​you)’), and walad az-​ziʕil (minn-​ak) ‘the one who got angry (with you) is a boy’ (‘it’s a boy that the one who got angry with you is’), and walad al-​fī al-​bēt ‘the one in the house is a boy’ (or ‘it’s a boy that the one in the house is’; literally: ‘boy the-​in-​the-​house’), with INDEFINITE+DEFINITE word order. These are the INDEFINITE+DEFINITE word-​order counterparts of at-​tarzī walad ‘the tailor’s a boy’ (literally: ‘the-​tailor boy’), az-​zaʕlān (minn-​ak) walad ‘the one who is angry (with you) is a boy’ (literally: ‘the-​angry (from-​you) boy’), az-​ziʕil (minn-​ak) walad ‘the one who got angry (with you) is a boy’ (literally: ‘the-​got~angry (from-​you) boy’), and al-​fī

 11

Signs, syntax, para-syntax, theme and rheme 11 al-​bēt walad ‘the one in the house is a boy’ (literally: ‘the-​in-​the-​house boy’) with DEFINITE+INDEFINITE word order (all given in this section, above). On the basis of evidence of the kind presented in the above paragraphs, I argue in Dickins (2010b) that all Sudanese Arabic clauses of this type having two elements (bipartite clauses) are equative (not just those types traditionally regarded as equative), i.e. all have a fundamental A=B structure, and that crucially each of A and B can be definite or indefinite. Whether this analysis of Sudanese Arabic clausal syntax is in fact correct, even under the current approach, is not specifically relevant for the analyses in this book. I have however presented it, because it provides a useful background to the current analyses. In terms of traditional Arabic grammar, niḥna masākīn and masākīn niḥna are analysed as bipartite clauses/sentences. In both cases, niḥna is analysed as what I will term in this book (Section 7.2) the predicand (what is known in traditional Arabic grammar as mubtada’ bi-​h, literally ‘begun with-​it’, more commonly referred to as mubtada’ ‘begun’), and masākīn is in both cases analysed as what I will term in this book the predicate (what is known in traditional Arabic grammar as xabar, literally ‘news’). Traditional Arabic grammar is discussed in more detail in this book in Section 7.2. (For further arguments against the traditional Arabic grammar analysis and in favour of the equative analysis, see Dickins (2010b), Section 2.6.)vi Niḥna masākīn and masākīn niḥna in Sudanese Arabic are, thus, according to both the analysis in Dickins (2010b) and in traditional Arabic grammar, the same syntactically: they both embody (realise) the same syntactic structure – equative in Dickins (2010b) and predicand-​predicate (mubtada’ bi-​h – xabar) in traditional Arabic grammar. They are, however, different in respect of word order. As spoken utterances, they may also be different in terms of primary accent (also called main stress, or sentence stress), as well as intonational tune (or ‘melody’). I will argue in this book that word order (e.g. Section 2.4.3) and primary accent placement (e.g. Section 2.4.1) may both be aspects of para-​syntax, fulfilling the basic criteria of sign-​identity – i.e. having both an expression (realised as physical phonetic element/sound) and a content (realised as meaning). I will not deal with intonational tune in this book, but simply note here that this is also to be analysed as an aspect of para-​syntax.3,vii 2.4.1 Para-​syntax: accented and unaccented units The typical accent pattern associated with both niḥna masākīn ‘We’re wretched’ and masākīn niḥna ‘wretched are we’ in Sudanese Arabic is one in which there is, in rapid speech at least, a single intonation unit within which the primary accent falls on masākīn, and niḥna is unaccented or possibly carries an ‘attenuated accent’ (cf. for Egyptian Arabic El Zarka 2013: 167, 170, 181, 258–259,

3 For a discussion of intonational tune within an approach similar to the one in this book, see Gardner (1985).

12

12 Signs, syntax, para-syntax, theme and rheme 281–282, 316, 418). Other terms for ‘intonation unit’ found in the literature include ‘intonational unit’, ‘intonation(al) phrase’, ‘tone group’, ‘intonation group’, and ‘tone unit’. Intonation units may be further divided into intermediate phrases. See the discussion of the relationship between ‘intonational phrase’ and ‘intermediate phrase’ in Chahal (2007: 396), and the corresponding analysis in Hellmuth (2011). Hellmuth uses the term ‘Major Phonological Phrase’, in place of Chahal’s ‘intermediate phrase’ (cf. El Zarka 2017: 16), while El Zarka (2013: 39) uses the term ‘prosodic phrase’, and Ali (2014: 6, 18–24) ‘Phonological Phrase’ or ‘P-​Phrase’. In relation to intonation units, we may consider evidence from Sudanese Arabic (Ali 2014: 34–40) with words which have two allomorphs, one with a single final consonant, and one with a doubled consonant. An example is bitt ‘girl’, which has two allomorphs with phonological forms /bitt/ and /bit/. Ali (2014: 34) shows that the first allomorph bitt occurs within an intermediate phrase (his ‘Phonological Phrase’ or ‘P-​Phrase’), e.g. al-​bitt al-​kabīra ‘the older girl’. This corresponds to the overall phonological form, with syllabification, as /‘al bit tal ka bī ra/ (Ali 2014: 34). Note that syllables in Sudanese Arabic are said not to be able to begin with a phonological vowel; a syllable which looks phonetically like it begins with a vowel is typically analysed phonologically as beginning with a phoneme /‘/, sometimes perhaps realised as a glottal stop, but in the great majority of cases /‘/ realised as zero or creaky voice (Dickins 2007: 29; Mustapha 1982: 68; although, I have also argued that this /‘/ may itself be analysed as a zero ‘phoneme’; Dickins 2007: 59–64). The second allomorph of bitt ‘girl’, having the phonological form /bit/, occurs within an intonational unit (what Ali terms an ‘Intonation Phrase’ or ‘I-​Phrase’) to yield two intermediate phrases (Ali’s Phonological Phrases/P-​Phrases). Ali gives the example al-​bit akalat ‘the girl ate’, which corresponds to the overall phonological form, with syllabification /‘al bi ta ka lat/ (Ali 2014: 34). Here what is striking is that the /t/ of /bit/ appears as the onset of /ta/. Thus, within an intermediate phrase (Phonological Phrase/P-​Phrase) we have a juncture phenomenon involving doubling of the consonant al-​bitt al-​kabīra ‘the older girl’: /‘al bit tal ka bī ra/. Between intermediate phrases, by contrast, we find ‘resyllabification’, such that a single /t/ is the onset of the next syllable al-​bit akalat ‘the girl ate’: /‘al bi ta ka lat/. With words of the bitt type, therefore, there is a clear phonological distinction between the allomorph involved where there is no intermediate phrase break, and where there is. Ali shows that the same phenomena are evident in relation to ‘deletion’ of certain unstressed vowels. Thus, a word such as kalib ‘dog’, with stress on the first syllable /ka/, has the allomorphs /kalib/ and /kalb/. Ali shows that when there is a single intermediate phrase, the /i/ is ‘deleted’.viii Thus, al-​kalib al-​kabīr ‘the big dog’ (literally: ‘the-​dog the-​big’) is realised phonologically as /‘al kal bal ka bīr/ (Ali 2014: 19). When, however, there is an intermediate break, there is no ‘deletion’ of the /i/. Thus, al-​kalib akal al-​ʕaḍum ‘the dog ate the bone’ (literally: ‘the-​ dog ate the-​bone’) is realised phonologically as /‘al ka lib ‘a kal ‘al ʕa ḍum/ (Ali 2014: 21); i.e. here there are two intermediate phrases /‘al ka lib/ and /‘a kal ‘al

 13

Signs, syntax, para-syntax, theme and rheme 13 ʕa ḍum/, /kalib/ being realised without deletion of the /i/ at the end of the first of these. The same situation as occurs with al-​kalib al-​kabīr ‘the big dog’ (literally: ‘the-​ dog the-​big’) and al-​kalib akal al-​ʕaḍum ‘the dog ate the bone’ (literally: ‘the-​dog ate the-​bone’) occurs also with al-​tājir al-​kabīr ‘the big merchant’ (literally: ‘the-​ merchant the-​big’) and al-​tājir anāni ‘the merchant is selfish’ (literally: ‘the-​ merchant selfish’) (Ali 2014: 22), tājir having two allomorphs of phonological forms /tājir/ and /tājr/. In the case of al-​tājir al-​kabīr ‘the big merchant’, where there is only one intermediate phrase, tājir is realised as the allomorph having the phonological form /tājr/, the phonological form of the entire phrase being /‘at tāj ral ka bīr/. In the case of al-​tājir anāni ‘the merchant is selfish’, tājir is realised as the allomorph having the phonological form /tājir/, the phonological form of the entire phrase being /‘at tā jir ‘a nā ni/. Here /‘at tā jir/ constitutes one intermediate phrase, and /‘a nā ni/ another. In terms of the syntactic analysis given in Section 2.4, all three of al-​bitt akalat ‘the girl ate’ (literallyː ‘the-​girl ate’), al-​kalib akal al-​ʕaḍum ‘the dog ate the bone’ (literally: ‘the-​dog ate the-​bone’) and al-​tājir anāni ‘the merchant is selfish’ (literally: ‘the-​merchant selfish’) are bipartite clauses in which the first element, al-​bitt ‘the girl’, al-​kalib ‘the dog’ and al-​tājir ‘the merchant’, respectively, is definite, while the second element, akalat ‘ate’, akal al-​ʕaḍum ‘ate the bone’ and anāni is indefinite; i.e. all three are ‘DEFINITE+INDEFINITE’ structures. In standard speech, all three behave identically, as we might expect, with an intermediate-​ phrase break after the initial definite element. Although these phenomena do not tell us about accent pattern, in all three of al-​bitt akalat ‘the girl ate’, al-​kalib akal al-​ʕaḍum ‘the dog ate the bone’ and al-​ tājir anāni ‘the merchant is selfish’, the primary accent will standardly fall on the ‘INDEFINITE’ element: akalat ‘ate’, akal al-​ʕaḍum ‘ate the bone’ and anāni ‘selfish’, as we might expect from the fact that the first element in the bipartite clause is definite, and therefore given/known information, and this second element indefinite and therefore new/unknown information. If the only possible accent pattern in Sudanese Arabic were one in which a definite element in a ‘DEFINITE+INDEFINITE’ structure (including also cases involving indefinite-​definite word order, such as masākīn niḥna ‘wretched we are’, discussed above), and if Sudanese Arabic only had bipartite structures involving DEFINITE+INDEFINITE, we might say that accent here was non-​functional, i.e. purely a matter of realisation. What I mean by ‘functional’ here is ‘separately relevant to the purport of the whole to which it is a part’ (Dickins 2009a, Def. 1a; cf. Mulder 1989: 436, Def. 1a); i.e. a ‘functional’ element is one which is independently operative in the language system (whether in phonology, grammar or semantics), and is not just a concomitant, or ‘reflection’ (i.e. the realisation or aspect of the realisation), of something else (this ‘something else’ being functional). Thus, in San’ani Arabic, for example, all utterance-​final stops are pre-​glottalised. This pre-​glottalisation is merely a realisational concomitant/reflection of the position of the stop in the syllable. It is not functional, at least in terms of the segmental phonology of the language: it does not represent (realise) an independent

14

14 Signs, syntax, para-syntax, theme and rheme phoneme (see Watson 2002: 252), since it does not contrast with (is not opposed to) the occurrence of a stop in this position which is not pre-​glottalised (see also Technical Appendix Chapter 2, Endnote ii). In the case of niḥna masākīn ‘we’re wretched’ and masākīn niḥna ‘wretched are we’, if primary accent necessarily fell on masākīn, this accent would be just a realisational reflection of other features (in this case most obviously the fact that niḥna ‘we’ is definite, and masākīn ‘wretched’ is indefinite).4, ix For confirmation that in Sudanese Arabic, accent is not just a realisational reflection of other features (e.g. the fact that niḥna is definite, and masākīn is indefinite), consider the following exchange: 1a. niḥna masākīn. we wretched We’re wretched 1b. ma fī  xawājāt  masākīn.  masākīn al-​sūdāniyīn. not there-​are westerners wretched. wretched the Sudanese There are no wretched westerners. Wretched are the Sudanese/It’s the Sudanese who are wretched.5 In ­example 1a, there will almost certainly be one intonation unit, with primary accent falling on masākīn (as it does in the first sentence of ­example 1b ma fī xawājāt masākīn), and with niḥna unaccented. In the second sentence of ­example 1b, the situation is somewhat more complicated. Here we will almost certainly have two intonation units, al-​sūdāniyīn and masākīn. In this case, al-​ sūdāniyīn carries primary accent and can be termed the ‘primary intonation unit’, and masākīn carries secondary accent, and can be termed the ‘secondary intonation unit’.6 4 As suggested in this section, in Arabic all nominal/adjectival elements can be characterised as def� inite or indefinite (cf. Dickins 2010b). Personal pronouns are all definite, as evidenced by the fact that they take definite adjective agreement, with al-​on an accompanying attributive adjective; thus niḥna al-​sūdāniyīn ‘we Sudanese’, rather than *niḥna sūdāniyīn. Bare adjectives like masākīn are indefinite, but can be made definite in various ways, most simply by the addition of al-​‘the’ – thus al-​masākīn, as for example in al-​sūdāniyīn al-​masākīn ‘the poor Sudanese’, contrasting with the indefinite sūdāniyīn masākīn ‘poor Sudanese’. 5 It is worth pointing out, to avoid potential confusion, that while the English translation ‘it’s the Sudanese who are wretched’ involves a cleft sentence, I am not claiming that the Sudanese masākīn al-​sūdāniyīn involves clefting. 6 El Zarka (2013: 12) stresses that there is no necessary correlation between an intonation unit (‘inton�ational phrase’ in the terminology which she uses) and a clause, as has sometimes been claimed, for example in Chomsky and Halle’s Nuclear Stress Rule (Chomsky and Halle 1968). At a number of points, El Zarka underlines speaker variability such that otherwise identical utterances can be produced as either one or two intonation units (e.g. El Zarka 2013: 298, 318). Although El Zarka is describing Egyptian Arabic, the same principles apply to Sudanese.

 15

Signs, syntax, para-syntax, theme and rheme 15 There is, however, a clear parallelism between (i) primary accent vs. non-​ accent (‘unaccent’) or secondary accent within one intonation unit, and (ii) primary accent vs. secondary accent across two intonation units, such that we can regard this recursively; the relationship between the intonation unit carrying primary accent and that carrying secondary accent in the case of two intonation units is analysed as a recursive reapplication of the relationship obtaining between the element carrying primary accent and other elements (whether unaccented or secondarily accented) within one intonation unit (as also argued in Dickins 2009b: 1095, and Dickins 2009c: 494, though the implications for theme-​rheme/ topic-​comment analyses drawn in those articles are somewhat different from those drawn here). See also the discussion of the integration I ‘intonational construction’ in El Zarka (2013: 95, 241; El Zarka 2017: 32), where, as noted in this section above, El Zarka uses the term ‘prosodic phrase’ for what is termed in this book ‘intermediate phrase’. Thus, despite the fact that niḥna masākīn (‘we’re wretched’) consists of one intonation unit and masākīn al-​sūdāniyīn (‘wretched are the Sudanese’) consists of two, they can be analysed analogously in relation to accent. The only difference is that the latter, as argued in the previous paragraph, involves recursion – which in this case is in practical terms trivial, since both of the intonation units masākīn and al-​sūdāniyīn consist of one phonological word, and thus neither is amenable to further internal analysis in accent terms. To explain this further, consider a sentence such as masākīn al-​xawājāt (literally: ‘wretched the westerners’) ‘the Westerners are wretched’/‘how wretched the Westerners are’, spoken as one intonation unit with primary accent on masākīn. This can be broken up intonationally into two elements (intermediate phrases), as follows: 2. masākīn P

al-​xawājāt S

Here, I have used ‘P’ to stand for ‘primary’ accent and ‘S’ to cover both secondary accent of some kind (as is found on al-​xawājāt ‘the Westerners’ in masākīn al-​xawājāt ‘how wretched the Westerners are’) and unaccented elements, as could be found in various kinds of less marked utterances. Assuming we regard ‘primary accent’ as equivalent to Liberman and Prince’s (1977) ‘strong’ and secondary accent/‘unaccent’ as equivalent to their ‘weak’ in their ‘metrical tree’ approach, we can (as Sam Hellmuth has pointed out to me) also represent ­example 2 above, as in ­example 2a, employing a tree-​diagram representation. In e­ xample 2a, ‘s’ stands for ‘strong’ and ‘w’ for ‘weak’. 2a. 

s

masākīn

w al-xawājāt

16

16 Signs, syntax, para-syntax, theme and rheme Compare now masākīn al-​xawājāt (‘how wretched the Westerners are’) with masākīn xālis al-​xawājāt al-​majānīn (literally: ‘wretched very the-​Westerners the-​mad) ‘the mad Westerners are very wretched’/‘how very wretched the mad Westerners are’. As a longer utterance involving primary accent (P) near the start of the utterance, this is likely to be spoken with two intonation units, (i) masākīn xālis (‘very wretched’) and (ii) al-​xawājāt al-​majānīn (‘the mad Westerners’), the primary accent falling within intonation unit (i) on xālis, and the secondary accent (S) falling within intonation unit (ii) on on al-​majānīn. Assuming this to be the case, we can analyse masākīn xālis al-​xawājāt al-​majānīn along the same lines as masākīn al-​xawājāt. 3. Masākīn xālis xālis al-​xawājāt al-​majānīn P S Using a metrical tree-​type visualisation, this can also be represented as in 3a. 3a.  s

w

masākīn xālis

al-xawājāt al-majānīn

It will be seen, however, that within masākīn xālis al-​xawājāt al-​majānīn the primary intonation unit masākīn xālis ‘very mad’ can also be analysed accentually in primary-​secondary (P-​S) terms: 4.  masākīn xālis S P Using a metrical tree-​type visualisation, this can be also represented as in ­example 4a. 4a. 

w

s

masākīn

xālis

Similarly, within masākīn xālis al-​xawājāt al-​majānīn, the secondary intonation unit al-​xawājāt al-​majānīn can also be analysed accentually in primary-​ secondary (P-​S) terms (where ‘secondary’, as noted, can stand for unaccented as well as ‘secondarily accented’): 5. al-​xawājāt al-​majānīn S P Using a metrical tree-​type visualisation, this can also be represented as in 5a.

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Signs, syntax, para-syntax, theme and rheme 17 5a. 

w

s

al-xawājāt

al-majānīn

Overall, masākīn xālis al-​xawājāt al-​majānīn can be analysed accentually as follows, where ‘/’ stands for ‘within’: 6. masākīn xālis al-​xawājāt al-​majānīn P S  S/P   P/P   S/S    P/S Using a metrical tree-​type visualisation, this can also be represented as in 6a. 6a.  s

masākīn

w

xālis

al-xawājāt al-majānīn

This simple recursive analysis of accent would, of course, become vastly more complex in complex utterances, and there will certainly be cases in which a more complex analysis than a simple bipartite ‘primary’ (P) vs. ‘secondary’ (S) bifurcation is needed. However, the bipartite primary-​secondary (P-​S) model is sufficient for the material considered in this book. The basic principle being proposed here is also crucial: that one can think of accent recursively. Not only does this provide a maximally simple general model, but it allows, as noted earlier in this section, for a analogous analysis of cases such as niḥna masākīn (‘we’re wretched’) consisting of one intonation unit and masākīn al-​sūdāniyīn (‘wretched are the Sudanese’) consisting of two. The model adopted here also fits rather nicely with the fact that intonational phrasing, although structural, is not structurally fixed in the way that syntax (or phrase-​structural para-​syntax), for example, is. Thus, as Nolan notes, “even quite major grammatical boundaries may lack intonational marking, particularly if the speech is fast” (Nolan 2006: 433). Among other things, this means that in the case of two otherwise identical utterances, the first, spoken slowly, may involve two intonation units, while the second, spoken fast, may be one intonation unit. A recursive intonational analysis allows two such utterances to be analysed in a fundamentally analogous manner. Considering again masākīn al-​sūdāniyīn (‘wretched are the Sudanese’), with primary accent on al-​sūdāniyīn (­example 1b above), what is particularly striking about this is that although the primary accent falls on al-​sūdāniyīn ‘the Sudanese’

18

18 Signs, syntax, para-syntax, theme and rheme (‘wretched are the Sudanese’ or ‘it’s the Sudanese who are wretched’), al-​sūdāniyīn is definite. The accent pattern in 1b masākīn al-​sūdāniyīn (masākīn – indefinite, al-​sūdāniyīn – definite) thus contrasts with the accent pattern on masākīn niḥna (‘wretched are we’) (masākīn – indefinite, niḥna – definite), despite the fact that in both cases the definiteness patterning – indefinite followed by definite – is the same. Primary accent placement is not therefore simply a function of the definiteness or indefiniteness of the words in question (it is not simply predictable from these). Rather, it is separately functional in its own right (using ‘functional’ as defined earlier in this section, i.e. ‘separately relevant to the purport of the whole to which it is a part’: Dickins 2009a, Def. 1a; cf. Mulder 1989: 436, Def. 1a). The situation exemplified by niḥna masākīn ‘we are wretched’ and masākīn al-​sūdāniyīn ‘wretched are the Sudanese/it’s the Sudanese who are wretched’ is paralleled by the Sudanese proverb: 7.  al-​wilāda ma gāsya, gāsya al-​tarbiya7 the-​birth not hard, hard the-​upbringing It’s not giving birth that’s hard, it’s bringing [children] up’ In al-​wilāda ma gāsya (‘the-​birth not hard’/ ‘it’s not giving birth that’s hard’), taking this to be one intonation unit, the primary accent falls on gāsya ‘hard’, while in the element gāsya al-​tarbiya (‘hard the upbringing’), to be analysed as two intonation units, the primary accent falls on al-​tarbiya (‘the-​upbringing’) while a secondary accent falls on gāsya. The above argument establishes an expression-​type aspect to primary accent (whether contrasting with unaccented/secondarily accented elements within one intonation unit, or with a secondarily accented element in another intonation unit): primary accent (as an abstract notion) is realised by features of sound (mainly pitch change: e.g. Cruttenden 1986: 35–42). However, to have sign status, primary accent (and other features of accent) must also have a content aspect, i.e. it must give consistent meaning – or, better, range of meanings – in the utterances which realise it. The element (part) of an utterance which has (or includes) primary accent is perceptually prominent; we hear it better and more easily than other parts of the utterance which do not have primary accent. In a language such as Sudanese Arabic (also other varieties of Arabic, and English) there is a relationship between this perceptual prominence and prominence in terms of meaning, which can be described as iconic in the Peircean sense (e.g. Chandler 2007: 40): that is to say, perceptual prominence is mirrored (in some sense) by meaning prominence. Thus, in the case of ­example 1b, masākīn al-​sūdāniyīn ‘wretched are the Sudanese’ or ‘it’s the Sudanese who are wretched’, for instance, al-​sūdāniyīn carries primary accent, and has meaning prominence, involving more specifically 7 Another form in which the same basic proverb is found is al-​wilāda hayna, gāsya al-​tarbiya ‘giving birth is easy; what’s difficult is upbringing’ (literally: ‘the-​giving~birth easy, difficult the-​upbringing’).

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Signs, syntax, para-syntax, theme and rheme 19 contrastive focus (e.g. Zimmerman 2008). In saying masākīn al-​sūdāniyīn ‘it’s the Sudanese who are wretched’, the Sudanese are being contrasted with another group (al-​xawājāt ‘the westerners’): the speaker in this context is saying ‘It’s the Sudanese and not the Westerners who are wretched’. A further, and related, aspect of meaning prominence which applies to Arabic (and English, among other languages) is that the element associated with perceptual prominence (primary accent) tends to be the communicatively most central (essential) element. If one were permitted to say only one part (‘element’) of the utterance, it would be that part which carries primary accent. Imagine a situation, in Sudan, in which I am with a friend, and we see someone shouting and screaming in the middle of the road. My friend says: 8. ġarīb al-​rājil da! strange the-​man that! That man’s strange! Here the primary accent (whether the utterance is spoken as one or two intonation units) falls on ġarīb ‘strange’, just as in the English translation ‘That man’s strange’, the primary accent falls on ‘strange’. A more informal English translation would be ‘Strange that man!’ with again primary accent on ‘strange’. In Sudanese Arabic in the context where one heard somebody screaming and shouting in the road, it would be possible simply to say ġarīb, just as in English it would be possible simply to say ‘strange’ (whether this were taken as short, and perhaps elliptical, for ‘That man’s strange’ or for ‘Strange that man’). In this context, al-​rājil da/‘that man’ is communicatively less essential (central) than ġarīb/‘strange’, and could, if necessary, be left unuttered. In Section 2.4, I argued that forms such as niḥna masākīn ‘we are wretched’ and masākīn niḥna ‘wretched are we’ in Sudanese Arabic are syntactically identical. In this section, I have argued, by contrasting pairs of the type niḥna masākīn and masākīn niḥna with pairs of the type niḥna masākīn ‘we are wretched’ and masākīn al-​sūdāniyīn ‘wretched are the Sudanese’ that the primary accent vs. ‘unaccent’/secondary accent distinction in Sudanese Arabic is functional (i.e. ‘separately relevant to the purport of the whole to which it is a part’: Dickins 2009a, Def. 1a; cf. Mulder 1989: 436, Def. 1a). Given, moreover, that the primary accent vs. ‘unaccent’/secondary accent distinction involves both an expression-​ type and a content-​type aspect, the distinction involves a sign difference. Since this sign difference is not syntactic, and goes beyond syntax, it is, under the current model, to be analysed as para-​syntactic.x In this section I have also raised the issue of intonational recursion. This will be considered in more detail in Section 4.2.1.xi 2.4.2 Theme and rheme, given and new, Peri/Thema and Nuc/Rhema The notion of communicative centrality is closely related to two pairs of notions commonly used in linguistics: given vs. new, and theme vs. rheme. These notions

20

20 Signs, syntax, para-syntax, theme and rheme go back at least to the Czech linguist, Mathesius, who defined theme, as “that which is known or at least obvious in the given situation, and from which the speaker proceeds”, while the rheme can be defined as what the speaker states about, or in regard to, the theme (cf. Dahlgren 1998: 27). According to this definition, theme can be more-​or-​less equated with given information (“that which is known or at least obvious in the given situation”), while rheme can be equated with new information (“what the speaker states about, or in regard to, the theme”), i.e. information which is less known, or obvious, in the given situation. In the case of ġarīb al-​rājil da! ‘that man’s strange!’, the element al-​rājil da – i.e. the fact that the person/entity concerned is a man – is known/obvious/given/theme in this context, while the fact that he is strange is less known/obvious in this context: it is new (or newer), i.e. rheme. In certain contexts at least, therefore, primary accent can be said to give the meaning “this is not known or obvious, or at least is not as well known as some other information in this utterance”, while non-​primary accent can be said to give the meaning “this is known or obvious, or at least better known than some other information in this utterance”. While the identification primary accent = new information and non-​primary accent = given/obvious information works in some contexts for both English and Arabic, there are many contexts for both languages in which it cannot be made to work, for instance where no information is obviously new or given. In some instances, a wider notion of communicative centrality seems to work better: for instance, that even if all the information is of equal (or roughly equal) newness, some information is more immediately important for the message at hand than other information. I have pursued this idea in Dickins (2009b), where I have proposed a somewhat extended understanding of ‘theme’ and ‘rheme’, such that the theme is “element of most immediate concern in an utterance, while the rheme can be reasonably defined as what the speaker [or writer] says about this theme” (Dickins 2009b: 1096). In other instances, however, even an extended definition of this kind does not work (as discussed later in this book; Chapters 7 and 8). Accent (primary vs. non-​primary accent, etc.), therefore, may not yield the same meanings or range of meanings in all languages.8 However, where there is an association between primary accent and meaning prominence (of some kind), we can regard this as an aspect of para-​syntax. Importantly, we can also treat this aspect of para-​syntax as structural, and more specifically – since what is involved is phrases (i.e. roughly, groups of words in particular dependency configurations) – as phrase-​structural (just as syntax is phrase-​structural).9 We can

8 As Sam Hellmuth has pointed out to me, not all languages even seem to display prosodic prom�inence. Examples, some of which are disputed, include French, Korean, West Greenlandic, and Mongolian (Jun 2005, 2014). As she has also pointed out to me, some languages relay some of the meanings related to focus and/or givenness, etc. by prosodic means other than prominence, the most common being prosodic phrasing or morphological particles. 9 There are other aspects of para-​syntax which are not phrase-​structural. Gardner (1985: 126–130), for example, argues that subject-​verb inversion in English (e.g. ‘Has Mary left home?’ as contrasted with ‘Mary has left home’ is para-​syntactic, but does not suggest a phrase-​structural analysis of

 21

Signs, syntax, para-syntax, theme and rheme 21 operate with a basic distinction between the nucleus (on which other elements are dependent) and peripheral elements (which are dependent on a nucleus) (cf. Dickins 2014a). Thus in syntax, a verb might be analysed as a nucleus to which its object is peripheral. With respect to para-​syntax in Arabic, we can, as a starting point for our analyses, regard the element which receives primary accent (in terms of phonological realisation) & the communicatively central element (in terms of semantic realisation) (in some instances at least) as corresponding to (realising) the phrase-​ structural para-​syntactic nucleus10 (or ‘Nuc’ for short), where ‘&’ is to be read as ‘in conjunction with’ (cf. Dickins 2009a: Def. 24, Def. F1b0a, Def. F1b0b). Similarly, we can regard the element which receives non-​primary accent (in terms of phonological realisation) & the communicatively non-​central element (in terms of semantic realisation) (in some instances at least) as corresponding to (realising) the phrase-​structural para-​syntactic peripheral element (or ‘Peri’ for short). I will revise these definitions later in this book (especially Sections 8.2, 8.3) on the basis of having shown that they are not fully adequate. However, they are useful points at which to begin. In this book I will also term the nucleus (which for the moment we can regard as being realised – cf. Section 2.2 – by the primary-​accented/communicatively central element) the Rhema, and the peripheral element (which for the moment we can regard as being realised by the non-​primary accented/communicatively non-​ central element) the Thema. The use of the Greek forms ‘Thema’ and ‘Rhema’ is obviously intended to echo the English (Greek-​based) forms ‘theme’ and ‘rheme’, but is preferred to these latter, because a ‘thema’ may not also be (i.e. realised communicatively as) a ‘theme’ (in the sense discussed above), while a ‘Rhema’ may not also be (i.e. realised communicatively as) a ‘rheme’ (in the sense discussed above). To further differentiate between ‘thema’and ‘theme’, and ‘rhema’ and ‘rheme’ in this book, I will henceforth use the combined forms: ‘Peri/Thema’ and ‘Nuc/Rhema’.xii the difference between inverted and non-​inverted forms. (Whether Gardner’s analysis is correct or not falls outside the purview of the current book.) Similarly, many analyses of intonation distinguish between “discrete, contrastive linguistic units underlying the continuously variable melody [= tune] of speech” (Nolan 2006: 437) and “Other intonational effects [which] are communicative in the sense that the speaker has a choice, but are essentially gradient” (Nolan 2006: 439). Under the current approach, the former purely melodic aspects would be structural, while the latter would be non-​structural (in that gradients imply an infinite number of possibilities, whereas ‘structure’ by definition involves an initially non-​infinite number of possibilities, albeit that structural recursion can then yield infinite possibilities). Neither the discrete purely melodic categories of intonation nor the gradient ones, however, are phrase-​structural: they do not involve groupings of words in particular dependency configurations, unlike the para-​syntactic features which I deal with in this book. (Purely melodic categories of intonation do, of course, co-​occur with groupings of words in particular dependency configurations and pitch change can be a phonetic realisation of word grouping, but viewed as purely melodic functional categories they are distinct from these groupings.) 10 The phrase-​structural para-​syntactic nucleus will have within its scope, the ‘nuclear accent’, i.e. the “last, most prominent accent within a phrase” (Chahal and Hellmuth 2014: 367), also known in the British tradition as the nucleus (El Zarka 2017: 218). This use of ‘nucleus’ is not to be confused with the use of ‘nucleus’ in the current book.

22

22 Signs, syntax, para-syntax, theme and rheme To illustrate the operation of Peri/Thema and Nuc/Rhema as (abstract) pḣrase-​ structural para-​syntactic notions, we can consider ­example 1a (repeated here as ­example 9 for convenience) again: 9. niḥna masākīn We wretched We’re wretched I have proposed (cf. Section 2.4) that this example is syntactically equative (for a detailed discussion of what this might mean in terms of nuclear and peripheral elements, see Dickins 2010b: 258–259). Assuming that the primary accent here is on the word masākīn ‘wretched’, we can analyse niḥna masākīn in phrase-​ structural para-​syntactic terms as niḥna – Peri/Thema, and masākīn – Nuc/Rhema. Nuc/Rhema and Peri/Thema are thus abstract phrase-​structural para-​syntactic notions, belonging to the sign and having abstract expression and content aspects (see Figure 2.1).xiii They are realised in actual utterances, both phonetically and semantically. From the current perspective, notions such as theme and rheme are concrete notions, which may realise semantically the phrase-​structural para-​ syntactic notions of Peri/Thema and Nuc/Rhema.xiv Consider now the following (cf. Section 2.4): 10. masākīn niḥna Wretched we We’re wretched/Wretched are we/It’s wretched that we are. Assuming that the primary accent (whether in relation to one or two intonation units) here is on masākīn ‘wretched’, we are to analyse this sentence in phrase-​ structural para-​syntactic terms in exactly the same way as niḥna masākīn (1a, above). That is to say, masākīn is the Nuc/Rhema, while niḥna is the Peri/Thema. Niḥna masākīn and masākīn niḥna (with primary accent in both cases on masākīn) are thus the same at both the syntactic and the Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema phrase-​ structural para-​syntactic level according to this analysis. We can represent the relationship between masākīn and niḥna in masākīn niḥna, where the primary accent (realising the nucleus) falls on masākīn ‘wretched’ and the secondary accent (realising the peripheral entity) falls on niḥna ‘we’, as: 11. masākīn niḥna Nuc/Rhema Peri/Thema Equally, since we are only concerned with structure, not word order (see also Section 2.4.3 below), we can also represent this as: 12.

niḥna masākīn Peri/Thema Nuc/Rhema

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Signs, syntax, para-syntax, theme and rheme 23 We can also represent the relationship between a nucleus and a peripheral entity with a single-​headed arrow pointing from peripheral entity to nucleus. Thus we can also represent the phrase-​structural para-​syntactic structure of niḥna masākīn/masākīn niḥna (with primary accent on masākīn in both cases) as: 13. niḥna →masākīn This might equally be represented as: 14. masākīn ← niḥna The only relevant point in terms of the representation (visualisation) of the phrase-​structural para-​syntactic structure is that the arrow points from the peripheral entity to the nucleus. Thus, a sentence masākīn al-​sūdāniyīn (‘wretched the Sudanese’) is to be represented (visualised) in phrase-​structural para-​syntactic terms, when the primary accent falls on masākīn, as: 15. masākīn ←al-​sūdāniyīn or equally al-​sūdāniyīn→masākīn However, when the primary accent falls on al-​sūdāniyīn, it is to be represented in phrase-​structural para-​syntactic terms as: 16. masākīn →al-​sūdāniyīn or equally al-​sūdāniyīn←masākīnxv 2.4.3 Para-​syntax: word order Although niḥna masākīn and masākīn niḥna (with primary accent on masākīn in both cases) are the same in phrase-​structural para-​syntactic terms, there is an obvious sense in which they are different in terms of their physical phonetic realisations, i.e. in terms of their word order, and potentially also, of course, in respect of their intonational tune. In relation to word order, the following possiblities present themselves: either word order carries meaning independently of (other) para-​syntactic features, or it does not – these (other) para-​syntactic features including both phrase-​structural Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema elements and other intonational elements (particularly intonational tune). If word order does carry such independent meaning then that word order itself is semiotic, i.e. it has sign status: the combination of phonetic (physical) difference together with meaning difference being the indicator of sign identity (cf. Section 2.4.1). If word order does not carry meaning independently of para-​syntactic considerations, this should be indicated by there being no difference in meaning between niḥna masākīn and masākīn niḥna (with primary accent on masākīn in both cases) – assuming that the intonational tune is the same (or deemed the same) in both cases. Niḥna masākīn and masākīn niḥna will, in this case, merely be free variants (different possible word-​order realisations) of the same syntactic

24

24 Signs, syntax, para-syntax, theme and rheme structure plus the same phrase-​structural para-​syntactic Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema structure. In fact, word order does seem to relay meaning independently of both syntactic structure and (other) para-​syntactic features, both phrase-​structural Peri/Thema– Nuc/Rhema and other intonational features. In Sudanese Arabic (as well as many other languages, including English), initial Nuc/Rhemas seem to relay a meaning of emotional involvement which is a function of their positioning in the utterance – such ‘rheme-​theme’ word order sometimes being referred to as the ‘pathetic’ word order, a term which goes back to Weil (1991 [1844]), and which is, to some extent at least, independent of associated intonational tune. Unlike syntax or Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema para-​syntax, word order is not in itself a structural phenomenon. Thus, the fact that attributive adjectives in Arabic, for example, come after the noun but in English standardly before the noun does not tell us anything in itself about the structural (syntactic) relationship between nouns and adjectives in Arabic or English. Where word order is a semiotic phenomenon (involving a difference in sign-​identity), on the grounds that it involves physical (phonetic) difference allied to meaning difference, but where there are no issues of structural contrast involved, it is thus para-​syntactic (beyond, and ‘above’, syntax), but unlike Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema para-​syntax, it is non-​ structural. This is the case with masākīn niḥna and niḥna masākīn (with primary accent on masākīn in both cases).xvi Word order may also be semiotically quite different in different languages. While it is typical of some European languages and also Arabic for an initial Nuc/ Rhema to convey a meaning of emotional involvement, this may not be true of other languages. Indeed, even in Arabic, there are aspects of word order which are arguably semiotic, but have a meaning which is not one of emotional involvement, nor one which can be subsumed under standard notions related to theme and rheme, such as givenness/knownness or newness/unknownness (Chapters 7 and 8).

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3  Issues in defining ‘theme’

3.1 Introduction In this chapter, I consider theme and rheme as real-​world (realisational) informational (semantic) features. I also argue that the Hallidayan semantic definition of ‘theme’ and ‘rheme’ is uninterpretable and as such not acceptable.

3.2 Theme as starting point of the utterance In this section, I will consider further what can sensibly be meant by ‘theme’ and ‘rheme’ – understood not as abstract structural para-​syntactic features, but as models for the semantic (communicative, informational) realisations of these features (cf. Figure 2.1).i As noted above, the commonest approach to theme and rheme is to regard the theme as given information or obvious information (or similar) and the rheme as new information or non-​obvious information (or similar). There is, however, an ambiguity in the definition of theme and rheme, which goes back at least to Mathesius. Mathesius not only defined the theme as “that which is known or at least obvious in the given situation, and from which the speaker proceeds”, as noted above. He also – and somewhat inconsistently – defined the theme in 1939 as the “starting point of the utterance (východisko)”, while he defined the core of the utterance (jádro), i.e. the rheme, as “what the speaker states about, or in regard to, the starting point of the utterance”. In 1942, Mathesius stated that “The foundation (or the theme) of the utterance (základ, téma) [is what] is being spoken about in the sentence, [and] the core (jádro) is what the speaker says about this theme” (cited in Dahlgren 1998: 27). These latter definitions of theme and rheme suggest a further level of phrase-​ structural para-​syntax – though not one which I think should be accepted (as explained below). This is that, in addition to a para-​syntactic-​type distinction between what is known/given (etc.) and what is unknown, new (etc.), a further para-​syntactic-​type phrase-​structural bifurcation should be made between the theme, as what the speaker is talking about, and the rheme, as what he or she says about this theme. Let us assume for the moment that ‘what the speaker is talking about’ and ‘what he or she says about the theme’ are meaning notions (semantic notions). In this case, for this phenomenon to be semiotic (to have

26

26 Issues in defining ‘theme para-​syntactic sign status) we should also be able to identify phonetic differences between theme and rheme. Mathesius’ view that the theme is the “starting point of the utterance (východisko)” might provide such a phonetic counterpart to the meaning (semantic) notions of ‘what the speaker is talking about’/‘what he or she says about the theme’, suggesting that the theme should be identified as that element which comes first in the utterance. Thus, according to this analysis, in niḥna masākīn ‘we’re wretched’ niḥna would be the theme, regardless of whether the primary accent falls on niḥna ‘we’ or masākīn ‘wretched’, while in masākīn niḥna ‘we’re wretched/wretched are we/it’s wretched that we are’, masākīn would be the theme, regardless of whether the primary accent falls on masākīn or niḥna. Halliday, in fact, defines theme, and its counterpart rheme in systemic functional linguistics in very much this way, using the terms ‘given’ and ‘new’ for roughly what other writers term theme and rheme (Section 2.4.1). Halliday defines the theme as “the element which serves as the point of departure of the message; it is that which locates and orients the clause within its context” (Halliday and Matthiessen 2004: 65), while “the remainder of the message, the part in which the Theme is developed, is [...] the Rheme” (ibid.). Halliday further contrasts ‘theme’ and ‘rheme’ as speaker-​oriented notions, with ‘given’ and ‘new’ as hearer-​oriented notions (Halliday and Matthiessen 2004: 93). The notion “point of departure of the message” seems to be a semantic one (a matter I shall come back to later in this section). Assuming this is so, in order for the Hallidayan theme and rheme to qualify for semiotic status under the current approach, there needs to be something physical (phonetic) which constitutes the expression-​side realisation of theme and rheme. Halliday seems to supply such an expression-​side element when he says: “whatever is chosen as the theme is put first” (Halliday and Matthiessen 2004: 65). This can be translated to mean under the current approach that the theme as a sign (semiotic entity) is realised in physical (phonetic) terms by initiality in the utterance, and in semantic (meaningful) terms by the fact of its being the point of departure of the message. In fact, the situation in terms of phonetic realisation in Hallidayan linguistics is somewhat more complicated than this. In addition to initial themes, Halliday also recognises the possibility in English of postposed themes, as in “They don’t make sense, these instructions” (Halliday and Matthiessen 2004: 97). It is not clear why Halliday regards ‘these instructions’ in this example as a postposed theme – although it may be because of its co-​referentiality with the initial theme ‘they’. However, what this example seems to imply is that theme in a Hallidayan approach is not necessarily, even in English, the initial element in the utterance/ sentence. From the current perspective, this weakens the Hallidayan theme as a potential semiotic feature (sign). Since a sign requires realisationally both a physical (phonetic) and a meaningful aspect under the current approach, we need to be able to identify a degree of phonetic (sound) ‘stability’ for there to be a potential sign. Initiality is a type of phonetic (sound) stability: we can identify what the initial element is in phonetic terms. However, once we accept that themes may also occur elsewhere in the utterance, this undermines this phonetic (sound) stability.

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Issues in defining ‘theme 27 The other aspect of the sign under the current approach is the meaningful aspect. For there to be plausible semiotic (sign) status, we should also have a degree of semantic (meaningful) stability. As noted above, Halliday defines the theme in semantic terms as “the element which serves as the point of departure of the message; it is that which locates and orients the clause within its context” (Halliday and Matthiessen 2004: 65), while “the remainder of the message, the part in which the Theme is developed is... the Rheme” (ibid.). Halliday further contrasts ‘theme’ and ‘rheme’ as speaker-​oriented notions, with ‘given’ and ‘new’ as hearer-​oriented notions (Halliday and Matthiessen 2004: 93). Other definitions given by Halliday of theme and rheme (cited in Fries 1995: 3) include: The English clause consists of a ‘Theme’ and a ‘Rheme’ [the Theme] is as it were the peg on which the message is hung […] The Theme of the clause is the element which, in English, is put in first position. (Halliday 1970: 39) The Theme is one element in a particular structural configuration, which, taken as a whole organises the clause as a message […] the Theme is the starting-​point for the message; it is what the clause is going to be about. (Halliday 1985: 39) I do not believe that Halliday’s ‘theme’ and ‘rheme’ have any clear sense; we cannot unambiguously say what is meant in the case of ‘theme’ by ‘point of departure of the message’, ‘peg on which the message is hung’, ‘one element in a particular structural configuration, which, taken as a whole organises the clause as a message’, ‘starting-​point for the message’, or ‘what the clause is going to be about’, or why this should be regarded as a semantic (meaningful) notion. Huddleston (quoted in Fries 1995: 4) makes the same basic point: It is not clear that ‘starting point’ or ‘point of departure’ can sustain an interpretation that is independent of syntactic sequence – that the Theme is the point of departure for the message in a more significant sense than that of being the first element. (Huddleston 1991: 158) Fries acknowledges that “notions such as ‘starting-​point’ or ‘peg on which the message is hung’ are metaphorical and difficult to interpret” (Fries 1995: 4), and attempts himself to provide a more adequate non-​metaphorical definition: The Theme of a T-​unit [textual unit] provides a framework within which the Rheme of that T-​unit can be interpreted. (Fries 1995: 4)

28

28 Issues in defining ‘theme Fries’ definition has the advantage of being non-​metaphorical (except, perhaps, for the words ‘framework’ and ‘within’). It does not, I believe, however, further elucidate what is meant in Hallidayan linguistics by ‘theme’ than do Halliday’s own definitions. I will come back to the problematic nature of theme and rheme in Halliday later in this book (Section 7.3). For the moment, I will simply reiterate that in this book, where I use the terms ‘theme’ and ‘rheme’, I will regard them as semantic-​realisational notions, defining them provisionally as in Dickins (2009b: 1096), where the theme is “element of most immediate concern in an utterance, while the rheme can be reasonably defined as what the speaker [or writer] says about this theme”. A second issue arising from Halliday’s analysis is that of word order. As already suggested (Section 2.4.3), the placement of an element initially in the utterance, for instance (to take one example of word order), may have very different semantic correlates in different languages. Some of these correlates in Arabic seem impossible to reconcile with any of the notions discussed above – ‘theme’ and ‘rheme’ (whether taken roughly in a Prague-​school or a Hallidayan sense), and ‘given’ and ‘new’ (especially in the Hallidayan sense). I will examine this issue more closely in Section 7.2. Halliday’s notion of theme is similar to that of ‘topic’ in many other writers. ‘Topic’, it can be noted, is as problematic as the Hallidayan ‘theme’. As El Zarka (2013: 261) puts it: Although the definition of topic used by most researchers today is fairly uniform, based on the notion of aboutness, the problems of identifying aboutness topics obviously have not been solved yet as interrelater reliability tests of topic annotation in corpora show. (Cook and Bildhauer 2013)

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4  Recursion

4.1 Introduction In this chapter, I consider recursion. I argue (Section 4.2) that an analysis involving recursion is always simpler than, and therefore to be preferred to, one not involving recursion. This opens the way to a recursive analysis of complex para-​syntactic structures in Arabic. In Section 4.2.1, I consider prosodic recursion viewed as a purely formal, expression-​side para-​phonotactic phenomenon within phonology, arguing that this maximally simply reflects para-​syntactic recursion of the type discussed in this book (in Section 2.4.1). In Section 4.2.2, I consider phrase-​structural para-​ syntactic recursion, arguing for its viability in relation to Sudanese Arabic.

4.2 Recursion Recursion is not necessary for linguistic or semiotic structure. The great majority of non-​linguistic semiotic systems (e.g. traffic signs) do not have recursion, and it has even been claimed that natural languages may lack syntactic recursion (Everett 2009). There are obviously also areas of linguistic structure – e.g. phonotactics – which are not standardly analysed as having recursion (though see Heselwood 2008; Dickins 2014a). Recursion is, however, important with respect to natural language from at least two points of view. Firstly, provided it is not limited, recursion opens up the vista of saying – literally – endless things within a single sentence (e.g. Chomsky 1957: 65). Secondly, from an analytic point of view, recursion provides opportunities for simpler linguistic analyses (descriptions). I take it that the three aspects of a good linguistic (semiotic) analysis are: 1. internal coherence (the analysis in one aspect must not contradict that in another, as will be demonstrated in this section below); 2. adequacy to the data (the analysis must treat the relevant data comprehensively and competently); and 3. simplicity (cf. Mulder 1989: 7, 55–65).1 Simplicity requires the analysis to be as simple as possible; assuming 1 One other commonly given criterion for a good linguistic theory is that it should be ‘psychologically real’. This typically means that it should either model (in some sense) structures in the mind and ultimately in the brain; or that it should model the real-​time psychological processes of speakers/

30

30 Recursion two alternative analyses of equal coherence and adequacy, the simpler one is to be preferred over the more complex one. An analysis involving recursion is always simpler than one which covers the same data without involving recursion. This is particularly evident in terms of the current approach, in which linguistic analysis, including structural analysis, is an ex nihilo procedure. One begins with no presupposition of any entity or structure, only establishing these as the need arises. Any new, additional structure beyond those already established introduces further complication into the analysis. Recursive analysis by definition merely redeploys an existing structure, thus avoiding the need to establish a new one, and thus not, in any significant manner, increasing the complexity of the fundamental analysis. Consider the Sudanese Arabic form (from Dickins 2009c: 497; cf. also Dickins 2010b) bēt-​u kabīr (literally: ‘house-​his big’) ‘his house is big’. This can be analysed syntactically exactly like niḥna masākīn (also masākīn niḥna) (Section 2.4), i.e. bēt-​u=kabīr (or equally kabīr=bēt-​u), i.e. as an equative A=B structure. Now consider the following: 17. al-​rājil da  bēt-​u  kabīr the-​man this house-​his big This man’s house is big (more literally: ‘this man his house big’) This can be analysed syntactically as consisting of a basic equative structure A=B (Section 2.4 above; and for a more detailed analysis, see Dickins 2010b): 18. (al-​rājil da) = (bēt-​u kabīr) However, the element (bēt-​u kabīr) ‘his house [is] big’ can be further analysed as a subsidiary (embedded) equative A=B structure (as already noted in this section): 19. bēt-​u = kabīr This analysis is closely concordant with that of traditional Arabic grammar, as will be discussed in Section 7.2. A Sudanese Arabic form such as al-​rājil da bēt-​u kabīr ‘this man’s house is big’ (and also the corresponding Standard Arabic hāḏā writers and/or listeners/readers. There are very serious practical problems with both approaches. The well-​known neuroscientist, Steven Rose, for example, comments on the so-​called ‘language acquisition device’, which is claimed by ‘nativist generativists’ such as Chomsky and Steven Pinker to underly human beings’ ability to produce language: “it would appear that if it exists, as with other such proposed modules, it has no particular instantiation within brain structures or biochemistry” (Rose 2006: 110). I have elsewhere considered in more detail why I believe linguistic theory is better to take a neutral stance towards psychological reality than to make positive claims about it (Dickins 2016: 2–4).

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Recursion 31 al-​rajul bayt-​uh kabīr,2 literally ‘this the-​man house-​his big’; cf. Section 7.2) could be analysed syntactially in a non-​recursive manner. In fact, such a non-​recursive analysis is put forward by Moutaouakil using Simon Dik’s functional grammar in his distinction between topic and theme in Arabic (Moutaouakil 1989: 69–122). Such an analysis would be impossible in the case of unlimited recursion; one would need to have an infinite number of syntactic categories to deal with each additional recursion. In the case of Standard Arabic, however, predicand-​predicate (Section 2.4) recursion seems to be extremely limited. Arguing from a rather eclectic data-​based perspective, which combines elements of the Prague School approach with traditional Arabic grammar, Beeston (who, somewhat confusingly, uses ‘theme’ to mean what I have termed here ‘predicand’, rather than ‘theme’ in either a Prague-​school-​type or Hallidayan sense) states: (a) Normally, only one embedding process, producing a linear cumulation of two themes [= predicands], is admissable; (b) A second embedding process, producing a cumulation of three themes [= predicands], is admissable only when the tertiary theme [= predicand] is a pronoun or a pronoun preceded by a preposition (Beeston 1974: 477) These restrictions seem also to be generally true of Sudanese Arabic. Under circumstances of limited recursion, a non-​recursive analysis is always possible. Such an analysis, however, is necessarily less simple than an analysis involving recursion. As noted above in this section, this is because a non-​recursive analysis requires the establishment of additional structures (i.e. new structures, not previously established for the analysis), while a recursive analysis merely requires the reapplication of an already existing structure. The preference for recursion over non-​recursion on grounds of simplicity has practical application to para-​syntax as well as syntax. If a para-​syntactic analysis can be obtained making use of recursive structures, this is to be preferred on grounds of simplicity over an alternative analysis which does not involve recursion and therefore employs more complex fundamental structures. In the following sections I will consider issues involving recursion and of relevance to recursion in Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema phrase-​structural para-​syntax. I will start by considering recursion as a formal feature of intonation (Section

2 In my transliteration of Standard Arabic throughout this book, I have adopted what is known in Arabic as the sakkin taslam approach. This can be roughly translated as ‘leave off the (normally) vocalic endings, and you’ll be okay’. Standard Arabic has a complex system of endings, representing noun and adjective cases and verbal moods amongst other things. These are not normally represented in the script, and constitute a particular hazard, even for educated Arabs, who sometimes get them wrong since they are not features of the colloquial dialects which constitute their native language. I have only added case endings in transliteration in the relatively few cases (particularly before pronominal suffixes) where to leave them out would be felt odd by Arabic native speakers.

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32 Recursion 4.2.1), and then go on to look at semantic recursion – bearing in mind the definition of the sign as a bi-​unity of expression (realised as phonetic elements/sound) and content (realised as meaning) (Section 4.2.2). 4.2.1 Formal recursion: intonation In Section 2.4.1, I argued for recursion in intonation in Sudanese Arabic. In this section, I will consider the notion of recursion in intonation more generally. The majority view in intonational studies, until recently at least (see below), is that there is no prosodic recursion. This has been accepted by functionalists such as Halliday (e.g. Halliday 1966) as well as generativists (e.g. Selkirk 1984; for further details, see Ladd 1996: 237–238). There is, however, an alternative view, perhaps initially put forward by Ladd (1996), that prosodic features may display recursion (embedding). Ladd (1996: 241–246) reports the result of an experiment he did on the following: 20. Warren is a stronger campaigner, and Ryan has more popular policies, but Allen has a lot more money. 21. Warren is a stronger campaigner, but Ryan has more popular policies, and Allen has a lot more money. Ladd adopts the standard view of intonational studies that utterances can be divided up into intonation units. He points out that the standard analysis, assuming no possibility of recursion in intonation, is that both ­example 20 and 21 consist of three intonation units. In the case of 20, these are: i. ‘Warren is a stronger campaigner’, ii. ‘and Ryan has more popular policies’ and iii. ‘but Allen has a lot more money’; while in the case of 21, they are: i. ‘Warren is a stronger campaigner’, ii. ‘but Ryan has more popular policies’, and iii. ‘and Allen has a lot more money’. This view is apparently supported by the fact that: In multiple readings of these sentences by four speakers, I found evidence of Fo declination during each clause and across the entire sequence of three clauses; each clause ended with a clear boundary tone. It therefore seems appropriate to treat each clause as an intonational phrase [intonation unit], and the whole thing as an Utterance. (Ladd 1996: 242) Ladd notes that this contrasts with what we can take to be a syntactic difference between ­example 20 and 21: namely that 20 consists of two major syntactic elements: i. ‘Warren is a stronger campaigner, and Ryan has more popular policies’ and ii. ‘but Allen has a lot more money’, while 21 consists of two rather different major syntactic elements: i. ‘Warren is a stronger campaigner’ and ii. ‘but Ryan has more popular policies, and Allen has a lot more money’.

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Recursion 33 Significantly, however, while the global phonetic evidence (above) runs counter to the notion of syntactic difference between 20 and 21, more detailed phonetic analysis provides support for syntactic difference. Ladd comments: In addition to clear phonetic evidence for dividing up the Utterance into three intonational phrases [intonation units], however, I also found phonetic differences that reflect the hierarchical [syntactic] organisation […]. Specifically, the initial peaks of clauses B [the second clause] and C [the third clause] were higher after a but boundary than after an and boundary. Moreover, the pauses preceding but boundaries were by and large longer than those preceeding and boundaries. That is both the Fo cues and the pause-​duration cues agree in signalling that the but boundaries are ‘stronger’. (Ladd, 1996: 242) The phonetic structuring thus correlates with the syntax. Example 20, for instance, involves two basic coordinated elements, as follows: 22. First coordinated element:

Warren is a stronger campaigner, and Ryan has more popular policies Second coordinated element: but Allen has a lot more money

Within the first coordinated element ‘Warren is a stronger campaigner, and Ryan has more popular policies’, however, there is an embedded coordination, as follows: 23. First coordinated element (within first coordinated element): Warren is a stronger campaigner, Second coordinated element (within first coordinated element): and Ryan has more popular policies3 To capture the syntactic structure of ­example 20 (= ­example 22) more transparently, it would be better written without the first comma, i.e. as ‘Warren is a stronger campaigner and Ryan has more popular policies, but Allen has a lot more money’, while ­example 21 (= ­example 23) would be better written without the second comma, i.e. as ‘Warren is a stronger campaigner, but Ryan has more popular policies and Allen has a lot more money’. Such syntactic differences will yield semantic differences, in specific cases. The syntactic recursion in ­example 20 and 21 is mirrored by the fact that the prosodic boundary between the but-​clauses is ‘stronger’ than that between the and-​clauses. Prosody in this case is not para-​syntactic. That is to say, unlike in the Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema examples discussed in Section 3.2, the intonation features do not have sign identity (they do not independently have both expression 3 Dickins (2010a) provides further discussion and exemplification of this kind of analysis.

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34 Recursion and content – realised in actual utterances by both phonetics and meaning; they are not functional; cf. Section 2.4.1). Rather, these intonation features simply signal syntactic structure differences – they are a phonetic (sound) realisation of these syntactic differences. However, just as we can analyse sound segments in phonology without any regard to considerations of meaning, so we may analyse such intonation features in phonology without regard to considerations of meaning. As a supra-​segmental aspect of phonology (‘super-​imposed’ on the segmental aspects of phonology – distinctive features, phonematics and phonotactics), intonation, viewed in this light, falls under para-​phonotactics.i Just as ­examples 20 ‘Warren is a stronger campaigner, and Ryan has more popular policies, but Allen has a lot more money’ and 21 ‘Warren is a stronger campaigner, but Ryan has more popular policies, and Allen has a lot more money’ can be analysed as involving recursive coordination structures syntactically, so they can be viewed as having recursive intonation structures para-​phonotactically. An analysis of recursion in para-​phonotactics does not require that the phonetic features realising the abstract para-​phonotactic elements be themselves recursive – indeed, given the linearity of time, in which spoken language forms are produced, and the monophonous nature of human speech, such physical recursion is impossible. All that is required is that the phonetics are reasonably interpretable as the realisations of recursive structures. If this is the case, as noted in Section 4.2, an analysis which involves recursion is to be preferred, on grounds of descriptive simplicity, to one which does not. Other recent studies which have argued for recursion in intonation include Truckenbrodt (1995), Wagner (2005), Féry and Ishihara (2009), Kabak and Revithiadou (2009), Schreuder, Gilbers and Quené (2009), Féry (2010), Myrberg, (2010), Féry and Schubö (2010), and Itô and Mester (2012). Such views have become increasingly popular since Selkirk (2011). For a recent analysis of Arabic using prosodic recursion, see Jaradat (2018). 4.2.2 Phrase-​structural para-​syntactic recursion I have already informally argued (Section 2.4.1) from a practical standpoint for phrase-​structural para-​syntactic recursion in Sudanese Arabic. In this section, I will consider such recursion in more detail. Para-​phonotactic recursion of the kind discussed in Section 4.2.1 above does not necessarily imply phrase-​structural para-​syntactic thematic structure (theme-​rheme) recursion. In the examples from Ladd (1996) involving and and but, I argued that the situation is best understood as one in which prosodic (para-​phonotactic) recursion realises syntactic recursion, rather than there being independent para-​syntactic features which have their own prosodic realisation. This view bears some similarities to that of match theory (e.g. Selkirk 2011). The potential for prosodic (para-​phonotactic) recursion is, however, significant for the plausibility of phrase-​structural para-​syntactic Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema

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Recursion 35 recursion. The simplest and most straightforward phonological/phonetic realisation of a sign – whether this sign be grammatical (meaning here: morphological or syntactic) or para-​syntactic – is a transparent one, i.e. one in which the phonological/phonetic realisation unambiguously mirrors the sign. Thus, monomorphy (the existence of a single allomorph for a given sign) is more transparent than allomorphy/polymorphy (the existence of more than one allomorph for a given sign): ‘bungalow’ realised by only a single allomorph having the phonological form which we can take to be /bʌnɡələʊ/ is more transparent in this respect than ‘parallelepiped’, which we can take to be realised by at least four allomorphs having the following phonological forms: /parəlɛlᵻpʌɪpɛd/, /parəlɛlᵻpɪpɛd/, / pɛrəlɛləpaɪpᵻd/, and /pɛrəlɛləpɪpᵻd/ (cf. Oxford English Dictionary Online. I have not added stress marks here, since a simple statement of the phonemes involved suffices to illustrate the point in hand).ii The correspondence between a single phonological form and a single sign is similarly more straightforward than the correspondence between a single phonological form and more than one sign (homomorphy; Dickins 2009a: Def. 26a). Thus, the situation illustrated by the fact that the phonological form /bʌnɡələʊ/ is the phonological form only of the allomorph of the sign (word) ‘bungalow’ in English and no other sign (word) is more transparent than the one illustrated by the phonological form /bɪn/, which may be the phonological form of an allomorph of ‘been’ (the past participle of the verb ‘be’) or ‘bin’ (receptacle for putting rubbish, etc. in).4 One could in principle have para-​syntactic recursion without there being para-​ phonotactic recursion. However, the maximally transparent situation would be attained if para-​syntactic recursion were realised by allomorphs whose phonological form is also para-​phonotactically recursive. This is the situation which I have suggested exists in Sudanese Arabic (see also Sections 2.4.1, 4.2.1). More generally, the potential for recursion in para-​phonotactics provides a motivation for the possibility of recursion in para-​syntax. A number of generative linguists have, in fact, argued more or less explicitly for recursion in theme-​rheme (or similar) analysis (e.g. Vallduví and Zacharski

4 A particularly clear case in which there is non-​transparency between the sign level and phonology is liaison, e.g. the fact that in Standard Arabic (with the case-​ending used here, for reasons which will become apparent below), ‘the crown of religion’, also used as a male personal name, is tāj-​u l-​islām. Here there are four ‘major’ signs (ignoring the fact that both tāj and islām are both further analysable into their constituent morphemes): tāj ‘crown’, -​u nominative suffix, al-​ ‘the’ (realised phonologically as /l/ in this context), and islām ‘Islam’. The phonological analysis, however, ‘cuts across’ these signs, realising them non-​transparently as four syllables: /tā/, /jul/, /’is/, /lām/, with liaison in the second syllable /jul/ ‘disconnecting’ the definite particle (definite article) al-​(/l/) from the word islām which it makes definite. This non-​transparent ‘resyllabification’ gives rise to the short form of tāj-​u l-​islām as a personal name in South Asia as Tajul – and corresponding shortenings for other similar names, such as Abdul from ʕabdu l-​karīm ‘slave of the Generous’, etc. In some non-​Arabic-​speaking Muslim countries, Abdul has in practice become a proper name without any following noun (cf. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdul).

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36 Recursion 1994; cf. also Rooth 1992, 2007; Krifka 1998; Tomioko 2007). It is also noteworthy that Halliday accepts theme-​rheme analysis at all analytical ranks (albeit that, as noted, what he means by theme and rheme is rather different from what is meant in this book) (e.g. Halliday 1967a: 199). While not the same as recursion, this does involve something rather similar – the reapplication of the same notion in different parts of the grammar. As Halliday puts it: “[…] we find thematic organisation appearing in different guises throughout the system of the language, with manifestations both above the clause and below it” (Halliday 1985: 56). The basics of theme-​rheme (i.e. Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema) recursion can be illustrated by e­ xample 18, reproduced here as e­ xample 24, in Sudanese Arabic: 24. bēt-​u kabīr house-​his big His house is big As suggested in Section 4.2, the syntactic structure of ­example 24 is equative (­example 19, reproduced here as e­ xample 25): 25.

bēt-​u = kabīr (equally representable as: kabīr = bēt-​u)

Assuming that the primary accent falls on kabīr ‘big’, the phrase-​structural para-syntactic Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema structure is (paralleling the phrase-​ structural para-​syntactic structure of niḥna masākīn, i.e. niḥna→masākīn; Section 2.4.2): 26.

bēt-​u → kabīr

As elsewhere, the arrow → points from the peripheral to the nuclear element; i.e. kabīr ‘big’ is the Nuc/Rhema, and bēt-​u ‘his house’ is the Peri/Thema. In the same light, consider the following: 27.

al-​rājil  da bēt-​u kabīr the-​man this house-​his big This man’s house is big (more literally: ‘this man his house [is] big’)

As suggested in Section 4.2, the primary syntactic structure of this is: 28. (al-​rājil da) = (bēt-​u kabīr) (equally representable as: (bēt-​u kabīr) = (al-​rājil da))

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Recursion 37 However, as also suggested in Section 4.2, the element (bēt-​u kabīr) ‘his house [is] big’ can be further internally analysed as bēt-​u = kabīr (equally representable as: kabīr= bēt-​u), i.e. the same structure as e­ xample 25, above. Assuming two intonation units here,5 al-​rājil da ‘this man’ and bēt-​u kabīr ‘his house [is] big’, and that primary accent (comparing the two intonation units) falls on al-​rājil da (or more specifically on da ‘this’) and kabīr ‘big’. We can analyse the structure in global phrase-​structural para-​syntactic terms as: 29.

(al-​rājil da) → (bēt-​u kabīr)6

That is to say al-​rājil da ‘this man’ is the Peri/Thema, and bēt-​u kabīr ‘his house [is] big’ is the Nuc/Rhema. Within the Nuc/Rhema bēt-​u kabīr, however, we can further analyse bēt-​u ‘his house’ as an embedded (recursive) Peri/Thema within the Nuc/Rhema and kabīr ‘big’ as an embedded (recursive) Nuc/Rhema within the Nuc/Rhema, i.e. the same analysis as in e­ xample 25.

5 The assumption of two intonation units in al-​rājil da bēt-​u kabīr is reasonable, given the typical intonation patterns in Colloquial Arabic of utterances involving what is sometimes called ‘left-​ dislocation’ (see also Chapter 7, Footnotes 1 and 3), i.e. Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema structures where the Nuc/Rhema itself contains an embedded Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema structure (cf. for Egyptian Arabic, El Zarka 2013: 298). Hellmuth (2016) finds that even less obviously recursive structures such as S-​V-​O sentences may involve more than one intonation unit, particularly where the subject is long. As Dina El Zarka has pointed out to me (personal communication), these results are corroborated for Egyptian Arabic by research which she and Barbara Schuppler are currently working on. 6 I am not concerned in this book with intonational melody/tune. Accordingly, I do not mark this here or elsewhere in the book. For further discussion of intonational melody/tune from a theoretical perspective, however, see Chapter 2, Endnote vii.

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5  Summary of arguments so far

In this chapter, I will summarise the arguments made so far, which have been largely illustrated by Sudanese Arabic, before turning in the remainder of the book to a consideration of their application to Modern Standard Arabic in particular. The arguments made so far can be summarised as follows: 1. In Sudanese Arabic (and in fact in many other languages) there is a correlation between primary accent and communicative/semantic centrality (albeit that the latter is a rather vague notion) (Section 2.4.1). 2. This correlation (primary accent & semantic centrality) operates independently of syntactic structure: it is not therefore simply a realisation of syntactic features (Section 2.4.1). 3. This correlation (conjunction) between a phonetic (sound) element (primary accent) and a semantic element (semantic centrality) (i.e. (primary accent & semantic ) provides a basis for establishing semiotic (sign) identity (Section 2.4.1).1 4. Because this semiotic (sign) identity operates independently – and ‘beyond’ – syntax, it must be regarded as an aspect of para-​syntax (Section 2.4.1). 5. This aspect of para-​syntax is phrase-​structural (Section 2.4.2). 6. We can provisionally identify as the phrase-​structural para-​syntactic nucleus the element which is realised as primarily accented & semantically central, and as the peripheral entity the element which is realised as secondarily accented /unaccented & semantically non-​central (Section 2.4.2) – an analysis which will be revised later in this book. 7. We can term the abstract phrase-​structural para-​syntactic element which has been provisionally identified as having ‘semantic centrality’ (i.e. is realised as ‘semantically central’) the Nuc/Rhema, and that which has been provisionally identified as having ‘semantic non-​centrality’ (i.e. is realised as ‘semantically 1 It is tempting here to draw a comparison here between the notions in the current approach, such as realisation and notions such as spell-​out in the minimalist programme (e.g. Uriagereka 2012). The differences between the two approaches are so profound, however, that this could only be done in the context of a comparative global study of them both – something which falls outside the scope of this study.

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Summary of arguments so far 39 non-​central’) as the Peri/Thema. These can be associated with the notions of theme and rheme (the terms Thema and Rhema being chosen to underline this association). However the semantic realisations (actual meanings in real communicative situations) of Nuc/Rhema and Peri/Thema may be rather different in different languages (Section 2.4.2). 8. We can notate the Peri/Thema vs. Nuc/Rhema bifurcation simply using the terms Peri/Thema and Nuc/Rhema, as in: niḥna masākīn Peri/Thema Nuc/Rhema (cf. e­ xample 12) Or we can notate it in a more obviously structural manner, using a single-​ headed arrow pointing from the Peri/Thema to the Nuc/Rhema, as in: niḥna→masākīn (or masākīn←niḥna) (cf. ­examples 13 and 14) (Section 2.4.2). 9. Word order (‘fronting’/‘preposing’) seems to have a sign status (expression & content) in Arabic which is independent of both phrase-​structural para-​ syntactic features and intonation features. It is, accordingly, apparently para-​ syntactic but not phrase-​structural (Section 2.4.3). 10. The notions of theme and rheme in the Hallidayan approach, as well their congeners in other approaches, are challenged as undefinable semiotically (Section 3.2). 11. An analysis involving recursion, where available, is simpler, and therefore, to be preferred to an analysis not involving recursion. A recursive approach can, for example, be applied in syntax to al-​rājil da bēt-​u kabīr ‘This man’s house is big’ (‘the-​man this house-​his big’), giving the syntactic analysis (al-​rājil da)=([bēt-​u]=[kabīr]) (Section 4.2). 12. Para-​phonotactic recursion is a feature of intonation (Section 4.2.1). 13. Para-​syntactic recursion is a feature of the sign level, the maximally transparent realisation of this in phonology being para-​phonotactic recursion. An analysis is presented of para-​syntactic recursion in Sudanese Arabic (Section 4.2.2).

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6  Traditional Arabic grammar analysis of Arabic clause structure

6.1 Introduction This chapter shows that key principles established for Sudanese Arabic also apply to Standard Arabic, and in particular: 1. Primary accent does not have to be associated with an indefinite element; 2. Primary accent does not have to occur on the final (second) element in a bipartite clause; it may also occur on the first; 3. Primary accent, and by extension secondary accent/non-​accent, function independently of both definiteness and word order, i.e. they are independently functional of other factors in the grammatical system, not merely reflective (realisational) of other grammatical features. The chapter then goes on to consider clause/sentence analysis in traditional Arabic grammar, particularly (i) the distinction between nominal and verbal clauses/sentences, and (ii) the traditional recursive analysis of S-​V structures (including S-​V-​O structures and other post-​verbal extensions of the S-​V structure) , such that a post-​subject verbal phrase is itself analysed in traditional Arabic grammar as a verbal clause/sentence. This provides a point of comparison for the para-​syntactic analysis of Standard Arabic clauses which I shall put forward in Chapter 7.

6.2 Traditional Arabic grammar analysis of Arabic clause structure Having used Sudanese Arabic to build up models for the analysis of phrase-​ structural para-​syntax in Arabic in the previous sections, I will in subsequent sections apply and extend these models to Standard Arabic. In order to justifiably do this, however, it is necessary first to show that the crucial phrase-​structural para-​ syntactic notions which apply to Sudanese Arabic also apply to Standard Arabic. I will accordingly do this here. As noted at the start of Section 2.4, I attempted in Sections 2.4–2.4.1 to establish that there is grammatical phrase-​structural organisation in Sudanese Arabic beyond syntax: para-​syntax (this section). I showed in particular that:

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Traditional analysis of clause structure 41 1. Primary accent does not have to be associated with an indefinite element; indeed, it may be associated with a definite element, even when the other element in a clause consisting of two elements (a bipartite clause) is indefinite; 2. Primary accent does not have to occur on the final (second) element in a bipartite clause; it may also occur on the first; 3. Primary accent, and by extension secondary accent/non-​accent, function independently of both definiteness and word order, i.e. they are independently functional of other factors in the grammatical system, not merely reflective (realisational) of other grammatical features. I chose Sudanese Arabic to look initially at these features, because it provides beautifully clear examples of the issues at hand, for the following reasons in particular: i. The use of the definite particle al-​ throughout to make elements definite, whether they be nominals, adjectivals, verbals or adverbials (Section 2.4). ii. The very clearly bipartite structure of Sudanese Arabic clauses (excluding, of course, monopartite clauses); Sudanese Arabic makes very little use of verbal clauses/sentences (see Dickins 2010b: 259–260). iii. The relative commonness of forms in Sudanese Arabic such as ġarīb al-​rājil da! ‘that man’s strange/how strange that man is’ (literally: ‘strange the-​man this/that’) in which primary accent occurs on the first element (Section 2.4.1). iv. The occurrence in a number of cases in which primary accent is associated with the definite element (rather than the indefinite element, as would be expected) in a DEFINITE+INDEFINITE structure – for example, masākīn al-​sūdāniyīn ‘it’s the Sudanese who are wretched’ (literally: ‘wretched the-​ Sudanese’) (Section 2.4.1). v. The clear independence of primary accent from word order, as illustrated by the fact that in a DEFINITE+INDEFINITE structure, primary accent may occur on the first element (e.g. ġarīb al-​rājil da! ‘that man’s strange/ how strange that man is’; Section 2.4.1) or the second element (e.g. masākīn al-​sūdāniyīn ‘it’s the Sudanese who are wretched’; Section 2.4.1). Standard Arabic does not provide quite such beautifully clear examples for all these phenomena, but it can be shown that the same principles apply to Standard Arabic as well, as follows (Roman numerals below correspond to those immediately above): i. The use of the definite particle al-​ throughout to make elements definite, whether they be nominals, adjectivals, verbals, or adverbials In Standard Arabic, as in Sudanese Arabic, elements are either definite or indefinite. This is not quite so clear in Standard as in Sudanese Arabic, because Standard Arabic makes use of two types of forms to make elements definite: 1.

42

42 Traditional analysis of clause structure Table 6.1 Indefinite and definite phrases in Sudanese and Standard Arabic

Nominal Adjectival

Verbal

Adverbial

Indefinite: without definite particle

Definite: with definite particle

Sudanese: walad ‘a boy’ Standard: walad ‘a boy’ Literally: ‘boy’ Sudanese: zaʕlān (minn-​ak) ‘angry (with you)’ Standard: ġaḍbān (min-​ka) ‘angry (with you)’ Literally: ‘angry (from-​you)’ Also glossable as: ‘an angry (with-​you) one’ Sudanese: ziʕil (minn-​ak) ‘got angry (with you)’ Standard: ġaḍiba (min-​ka) ‘got angry (with you)’ Literally: ‘got~angry (from-​you)’ Also glossable as: ‘a got~angry (with-​you) one’ Sudanese: fī al-​bēt ‘in the house’ Standard: fī al-​bayt ‘in the house’ Literally: ‘in-​the-​house’ Also glossable as: ‘an in-​the-​ house one’

Sudanese: al-​walad ‘the boy’ Standard: al-​walad ‘the boy’ Literally: ‘the-​boy’ Sudanese: al-​zaʕlān (minn-​ak) ‘the one who is angry (with you )’ Standard: al-​ġaḍbān (min-​ka) ‘the one who is angry (with you )’ Literally: ‘the-​angry (from-​you)’ Also glossable as: ‘the-​angry (with-​ you) one’ Sudanese: al-​ziʕil (minn-​ak) ‘the one who got angry (with you )’ Standard: allaḏī ġaḍiba (min-​ka) ‘the one who got angry (with you )’ Literally: ‘the-​got~angry (with-​you)’ Also glossable as: ‘the got~angry (with-​you) one’ Sudanese: al-​fī al-​bēt ‘the one who is in the house’ Standard: allaḏī fī al-​bayt ‘the one who is in the house’ Literally: ‘the-​in-​the-​house’ Also glossable as: ‘the in-​the-​house one’

the definite particle (or definite article) al-​; 2. allaḏī and other members of what can be called the allaḏī-​set. These can be illustrated as in Table 6.1. As can be seen from Table 6.1, al-​ in Standard Arabic standardly occurs with nominals and adjectivals, while allaḏī, and in fact other members of the allaḏī-​ set, occur with verbals and adverbials. A further complication with the allaḏī-​set is that its members agree in gender, number, and in some instances case with the preceding nominal element. Thus, ‘the boy who got angry (with you)’ is al-​walad allaḏī ġaḍiba (min-​ka) (literally: ‘the-​boy the got~angry (with-​you)’). Here, the masculine, singular form allaḏī agrees with the masculine singular nominal al-​walad ‘the boy’. By contrast, ‘the girl who got angry (with you)’ is al-​bint allatī ġaḍibat (min-​ka) (literally: ‘the-​girl the got~angry (with-​you)’). Here, the feminine, singular form allatī agrees with the feminine singular nominal al-​bint ‘the girl’. Both Sudanese Arabic and Standard Arabic have definiteness agreement. Accordingly, an indefinite nominal takes an indefinite attributive adjectival. Taking indefinite agreement first, Sudanese Arabic thus has walad zaʕlān ‘an angry boy’ (literally: ‘boy angry’), and also walad zaʕlān minn-​ak ‘a boy who

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Traditional analysis of clause structure 43 is angry with you’ (literally: ‘boy angry with-​you’), while Standard Arabic has walad ġaḍbān ‘an angry boy’ (literally: ‘boy angry’), and also walad ġaḍbān min-​ ka ‘a boy who is angry with you’ (literally: ‘boy angry with-​you’). In the case of definite attributive agreement, Sudanese Arabic has al-​walad al-​ zaʕlān ‘the angry boy’ (literally: ‘the-​boy the-​angry’), and also al-​walad al-​zaʕlān minn-​ak ‘the boy who is angry with you’ (literally: ‘the-​boy the-​angry with-​you’), while Standard Arabic has al-​walad al-​ġaḍbān ‘the angry boy’ (literally: ‘the-​boy the-​angry’), and also al-​walad al-​ġaḍbān min-​ka ‘the boy who is angry with you’ (literally: ‘the-​boy the-​angry with-​you’). Nominal-​verbal agreement works the same way. Accordingly, an indefinite nominal takes an indefinite attributive verbal. Taking indefinite agreement first, Sudanese Arabic thus has walad ziʕil ‘a boy who got angry’ (literally: ‘boy got~angry), and also walad ziʕil minn-​ak ‘a boy who got angry with you’ (literally: ‘boy got~angry with-​you’), while Standard Arabic has walad ġaḍiba ‘a boy who got angry’ (literally: ‘boy got~angry’), and also walad ġaḍiba min-​ka ‘a boy who got angry with you’ (literally: ‘boy got~angry with-​you’). In the case of definite attributive nominal-​verbal agreement, Sudanese Arabic has al-​walad al-​ziʕil ‘the boy who got angry’ (literally: ‘the-​boy the-​got~angry’), and also al-​walad al-​ziʕil minn-​ak ‘the boy who got angry with you’ (literally: ‘the-​ boy the-​got~angry with-​you’), while Standard Arabic has al-​walad allaḏī ġaḍiba ‘the boy who got angry’ (literally: ‘the-​boy the got~angry’), and also al-​walad allaḏī ġaḍiba min-​ka ‘the boy who got angry with you’ (literally: ‘the-​boy the got~angry with-​you’). For more detailed discussion of these issues, see Dickins (2009d). In Standard Arabic, al-​and allaḏī-​set members are in complementary distribution; in any given context where one occurs, the other cannot. Thus, al-​standardly occurs before nominals and adjectivals, while allaḏī-​set members standardly occur before bipartite clauses, verbals and adverbials. In fact, there are cases where clauses have al-​ rather than an allaḏī-​set member, for example, where the predicate (in traditional Arabic grammar terms) of the bipartite clause is a participle. An example is al-​mutawaqqaʕ wuṣūlu-​hum ‘whose arrival is expected’ (literally: ‘the-​expected arrival-​their’), such as in the phrase al-​muhājirūn al-​ mutawaqqaʕ wuṣūlu-​hum ‘the immigrants whose arrival is expected’ (literally: ‘the-​immigrants the-​expected arrival-​their’) (cf. Dickins 2009d: 550). Here mutawaqqaʕ wuṣūlu-​hum (literally: ‘expected arrival-​their’) is a bipartite clause, in which in traditional Arabic grammatical terms, the predicand is wuṣūlu-​hum ‘their arrival’ and the predicate is the passive participle mutawaqqaʕ ‘expected’. In al-​mutawaqqaʕ wuṣūlu-​hum, ‘whose arrival is expected’ (literally: ‘the-​expected arrival-​their’), the entire clause is made definite by the initial al-​, this clause thus agreeing in definiteness as an attributive relative clause with the preceding definite nominal al-​muhājirūn ‘the immigrants’. (Note that mutawaqqaʕ remains indefinite in al-​mutawaqqaʕ wuṣūlu-​hum.) Where a passive participle (such as mutawaqqaʕ ‘expected’) occurs as the predicate of a bipartite clause, the entire clause is, as seen, made definite by the use of al-​. Where, however, a verbal occurs as the predicate of a bipartite clause,

44

44 Traditional analysis of clause structure this clause is made definite by the use of a member of the allaḏī-​set. Thus, when the verb yutawaqqaʕ ‘is expected’ occurs as in a bipartite clause, e.g. yutawaqqaʕ wuṣūlu-​hum ‘their arrival is expected’ (literally: ‘is~expected arrival-​their’), we have al-​muhājirūn allaḏīn yutawaqqaʕ wuṣūlu-​hum ‘the immigrants whose arrival is expected’ (literally: ‘the-​immigrants DEF.=allaḏīn is~expected arrival-​their’).1 ii. The very clearly bipartite structure of Sudanese Arabic clauses (excluding, of course, monopartite clauses) This will be discussed for Standard Arabic in this section below. iii. The relative commonness of forms in Sudanese Arabic such as ġarīb al-​ rājil da! ‘that man’s strange/how strange that man is’ (literally: ‘strange the-​man this/that’) in which primary accent occurs on the first element (Section 2.4.1) Forms such as these are probably not as common in Standard Arabic as they are in Sudanese. However, they certainly occur, as in the example from the novel al-​šabaka (‘The Network’) by the Egyptian novelist šarīf ḥatāta...‫غريب هذا الرجل‬ ‫ل ينطق أكثر من كلمتين أو ثلث ثم يصمت‬... ġarīb hāḏā al-​rajul… lā yanṭuq akṯar min kalimatayn aw ṯalāṯ ṯumma yaṣmut2 ‘Strange this man/How strange this man is! … He doesn’t utter more than two or three words, then he falls silent’ (literally: ‘strange this the-​man … no he~utters more than words~two or three then he~falls~silent’). iv. The occurrence in a number of cases in which primary accent is associated with the definite element (rather than the indefinite element, as would be expected) in a DEFINITE+INDEFINITE structure – for example, masākīn al-​sūdāniyīn ‘it’s the Sudanese who are wretched’ (literally: ‘wretched the-​Sudanese’) This is found in Standard Arabic particularly in certain phrases, for example mamnūʕ al-​duxūl ‘no entry’ (literally: ‘forbidden the-​entrance’).

1 While Sudanese Arabic has only one definite particle al-​, and Standard Arabic has al-​and the allaḏī-​ set, most Arabic dialects have two definite particle forms: il-​(with various allomorphs) and illi. In Egyptian Arabic, these are in virtual complementary distribution, il-​occurring before nominals, and illi occurring before verbals and adverbials. Before adjectivals il-​standardly occurs. There is, however, an opposition here, il-​and illi before adjectivals, the latter giving a more ‘clausal’ feel. This is illustrated by the following, which occurs in a short story by the Egyptian writer Yusuf Idris called al-​ġarīb ‘The Stranger’: il-​ḥa’’ miš hu illi ġalṭān … ana il-​ġalṭān ‘In fact/The fact is, it wasn’t him who was [the] wrong [one]; it was me/I was [the] wrong [one]’ (literally: ‘the-​fact not he the [illi] wrong … I the [il-​]-​wrong’ (cf. Dickins 2009d: 549). 2 A form having much the same communicative purpose as ġarīb hāḏā al-​rajul, but which is regarded as more Classical, is mā aġraba hāḏā al-​rajul, literally ‘what made~strange this the-​man’.

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Traditional analysis of clause structure 45 v. The clear independence of primary accent from word order, as illustrated by the fact that in a DEFINITE+INDEFINITE structure, primary accent may occur on the first element (e.g. ġarīb al-​rājil da! ‘that man’s strange/how strange that man is’; Section 2.4.1) or the second element (e.g. masākīn al-​ sūdāniyīn ‘it’s the Sudanese who are wretched’; Section 2.4.1) As noted under iii. immediately above, ġarīb hāḏā al-​rajul ‘Strange this man/ How strange this man is!’ with primary accent on ġarīb is found in Modern Standard Arabic. It is not clear to me whether Standard Arabic would allow a form such as masākīn al-​sūdāniyūn (where al-​sūdāniyūn in Standard Arabic is the equivalent of al-​sūdāniyīn in Sudanese Arabic) with primary accent on the second element al-​sūdāniyūn. However, Standard Arabic certainly allows primary accent on the second element in a bipartite DEFINITE+INDEFINITE structure. Thus, in al-​sūdāniyūn masākīn ‘the Sudanese are wretched’ (literally: ‘the-​Sudanese wretched’), primary accent standardly falls (and possibly, in fact, only falls) on the second element masākīn ‘wretched’. As noted above in this section, three points in particular were used to establish that there is grammatical phrase-​structural organisation in Sudanese Arabic beyond syntax: para-​syntax. These same three points, which are elucidated for Standard Arabic through i.–v. immediately above, can be shown to also apply to Standard Arabic, as follows: 1. Primary accent does not have to be associated with an indefinite element; indeed, it may be associated with a definite element, even when the other element in a clause consisting of two elements (a bipartite clause) is indefinite. This is found in Standard Arabic particularly in certain phrases, for example mamnūʕ al-​duxūl ‘no entry’ (literally: ‘forbidden the-​entrance’). (An example given for Sudanese Arabic was masākīn al-​sūdāniyīn ‘wretched are the Sudanese/it’s the Sudanese who are wretched’; Section 2.4.1.) 2. Primary accent does not have to occur on the final (second) element in a bipartite clause; it may also occur on the first. This is also seen in ġarīb hāḏā al-​rajul ‘strange that man/how strange that man is’ for Standard Arabic (and for Sudanese Arabic, in the corresponding ġarīb al-​rājil da). 3. Primary accent, and by extension secondary accent/non-​accent, function independently of both definiteness and word order, i.e. they are independently functional of other factors in the grammatical system, not merely reflective (realisational) of other grammatical features. For Standard Arabic, the independence of primary accent from word order has already been shown through the fact the primary accent may appear on the first element, as in ġarīb hāḏā al-​rajul ‘strange that man/how strange that man is’, or on the second element, as in hāḏā al-​rajul ġarīb ‘this man is strange’ (cf. for Sudanese Arabic ġarīb al-​rājil da and al-​rājil da ġarīb). For definiteness, it has been shown through the fact that indefinite elements

46

46 Traditional analysis of clause structure may, typically, take primary accent, as in the standard reading of hāḏā al-​ rajul ġarīb ‘this man is strange’. However, definite elements may also, sometimes, take primary accent, even in a DEFINITE+INDEFINITE structure, as in mamnūʕ al-​duxūl ‘no entry’ (literally: ‘forbidden the-​entrance’). In the remainder of this section, I will consider the basic traditional clause/ sentence models for Arabic, showing in subsequent sections how these in some respects conform to the analyses proposed in this book, but also arguing that the current analyses are in crucial respects superior to those of traditional Arabic grammar. Traditional Arabic grammar uses the term jumla. This covers both ‘clause’ and ‘sentence’ in terms of standard modern Western-​based approaches (cf. Iványi 2007: 536–540), and will therefore be translated in this book as ‘clause/sentence’. It recognises two basic kinds of clauses/sentences: jumla fiʕliyya ‘verbal clause/sentence’ (Hoyt 2009: 653–659) and jumla ismiyya ‘nominal clause/sentence’ (Hoyt 2008: 381–388). A jumla fiʕliyya ‘verbal clause/sentence’ is a clause/sentence which begins with a verb (Hoyt 2008: 653), e.g: 30. banā al-​rajul bayt built the-​man house The man built a house The basic components of such a clause/sentence in traditional Arabic grammar are: fiʕl ‘verb’, literally ‘act/action’ (here banā ‘[he] built’), fāʕil ‘subject’, literally ‘doer’ (here al-​rajul ‘the man’), and mafʕūl bi-​h ‘object’, literally ‘done by it’ (here bayt ‘a house’). A verbal clause/sentence may occur without an explicit subject (fāʕil), e.g: 31.

banā bayt built house He built a house

It may also occur without an object (mafʕūl bi-​h) , e.g: 32.

banā built He built

In cases where there is no explicit subject, such as banā bayt ‘he built a house’ and banā ‘he built’, there is said to be a hidden (mustatir) subject pronoun (Carter 2007: 430–431). A jumla ismiyya ‘nominal clause/sentence’ is a clause/sentence which begins with a nominal (noun, adjective, noun phrase, etc.; Hoyt 2008: 381), e.g:

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Traditional analysis of clause structure 47 33. al-​rajul muhandis the-​man  engineer the man is an engineer The basic components of such a clause/sentence in traditional Arabic grammar are: mubtada’ bi-​h ‘predicand’, literally ‘begun with it’ (here, al-​rajul ‘the man’) and xabar ‘predicate’, literally ‘[piece of] news’ (here, muhandis ‘engineer’) (cf. Houssaini 2007; Peled 2009; ‘predicand’ is used as the translation of mubtada’ bi-​h by Bohas, Guillaume and Kouloughli 1990: 43; Watson 1993; and Dickins 2010b, among others.) The xabar ‘predicate’ of a nominal clause/sentence may be a noun/noun phrase, as with muhandis ‘engineer’ in al-​rajul muhandis ‘the man’s an engineer’ above. However, it may also be an adjective/adjectival phrase, adverbial (e.g. a prepositional phrase) or a verb/verb phrase, as in 34–36 below: 34.

al-​rajul ġarīb the-​man  strange the man is strange

Here, al-​rajul ‘the man’ is the predicand and ġarīb ‘strange’ the predicate. 35.

al-​rajul  fī al-​bayt the-​man in the-​house the man is in the house

Here, al-​rajul ‘the man’ is the predicand and fī al-​bayt ‘in the house’ the predicate. 36.

al-​rajul banā bayt the-​man built house The man built a house

Here, al-​rajul ‘the man’ is the predicand (mubtada’ bi-​h) and banā bayt ‘built a house’ the predicate (xabar). Examples such as 36, in which the predicate is a verb phrase, are particularly interesting, because they are regarded in traditional Arabic grammar as involving recursion. Thus, in al-​rajul banā bayt ‘the man built a house’, while the verb phrase banā bayt is the predicate (xabar) of the predicand al-​rajul, it is itself analysed as an embedded verbal clause/sentence (Carter 2007: 430). Just as a verbal clause/sentence can be embedded as a predicate, so can a nominal clause/sentence. Thus, a sentence such as hāḏā al-​rajul bayt-​uh kabīr ‘this man’s house is big’ (literally: ‘this man house-​his big’) is analysed most basically as hāḏā al-​rajul (‘this man’) – predicand, and bayt-​uh kabīr (‘his house is big’) – predicate. Within the predicate bayt-​uh kabīr, however, bayt-​uh ‘his house’ is

48

48 Traditional analysis of clause structure analysed as a ‘secondary’ (embedded) predicand, and kabīr ‘big’ as a ‘secondary’ (embedded) predicate. Further degrees of recursion are also possible in nominal clauses/sentences. Thus, for example, in al-​rajul ṣadīq-​uh banā bayt (literally: ‘the-​man friend-​ his built house’) ‘the man’s friend built a house’, the overall analysis is al-​rajul (‘the man’) – predicand; ṣadīq-​uh banā bayt (‘his friend built a house’) – predicate. Within this predicate there is a ‘secondary’ (embedded) predicand ṣadīq-​uh (‘his friend’) and predicate banā bayt (‘built a house’). Finally, this ‘secondary’ (embedded) predicate banā bayt (‘built a house’) is itself an embedded verbal clause/sentence. Examples of the kind al-​rajul ṣadīq-​uh banā bayt would seem to be ruled out by Beeston’s stipulation that “A second embedding process, producing a cumulation of three themes [= predicands], is admissable only when the tertiary theme [= predicand] is a pronoun or a pronoun preceded by a preposition” (Beeston 1974: 477). However, Beeston does not consider examples in which the third predicand involves a verbal clause (the predicand, i.e. Peri/Thema, in the verbal clause banā bayt here being in fact a zero Ø; cf. Section 7.2). Particularly in relation to nominal clauses/sentences, traditional Arabic grammar also employs as sub-​notions taqdīm ‘fronting’/‘preposing’ and ta’xīr ‘backing’/‘postposing’ (Peled 2009: 739). Thus, the nominal clause al-​rajul ġarīb ‘the man’s strange’ (al-​rajul – predicand; ġarīb – predicate) exhibiting basic word order can be compared with ġarīb al-​rajul (‘strange the man!’, or similar). In this latter example, traditional Arabic grammar still analyses al-​rajul (‘the man’) as the predicand (mubtada’ bi-​h) and ġarīb (‘strange’) as the predicate, i.e. the basic sentence structure of al-​rajul ġarīb and ġarīb al-​rajul is for traditional Arabic grammar the same. However, in ġarīb al-​rajul (‘strange the man!’, or similar), there is said to be taqdīm ‘fronting’/‘preposing’ of ġarīb and ta’xīr ‘backing’/‘postposing’ of al-​rajul ‘the man’. It should also be noted that there is a difference in the analyses of clause/sentence structure typically offered in traditional Arabic grammar (naḥw) and that more typically offered in its sister-​discipline traditional Arabic rhetoric (balāġa). In traditional Arabic grammar, as seen, verbal clauses/sentences (necessarily containing a verb) and nominal clauses/sentences where these contain a verb are normally analysed differently, as in the previously discussed examples banā al-​rajul bayt ‘the man built a house’ (literally: ‘built the-​man house’) and al-​ rajul banā bayt ‘the man built a house’ (literally: ‘the-​man built house’). There is, however, an alternative analysis used by Arab grammarians but more typically by rhetoricians, in which both verbal and nominal clauses/sentences are analysed identically (Bohas, Guillaume and Kouloughli 1990: 64–72, 120, 123; Versteegh 2007: 434–437); cf. discussion of musnad and musnad ilay-​h, Section 7.2.

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7  Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema analysis of Standard Arabic

7.1 Introduction This chapter develops and investigates the Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema analysis of Standard Arabic. Section 7.2 applies the current model to both simple and complex clauses in Standard Arabic. Section 7.3 compares the current Peri/Thema– Nuc/Rhema analysis with the Hallidayan-​based theme-​rheme analysis in Baker (2011), arguing that the quite different analyses which Baker arrives at for an English text and its Arabic translation are a function, not of the nature of texts, but of the inadequacies of the model which Baker adopts, and showing that the model proposed in this book overcomes these inadequacies. Section 7.4 considers Peri/ Thema and Nuc/Rhema markers in Standard Arabic, showing, first in relation to predicand-​predicate structures, that in ammā … fa structures, ammā is a ‘theme-​ introducer’, coming at the start of the overall Peri/Thema, while fa-​ is a ‘rheme-​ introducer’ coming at the start of the Nuc/Rhema. This analysis is extended to other initial adverbial phrases/clauses, including sentences which lack a ‘theme-​ introducer’, but have a ‘rheme-​introducer’. Section 7.4.1 considers the notion of markedness, arguing that ‘markedness’ is a semantic matter as well as a matter of realisational frequency, and presents a putative hierarachy of potential markedness for different types of clause structure in Arabic. Section 7.4.1.1 proposes five functions of marked themes in Arabic. Section 7.4.1.1.1 compares the five functions in Section 7.4.1.1 with categories in other writers on Standard and Colloquial Arabic, arguing that there is significant commonality. Section 7.4.1.1.2 considers the relationship between ‘given’ and ‘new’ and the functions in Section 7.4.1.1, showing that as there is no full match between them, the two cannot be equated. Section 7.4.2 considers historical changes in Standard Arabic, arguing that in Classical Arabic, initial adverbial Peri/Themas were realised as more marked than in Modern Standard Arabic. I note that in Modern Standard Arabic nominal clauses/sentences are becoming more common, and verbal clauses/sentences less common, suggesting that nominal clauses/sentences are becoming less marked. This does not involve a change in the phrase-​structural para-​syntactic structures, but rather in the semantic correlates (realisations) of these structures. Section 7.5 considers Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema structures in Arabic dialects and Standard Arabic, contrasting dialects in which nominal clauses/sentences are

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50 Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema in Standard Arabic becoming generalised with dialects where both verbal and nominal clauses/sentences remain widely used. I also compare Arabic with ‘verb-​second’ Germanic languages.

7.2 Application of Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema analysis to Standard Arabic In this section, I will consider the application of the general principles of Peri/ Thema–Nuc/Rhema analysis to Standard Arabic, which, as a language which makes extensive use of Verb-​Subject-​(Object/Complement) – V-​S-​(O/C) – word order, presents particularly interesting challenges from the current perspective. The analyses here draw particularly on those in Alharthi (2010: 96–129, 192–202, 433–572). I will also, where appropriate, make comparisons with the corresponding analyses of traditional Arabic grammar. I have already considered some aspects of syntactically equative structures in para-​syntactic Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema terms in Standard Arabic. Consider the following (paralleling Sudanese Arabic bēt-​u kabīr: ­example 19, etc., above): 37. bayt-​uh kabīr house-​his big ‘his house [is] big’ Assuming primary accent on kabīr ‘big’, this is to be analysed in terms of phrase-​structural para-​syntax as: 38. bayt-​uh → kabīr That is to say, kabīr ‘big’ is the phrase-​structural para-​syntactic Nuc/Rhema and bayt-​uh ‘his house’ the Peri/Thema. Consider also the following (paralleling Sudanese Arabic al-​rājil da bēt-​u kabīr; ­example 18, etc. above): 39. hāḏā al-​rajul bayt-​uh kabīr this the-​man house-​his big This man’s house is big (more literally: ‘this man his house [is] big’) Assuming two intonation units,1 hāḏā al-​rajul ‘this man’ and bayt-​uh kabīr ‘his house is big’, with primary accent (within the primary intonation unit; Section 2.4.1) on hāḏā al-​rajul (more precisely on al-​rajul ‘the man’), and secondary

1 The assumption of two intonation units in hāḏa al-​rajul bayt-​uh kabīr is reasonable, given the typical intonation patterns in Colloquial Arabic of utterances involving what is sometimes called ‘left-​ dislocation’ (see also Chapter 4, Footnote 5; Chapter 7, Footnote 3), i.e. Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema structures where the Nuc/Rhema itself contains an embedded Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema structure (cf. for Egyptian Arabic, El Zarka 2013: 298).

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Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema in Standard Arabic 51 accent (within the secondary intonation unit; Section 2.4.1) on kabīr, we can analyse ­example 39 in phrase-​structural para-​syntactic terms as: 40. hāḏā al-​rajul → (bayt-​uh → kabīr) That is to say, the global Peri/Thema is hāḏā al-​rajul ‘this man’, while the global Nuc/Rhema is bayt-​uh → kabīr ‘his house is big’. Within the global Nuc/ Rhema (bayt-​uh → kabīr ‘his house is big’, however, there is an embedded Peri/ Thema–Nuc/Rhema structure, of which bayt-​uh ‘his house’ is the Peri/Thema and kabīr ‘big’ is the Nuc/Rhema. As noted in Section 6.2, traditional Arabic grammar recognises any clause/ sentence which begins with a noun or noun-​phrase as a nominal clause/sentence (Hoyt 2008: 381). Thus while bayt-​uh kabīr is a nominal clause/sentence, so is the following: 41. bayt-​uh buniya2 house-​his was-​built (PASSIVE) his house was built Syntactically, we can regard bayt-​uh buniya ‘his house was built’ as an equative sentence (cf. Section 2.4; and for corresponding arguments for Sudanese Arabic, see Dickins 2010b). Assuming that the primary accent is on buniya, in para-​ syntactic Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema terms (which would be the standard reading), it seems sensible to say buniya ‘was built’ is the Nuc/Rhema, and bayt-​uh ‘his house’ is the Peri/Thema, just as in bayt-​uh kabīr, the Nuc/Rhema is kabīr ‘big’ and the Peri/Thema is bayt-​uh ‘his house’. I believe this analysis of bayt-​uh buniya is essentially correct, but I will also suggest below that it needs to be refined. As discussed in Section 6.2, in addition to the nominal clause/sentence, traditional Arabic grammar also recognises a syntactically distinct type of clause/sentence, the verbal clause/sentence (jumla fiʕliyya). Verbal clauses/sentences begin with a verb, for example: 2 The example bayt-​uh buniya ‘his house was built’ is pragmatically rather odd, because it combines a predicand Peri/Thema which is likely to be realised semantically as a marked theme/given information, with a predicate Nuc/Rhema buniya ‘was built’ which is likely to be realised semantically as rheme/new information (see Section 2.4.2). However, the information conveyed by buniya ‘was built’ is highly predictable (being built is an absolutely standard thing to happen to houses). This is fairly incompatible with buniya ‘was built’ being the rhematic/new information linked to an emphatic theme/given information bayt-​uh – one would hardly want to stress the fact that ‘his house was built’. The example can be dramatically improved by adding a final additional element, e.g. bayt-​uh buniya bi-​surʕa ‘his house was built quickly’, or by changing the verb to one which is less predictable, e.g. bayt-​uh hudim ‘his house was destroyed’. In both cases the Nuc/Rhema becomes more worthy of conveying rhematic/new (etc.) information, and therefore the Peri/Thema becomes more worthy of conveying ‘emphatic’ (marked) given/old (etc.) information. I have chosen the example bayt-​uh buniya ‘his house was built’ because it fits in most easily with the other examples used involving bayt-​uh ‘his house’ and buniya ‘was built’, and related examples.

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52 Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema in Standard Arabic 42. buniya bayt-​uh was-​built (PASSIVE) house-​his His house was built There are some other interesting differences between nominal and verbal clauses/sentences. For example, they have different agreement patterns: the verb in a verbal clause/sentence is always singular, regardless of whether the subject is singular or plural, whereas the verb in a nominal clause/sentence is in some circumstances in the plural. However, I believe that the nominal clause/sentence and the verbal clause/sentence are, in terms of the current approach, syntactically the same: i.e. both syntactically equative. According to this argument, both the nominal clause/sentence al-​rajul banā ‘the man built’ (literally: ‘the-​man built’) and the verbal clause/sentence banā al-​rajul ‘the man built’ (literally: ‘built the-​ man’) are syntactically equative, both consisting of the two elements al-​rajul and banā. By extension, so are the nominal clause/sentence al-​rajul banā bayt ‘the man built a house’ (literally: ‘the-​man built house’) and the verbal clause/sentence banā al-​rajul bayt ‘the man built a house’ (literally: ‘built house the-​man’), both consisting of the two elements al-​rajul and banā bayt. In the case, of banā al-​rajul bayt there is ‘scrambling’ in that the second element of the verbal clause/sentence banā … bayt is discontinuous (for a discussion of such ‘scrambling’ in Sudanese Arabic, see Dickins 2010b: 259–260). Interestingly, the view that nominal and verbal clauses/sentences are basically the same is found in Arabic grammar and is particularly prevalent in Arabic rhetoric (as already noted in Section 6.2, a different area of study in traditional Arabic scholarship from linguistics, though closely related to it). According to this, only one distinction is made, between the musnad ilay-​h (‘supported element’), i.e. the nominal element (predicand/subject) in both a nominal clause/sentence and a verbal clause/sentence, and the musnad (‘supporting element’), i.e. the verb in a verbal clause/sentence, and the predicate (adjective, verb, noun, etc.) in a nominal clause/sentence (Bohas, Guillaume and Kouloughli 1990: 64–72, 120, 123; Versteegh 2007: 434–437; Alharthi 2010: 115–121). Consider now the following: 43. banā al-​rajul bayt built  the-​man house The man built a house Assuming standard intonational phrasing for Standard Arabic, with the primary accent on the last lexical item, bayt, the best para-​syntactic Peri/Thema– Nuc/Rhema analysis of this sentence is, I believe: 44. (banā … bayt)← al-​rajul Nuc/Rhema   Peri/Thema

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Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema in Standard Arabic 53 This analysis is supported not only intonationally (to the extent that the primary accent is on the last lexical item bayt), but by the fact that the Peri/Thema, al-​rajul ‘the man’, is definite (known, given), bayt ‘a house’, the Nuc/Rhema, is indefinite (unknown, not given), and by extension that banā … bayt is also most plausibly regarded as unknown or not given. Banā al-​rajul bayt thus has a discontinuous para-​syntactic Nuc/Rhema, banā … bayt. Compare now the verbal clause/ sentence (in traditional Arabic grammatical terms) banā al-​rajul bayt ‘the man built a house’ with the following: 45. al-​rajul banā bayt the-​man built house The man built a house In traditional Arabic grammatical terms, al-​rajul banā bayt ‘the man built a house’ is a nominal clause/sentence, because it starts with a noun phrase al-​rajul ‘the man’. In general para-​syntactic Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema terms, al-​rajul banā bayt and banā al-​rajul bayt ‘the man built a house’ can (assuming primary accent on bayt ‘a house’ in both cases) both be analysed as al-​rajul ‘the man’ Peri/Thema, and banā bayt ‘built a house’ Nuc/Rhema. Al-​rajul banā bayt and banā al-​rajul bayt are, however, not the same phonetically – they differ in word order, meaning they sound different. Nor do they have exactly the same meaning. Banā al-​rajul bayt is an unmarked form (cf. Section 7.4.1). Al-​rajul banā bayt, by contrast, has the potential for contrastivity (amongst other things) – e.g. ‘the man and not the woman’ (see Section 7.4.1.1 below; also Dickins and Watson 1999: 347). Given that a combination of phonetic difference and semantic (meaning) difference is indicative of sign difference (Section 2.4.1), and given that I have proposed, above, that nominal clauses/sentences (such as al-​ rajul banā bayt) and verbal clauses/sentences (such as banā al-​rajul bayt) are syntactically identical, the obvious conclusion is that the sign difference between the two resides at the phrase-​structural para-​syntactic Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema level. I propose, following Alharthi (2010: 125; cf. also Obiedat 1994: 544–545), that al-​rajul banā bayt ‘the man built a house’ should be analysed para-​syntactically as al-​rajul Peri/Thema, and banā bayt Nuc/Rhema, as already argued, but that within banā bayt we should recognise an embedded Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema structure, comprising a zero Peri/Thema, representable as Ø, plus a Nuc/Rhema banā bayt. This zero Peri/Thema can be, interestingly, compared to the hidden (mustatir) subject pronoun which traditional Arabic grammar analyses as existing in banā bayt ‘he built a house’ and banā ‘he built’ (Section 6.2). The overall para-​syntactic Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema structure of al-​rajul banā bayt ‘the man built a house’ is thus: 46. (al-​rajul)  →   (Ø  →   banā bayt) main Peri/Thema  main Nuc/Rhema          2nd Peri/Thema 2nd Nuc/Rhema

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54 Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema in Standard Arabic Al-​rajul banā bayt is accordingly in phrase-​structural para-​syntactic terms different from banā al-​rajul bayt, this latter being analysable as: 47. (al-​rajul) →  (banā … bayt) Peri/Thema   Nuc/Rhema Banā al-​rajul bayt thus has the same phrase-​structural para-​syntactic Peri/ Thema–Nuc/Rhema structure as does the embedded banā bayt element in al-​ rajul banā bayt. The only difference is that in al-​rajul banā bayt the embedded banā bayt element has a Ø (zero, ‘empty’) Peri/Thema position (‘slot’), while in banā al-​rajul bayt this zero Peri/Thema position (‘slot’) is filled by al-​rajul ‘the man’. As noted in Section 6.2, in traditional Arabic grammar, al-​rajul banā bayt is not only analysed as a nominal clause/sentence, but the banā bayt element is itself analysed as an embedded verbal clause/sentence. This equation of the banā bayt element in al-​rajul banā bayt with banā bayt as a verbal clause/sentence in the complete sentence banā bayt accords well with the current analysis. The current para-​syntactic Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema analysis of banā bayt ‘he built a house’ as a complete sentence is thus (assuming primary accent on bayt ‘a house’): 48.

Ø  →  (banā bayt) Peri/Thema Nuc/Rhema

This analysis makes good sense communicatively. As argued above, in banā al-​rajul bayt ‘the man built a house’ al-​rajul ‘the man’ is definite (known, given), bayt ‘a house’ is indefinite (unknown, not given), and by extension banā bayt is also most plausibly regarded as unknown or not given. Here, in banā bayt ‘he built a house’, analogy requires us to say that the entire sentence banā bayt is to be regarded as rhematic (unknown, not given, etc.). What is known (thematic), though not explicitly expressed, in banā bayt ‘he built a house’ is the ‘he’ (3rd person, masc. sg.) element. The analysis of banā bayt as containing a Ø element also works well with more extended structures, such as the following: 49. al-​walad banā wālid-​uh bayt3 the-​boy built  father-​his house The boy’s father built a house (more literally ‘the boy his father built a house’) 3 Structures of the kind al-​walad banā wālid-​uh bayt (The boy’s father built a house; more literally ‘the boy his father built a house’) are often said syntactically to involve ‘left-​dislocation’, i.e. the ‘moving’ of an element, in this case al-​walad, to the start (‘left’) of a clause (e.g. Andrason 2016). Under the approach to Arabic syntax adopted in Dickins (2010b), and discussed in Section 2.4, al-​ walad banā wālid-​uh bayt is simply a DEFINITE+INDEFINITE bipartite clause, in which al-​walad

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Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema in Standard Arabic 55 Here, the banā wālid-​uh bayt ‘his father built a house’ element obviously involves the same para-​syntactic Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema structure as banā al-​ rajul bayt ‘the man built a house’, discussed above; i.e. al-​rajul/wālid-​uh ‘the man/his father’ Peri/Thema and banā bayt ‘built a house’ Nuc/Rhema. The entire phrase banā wālid-​uh bayt ‘his father built a house’, however, functions as a secondary (embedded) Nuc/Rhema, whose Peri/Thema is al-​walad ‘the boy’; just as in hāḏā al-​rajul banā bayt ‘this man built a house’ the entire phrase banā bayt ‘built a house’ functions as a Nuc/Rhema whose Peri/Thema is hāḏā al-​rajul. The overall phrase-​structural para-​syntactic Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema analysis of al-​walad banā wālid-​uh bayt ‘the boy’s father built a house’ (more literally: ‘the boy his father built a house’) is: 50. al-​walad  →   (wālid-​uh → [banā … bayt]) main Peri/Thema  main Nuc/Rhema           2nd Peri/Thema  2nd Nuc/Rhema Compare ­example 50 in particular to al-​rajul banā bayt (­example 46), and banā al-​rajul bayt (­example 47). One point to note is that al-​rajul banā bayt would typically be one intonation unit in Arabic, whereas al-​walad banā wālid-​uh bayt ‘the boy’s father built a house’ (more literally: ‘the boy his father built a house’) could be two (cf. El Zarka 2013: 104; though as Sam Hellmuth has pointed out to me, there is likely to be some variation in this regard, depending on the speakers ‘underlying’ Arabic dialect). This accords, in terms of the current analysis, with whether the embedded Peri/Thema ‘slot’ is Ø (zero) as in banā bayt or whether it is filled, as in al-​walad banā wālid-​uh bayt (where it is filled with wālid-​uh ‘his father’). Clauses/sentences with an initial verb (verbal clauses/sentences in traditional Arabic grammar) which consist of verb, subject and object most commonly have the word order Verb-​Subject-​Object (V-​S-​O), as in banā al-​rajul bayt ‘the man built a house’. The word order Verb-​Object-​Subject (V-​O-​S) is also possible, however, as in banā al-​bayt rajul ‘a man built the house’, or more likely, in translation

is definite and banā wālid-​uh bayt is indefinite (the definite correspondent of this in Standard Arabic being allaḏī banā wālid-​uh bayt ‘the one whose father built a house’; literally: ‘the-​who built father-​ his house’; cf. Section 6.2). We can thus think of banā wālid-​uh bayt, as an indefinite, as meaning ‘one whose father built a house’ (or ‘a his-​father-​built-​a-​house one’). Within banā wālid-​uh bayt there is a further embedded (recursive) DEFINITE+INDEFINITE structure; wālid-​uh ‘his father’ DEFINITE, plus banā… bayt ‘built a house’ INDEFINITE. This analysis is explored in detail in Dickins (2010b) for Sudanese Arabic; but the same principles apply also to Standard Arabic. In Sudanese Arabic the equivalent of al-​walad banā wālid-​uh bayt would be al-​walad wāld-​u bana bēt (literally: ‘the-​boy father-​his built house’). Sudanese Arabic makes very little use of verbal clauses/ sentences, almost always using ‘predicand-​predicate’ structures (cf. Section 6.2, and Dickins 2010b: 259). However, in Sudanese Arabic, as noted in Section 2.4, definiteness is transparent in that the basic marker of definiteness (the definite particle) is al-​. Thus, the indefinite clause wāld-​u bana bēt ‘his father built a house/one whose father built a house’ has as its definite counterpart al-​ wāld-​u bana bēt ‘the one whose father built a house’.

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56 Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema in Standard Arabic terms, ‘the house was built by a man’. (A form such as banā al-​bayt muhandis ‘the house was built by an engineer’ – literally ‘built-​the-​house engineer’, would, of course, be more communicatively/pragmatically plausible. I have, however, used banā al-​bayt rajul ‘the man built a house’ for lexical consistency with previous examples.) In a case like this, the primary accent normally falls on the final subject element, here rajul ‘a man’, which most obviously conveys the new/unknown information. The object, here, al-​bayt ‘the house’, by contrast typically conveys the old/known information. This is reflected in the fact that rajul ‘a man’ is indefinite, while al-​ bayt ‘the house’ is definite. A sentence such as banā bayt al-​rajul ‘a man built the house’ would be odd, just as ‘A house was built by the man’ sounds odd in English. A Verb-​Object-​Subject (V-​O-​S) clause/sentence (with primary accent on the subject), such as banā al-​bayt rajul ‘a man built the house’/‘the house was built by a man’ seems to be best analysed in para-​syntactic Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema terms as banā al-​bayt Peri/Thema, rajul ‘man’ Nuc/Rhema, i.e: 51. (banā al-​bayt)→rajul Peri/Thema  Nuc/Rhema The reasons for adopting this analysis are (i) that in relation to the expression-side of the sign, banā al-​bayt rajul has primary accent on rajul, and (ii) that in relation to the content side of the sign rajul is indefinite, and, as is normally the case with indefinites, conveys new (rhematic) information. Al-​bayt as a definite, by contrast, clearly conveys old (thematic) information. The entire phrase banā al-​bayt ‘built the house/one who built the house’ is indefinite, its definite counterpart being allaḏī banā al-​bayt ‘the one who built the house’ (cf. the discussion of banā wālid-​uh bayt ‘his father built a house/one whose father built a house’, literally: ‘built father-​his house’, and allaḏī banā wālid-​uh bayt ‘the one whose father built a house’; literally: ‘the-​who built father-​his house’, in this section, Footnote 2). However, as noted, within this the definite element al-​bayt ‘the house’ makes the phrase appropriate to be used in contexts where the information relayed by the enitre phrase banā al-​bayt is old (thematic); e.g. man banā al-​bayt? ‘who built the house?’/Banā al-​bayt rajul [ism-​uh aḥmad], literally: ‘built the-​house man [name-​his Ahmed]’; more idiomatically, ‘the house was built by a man whose name is Ahmed’. Clauses/sentences of the type al-​walad banā wālid-​uh bayt ‘the boy’s father built a house’ (more literally: ‘the boy his father built a house’) have been analysed as al-​walad ‘the boy’ main Peri/Thema, banā wālid-​uh bayt-​a ‘his father built a house’ main Nuc/Rhema – with further analysis for the internal para-​ syntactic Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema structure of banā wālid-​uh bayt. This kind of structure in which a verbal clause/sentence (in traditional Arabic-​grammatical terms; see Section 7.2), here banā wālid-​uh bayt ‘his father built a house’, is preceded by a noun phrase, here al-​walad, illustrates an interesting feature of Standard Arabic: normally at least, it is only possible to have one element before a verbal clause/sentence (as noted in the analysis of Benmahdjoub 1991: 208).

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Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema in Standard Arabic 57 In the case of al-​walad banā wālid-​uh bayt, this pre-​verbal-​clause element is a noun phrase al-​walad. In other cases, however, the pre-​verbal element may be an adverbial, for example al-​sana al-​māḍiya banā al-​rajul bayt ‘last year the man built a house’. Here, we would typically expect to have two intonation units al-​ sana al-​māḍiya ‘last year’ and banā al-​rajul bayt ‘the man built a house’. Just as we can analyse al-​walad banā wālid-​uh bayt (normally also with two intonation units) in phrase-​structural para-​syntactic terms into a main Peri/Thema al-​walad ‘the boy’ and a main Nuc/Rhema banā wālid-​uh bayt ‘his father built a house’, so we can analyse al-​sana al-​māḍiya banā al-​rajul bayt ‘last year the man built a house’ into a main Peri/Thema al-​sana al-​māḍiya ‘last year’ and a main Nuc/ Rhema banā al-​rajul bayt ‘the man built a house’. Similarly, as we have seen with al-​walad banā wālid-​uh bayt ‘the boy’s father built a house’ (literally: ‘the-​boy father-​his built house’), we can further analyse the main Nuc/Rhema banā wālid-​uh bayt ‘his father built a house’ into an embedded Peri/Thema wālid-​uh ‘his father’ and an embedded Nuc/Rhema banā … bayt ‘built a house’. So with al-​sana al-​māḍiya banā al-​rajul bayt ‘last year the man built a house’ we can further analyse the main Nuc/Rhema banā al-​rajul bayt ‘the man built a house’ into an embedded Peri/Thema al-​rajul ‘the man’ and an embedded Nuc/ Rhema banā … bayt ‘built a house’. The analysis of al-​sana al-​māḍiya banā al-​rajul bayt ‘last year the man built a house’ can be represented (visualised) as follows: 52. (al-​sana al-​māḍiya)→(al-​rajul → [banā … bayt]) main Peri/Thema  main Nuc/Rhema 2nd Peri/Thema 2nd Nuc/Rhema

Other sentences with ‘preposed’ adverbials are combinations of types already discussed. Thus, the para-​syntactic Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema analysis of al-​sana al-​māḍiya banā bayt ‘last year he built a house’ is (assuming two intonation units: a secondary intonation unit with secondary accent al-​sana al-​māḍiya ‘last year’, and a primary intonation unit banā bayt with primary accent on bayt ‘a house’) as follows: 53. (al-​sana al-​māḍiya) → (Ø  →  [banā bayt]) main Peri/Thema   main Nuc/Rhema           2nd Peri/Thema 2nd Nuc/Rhema This analysis involves a pre-​verbal-​sentence Peri/Thema followed by the analysis for the verbal clause/sentence banā bayt ‘he built a house’ (­example 48).

7.3 Comparison with Baker’s (2011) analysis of Standard Arabic The following paragraphs consider in particular Baker’s (2011: 131–189) analysis of the thematic structure of Arabic using a systemic functional linguistic

58

58 Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema in Standard Arabic approach. The analyses which she provides are in terms of the theme-​rheme elements considered in this section, the same as those of other recent researchers using the systemic functional approach (e.g. Althumali 2016; Al Herz 2016). The critique offered in this section thus applies to the mainstream of systemic functional analyses of thematic structure in Arabic. Baker (2011: 131–189) provides an account of thematic structure covering both English and Arabic, among other languages. She considers an English text from the book A Hero from Zero, in which Tiny Rowland discusses his part in the events leading up to the Fayed brothers’ acquisition of the House of Fraser, and compares this to its Arabic translation. The English text has a series of sentences beginning with ‘I’, as might be expected given that this is a first-​ person account of Tiny Rowland’s activities. In the Arabic translation, most of the sentences start with the verb (they are verbal clauses/sentences in terms of traditional Arabic grammar: see Section 6.2). This is typical of Arabic narrative (a point which will be taken up in Section 8.2 below). Also in keeping with the norms of Arabic, the subject is not expressed by an independent subject pronoun (anā ‘I’); rather, it is simply expressed through the first person singular perfect (past) verb suffix -​tu. Baker uses the Hallidayan approach in which the theme is the first element in the sentence. She points out that according to this view, the thematic organisation of the Arabic translation – involving a series of initial thematic verbs – is quite different from that of the English original, involving a series of initial subject ‘I’ elements. Intuitively, this seems a very odd conclusion to draw. If theme is a semantic notion, as Halliday argues, we should not expect two languages to have very different thematic organisations of the same sort of text, particularly where one text (here the Arabic) is a translation of the other (the English), and therefore specifically intended to convey the same meaning (all other things being equal) as the original. One apparently possible way of getting round this problem would be to say that theme – in the Hallidayan sense – is not a semantic notion. This, however, is not possible without altering the theory itself, since theme is established as a universal theoretical notion in Hallidayan linguistics (Section 3.2; Halliday and Matthiessen 2004: 64–68). (A second way of dealing with the problem would be to say that in Arabic, the theme is not the first element in the clause – a position adopted by Obiedat 1994, for example; although this is in many ways sensible, it runs into its own problems, as noted in Section 3.2.) In Hallidayan terms, those sentences in Tiny Rowland’s text from A Hero from Zero which begin with ‘I’ in English and with a verb in its Arabic translation exhibit not only theme-​rheme sequencing, but also given-​new sequencing: the new element (indicated by primary accent) falls towards the end of the clause, as is standard for both English and Arabic, meaning that the element(s) at the start of the clause are treated as given. This is fine in the English original text, where the initial element is ‘I’. ‘I’ is intrinsically given, regardless of the context. In a text in which someone is narrating their own actions, ‘I’ can be regarded as doubly given, since it is the most prominent known element in the overall context, regardless of what other elements may also be known.

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Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema in Standard Arabic 59 In the Arabic translation, by contrast, the initial verbs are clearly not given. The main verb in each sentence in a narrative is most likely to describe what comes next. Assuming the narrative presents newsworthy – unknown – information to the reader, the verb is likely to express at least part of this new or unknown information. An Arabic verb, of course, also contains a pronominal element, and as such can be said to include an element which is likely to be known or given. However, the main feature of the verb is its presentation of other information. (As noted in Section 3.2, the Hallidayan given and new are much more like Peri/ Thema and Nuc/Rhema in the current approach, than are the Hallidayan theme and rheme.) The current analysis provides an escape route from the rather bizarre conclusion under a Hallidayan approach that initial verbs in the Tiny Rowland text are themes and given. As noted in Section 7.2, under the current approach in Arabic verbal clauses/sentences, an empty (zero) Peri/Thema position (‘slot’) is established (hypothesised). Thus we can say that the string of verbal clauses/sentences have as their Peri/Thema an empty pronominal-​type entity – which can be regarded in some sense at least as equivalent to English ‘I’, and which might, in marked and some other contexts (cf. Pashova 2003: 25–26), be filled by the Arabic pronoun anā ‘I’. The analysis proposed here thus allows us to regard the Arabic translation as much more similar to the English original than does a Hallidayan analysis, whether in theme-​rheme or given-​new terms, recognising the rough equivalence between the original English version and its Arabic translation in these respects which common sense tells us should exist. Though the two analyses are essentially different, there is also a striking commonality between the notion of zero Peri/Thema position in this approach and a hidden (mustatir) subject pronoun in a clause/sentence lacking an ‘overt’ (explicit) subject outside the verb in a verbal clause/sentence in traditional Arabic grammar (Section 6.2).

7.4 Nuc/Rhema-​markers and Peri/Thema-​markers in Standard Arabic Arabic is traditionally analysed as having three basic conjunctions: wa-​‘and’, fa ‘and so/so’ and ṯumma ‘then’ (e.g. Bohas, Guillaume and Kouloughli 1990: 133–135). Wa-​‘and’, and fa-​‘and so/so’ function in many ways like English ‘and’. Both wa-​ ‘and’, and fa-​ can occur between nouns/noun phrases, adjectives/adjective phrases, adverbs/adverbial phrases, and clauses. Like English ‘and’ – though much more commonly than ‘and’ in formal English writing – wa-​‘and’, and fa-​can also occur sentence-​initially. There are, however, contexts where fa-​, in particular, occurs which are clearly different from contexts in which ‘and’ can occur in English. Perhaps the most prominent un-​English-​like context in which fa-​occurs is what is sometimes referred to in English as the ammā … fa construction. Ammā … fa is sometimes translated in traditional Arabic teaching books as ‘as … for’, and I shall use this translation for illustrative purposes immediately below. Ammā … fa is used in situations of contrast in Arabic or in listing of a series of elements (cf. Pashova

60

60 Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema in Standard Arabic 2003: 16), where the initial element after the ammā is contrastive with an element in a previous – or sometimes following – element. It may, depending on context, be idiomatically translated into English as ‘however’, ‘meanwhile’, or ‘on the other hand’, amongst other things (cf. Dickins, Hervey and Higgins 2016: 182–183). Consider the following examples, involving ammā … fa-​with a Peri/Rhema–Nuc/ Thema analysis below each, to be discussed subsequently in this section: 54.  ammā hāḏā al-​rajul fa-​kabīr as~for this the-​man and/so-​big As for this man   he is big (ammā hāḏā al-​rajul) → (fa-​kabīr) 55.  ammā hāḏā al-​rajul  fa-​banā bayt as~for this the-​man  and/so-​(he~)built house As for this man he built a house (ammā hāḏā al-​rajul) → (fa-​Ø → [banā bayt]) 56.

ammā hāḏā al-​rajul  fa-​huwa  kabīr as~for this  the-​man and/so-​he big As for this man he is big (ammā hāḏā al-​rajul) → (fa-​huwa→kabīr)

57.

ammā hāḏā al-​rajul   fa-​ṣadīq-​uh   banā bayt as~for this   the-​man and/so-​friend-​his built house As for this man his friend built a house (ammā hāḏā al-​rajul) → (fa-​ṣadīq-​uh → [Ø → {banā bayt}])

58.

ammā hāḏā al-​rajul fa-​ṣadīq-​uh   ism-​uh  zayd as~for this   the-​man and/so-​friend-​his name-​his zayd As for this man his friend’s name is Zayd (more literally: ‘As for this man his friend his name Zayd’) (ammā hāḏā al-​rajul) → (fa-​ṣadīq-​uh → [ism-​uh → zayd])

59.

ammā hāḏā al-​rajul  fa-​banā  ṣadīq-​uh bayt as~for this   the-​man and/so-​built friend-​his house As for this man his friend built a house (ammā hāḏā al-​rajul) → (fa-​ṣadīq-​uh → [banā … bayt])

In all these examples, the phrase beginning with ammā introduces what is in traditional Arabic grammatical terms the mubtada’ (predicand) (Section 6.2), and the phrase beginning with fa-​ introduces what is in traditional Arabic grammatical terms the xabar (predicate). Thus, ­example 54 ammā hāḏā al-​rajul fa-​ kabīr (‘as-​for this the-​man and/so-​old’) has a simple predicand (ammā) hāḏā

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Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema in Standard Arabic 61 al-​rajul (‘as~for this the-​man’) and a simple predicate (fa-​)kabīr (‘and/and~so-​ big’). Example 55 ammā hāḏā al-​rajul fa-​banā bayt (‘as-​for this the-​man and/ so-​[he]~built house’) has a simple predicand (ammā) hāḏā al-​rajul (‘as-​for this the-​man) and a complex predicate (fa-​)banā bayt (‘and/so-​[he]~built house’), this complex predicate consisting of a zero (Ø) secondary (embedded) predicand and a secondary (embedded) predicate banā bayt (cf. e­ xample 48). In ­example 56, the predicate huwa kabīr (‘he [is] big’) itself consists of a secondary (embedded) predicand, huwa ‘he’, and predicate, kabīr ‘big’. In ­example 57, the predicate ṣadīq-​uh banā bayt (‘friend-​his built house’) consists of a secondary (embedded) predicand ṣadīq-​uh (‘friend-​his’) and a complex predicate banā bayt (‘built house’), this complex predicate consisting of a zero (Ø) secondary (embedded) predicand and a secondary (embedded) predicate banā bayt (cf. ­example 48). In ­example 58, the predicate ṣadīq-​uh ism-​ uh zayd (‘friend-​his name-​his Zayd, i.e. ‘his friend’s name is Zayd’) consists of a secondary (embedded) predicand ṣadīq-​uh (‘friend-​his’) and a secondary (embedded) predicate ism-​uh zayd (‘name-​his Zayd’, i.e. ‘his name is Zayd’), and this itself consists of a tertiary predicand ism-​uh (‘name-​his’) and a tertiary predicate zayd (‘Zayd’). (I believe that this kind of tertiary predication is acceptable in ammā … fa-​ usages, even if it is not acceptable elsewhere, according to Beeston’s stipulation; cf. Section 4.2.) In terms of traditional Arabic grammar, ­example 59 has a verbal clause/sentence (see Section 7.2) predicate banā ṣadīq-​uh bayt (‘built friend-​his house’, i.e. ‘his friend built a house’). If, however, we accept that verbal clauses/sentences in Arabic are syntactically equative just as are nominal clauses/sentences (see Section 7.2), the syntactic structure of ­example 59 is in fact the same as that of e­ xample 57. So far, I have suggested that in ammā … fa-​ constructions, ammā introduces the predicand and fa-​ the predicate. However, as argued in Section 7.2, I believe that predicand and predicate are not really syntactic notions in Arabic and that ‘predicand-​predicate’ sentences are basically equative (A=B or B=A) structures (cf. Section 2.4), in which what is predicand and what predicate is traditionally determined on non-​syntactic grounds, which include word order. In all of the ­examples 54–59, what I have identified as the predicate takes the primary accent – i.e. in terms of the current approach it is the phrase-​structural para-​syntactic Nuc/Rhema. What I have identified as the predicand is, accordingly, the phrase-​structural para-​syntactic Peri/Thema. This leads to the conclusion that what ammā does in ammā … fa-​constructions is to mark the Peri/Thema, while fa-​marks the Nuc/Rhema. In respect of this analysis, consider the following: 60.  ammā al-​sana al-​māḍiya   fa-​banā bayt as~for the-​year the-​last  and/so-​[he~]built house Last year he built a house (more literally: ‘As for the last year, and/so he built a house’) (ammā al-​sana al-​māḍiya) → (fa-​Ø → [banā bayt])

62

62 Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema in Standard Arabic Example 60 accords with the analysis just put forward that ammā marks the Peri/ Thema and fa-​ introduces the Nuc/Rhema. Al-​sana al-​māḍiya is the Peri/Thema while banā bayt is the Nuc/Rhema (see Section 7.2). It does not, however accord with the view previously suggested that ammā marks the predicand and fa-​ the predicate. As an adverbial which is peripheral to the basic clause structure, al-​sana al-​māḍiya is here not a predicand. (Nor is it a predicate, i.e. the other basic element in a bipartite clause in Arabic; it is, rather, what is standardly known as an adverbial adjunct, or adjunct adverbial; cf. Hasselgård 2014; Dickins 2010b: 1085.) Consider now the following: 61. iḏan fa-​banā     bayt thus and/so-​(he~)built  house Thus he built a house (iḏan) → (fa-​Ø → [banā bayt]) 62. ʕalā ayyi ḥāl fa-​al-​rajul  kabīr on any case and/so-​the-​man big/old Anyway the man is old (ʕalā ayyi ḥāl) → (fa-​al-​rajul → kabīr) Examples 61 and 62 do not involve the Peri/Thema-marker ammā. However, in both cases an initial adverbial Peri/Thema is followed by a Nuc/Rhema introduced by fa-​: iḏan ‘thus’ in ­example 61, and ʕalā ayyi ḥāl ‘in any case’ in ­example 62. Conditional structures in Arabic can be analysed in the same way. (For recent discussions of conditionals in both Standard and Colloquial Arabic, see Sartori 2009, 2011; Alfraidi 2017.) Standard Arabic has three conditional particles, in and iḏā ‘if’, normally introducing real conditions, and law ‘if’, normally introducing unreal conditions. In all cases, it is possible to have all the verbs in the so-​called perfect tense (otherwise mainly used for expressing the past). With in and iḏā, the main clause is frequently introduced by fa-​. Thus: 63.

in banā   bayt fa-​sakant-​u   fī-​h if (he-​)built  house and/and-​so-​lived-​I in-​it If he builds a house I will live in it (in banā bayt) →  (fa-​Ø → [sakant-​u fī-​h])

Conditional clauses are adverbial. In ­example 63, an initial Peri/Thema adverbial clause in banā bayt ‘if he builds a house’ (not further analysed here) is followed by a Nuc/Rhema main clause sakant-​u fī-​h ‘I will live in it’, introduced by fa-​. With the unreal conditional particle law, the Nuc/Rhema is not introduced by fa-​, but may be introduced by another particle la-​. Thus:

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Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema in Standard Arabic 63 64.  law banā  bayt    la-​sakant-​u fī-​h if (he-​)built house la-​lived-​I   in-​it If he built a house I would live in it (law banā bayt) →  (la-​Ø → [sakant-​u fī-​h]) Where the initial Peri/Thema adverbial element means ‘since’, the more basic conjunction wa-​ ‘and’ may be used to introduce a Nuc/Rhema (cf. Dickins and Watson 1999: 493), as in the following: 65.

munḏu ḏālika al-​ḥīn    wa-​askun fī hāḏā al-​bayt since that  the-​time and-​I~live in this the-​house Since that time, I’ve been living in this house (munḏu ḏālika al-​ḥīn) → (wa-​Ø → [askun fī hāḏā al-​bayt])

With initial Peri/Thema adverbials meaning ‘despite/although’, the Nuc/Rhema may be introduced by the phrase illā anna, where illā anna can be paraphrased as ‘except that’ (cf. Dickins and Watson 1999: 492; cf. also the discussion of ‘markedness’; Section 7.4.1.1): 66.

raġma  anna-​hu ya-​skun fī bayt kabīr illā anna-​hu  ḥazīn although that-​he lives  in house big  except that-​he sad Although he lives in a big house, he is sad (raġma anna-​hu ya-​skun fī bayt kabīr) → (illā anna-​hu → ḥazīn)

(I have not analysed the internal phrase-​structural para-​syntactic structure of raġma anna-​hu ya-​skun fī bayt kabīr in this example, since this is not directly relevant to the focus of analysis.) Illā anna may also itself be preceded by fa-​(to give fa-​illā anna) in such cases (Dickins and Watson 1999: 492). Having focused above on particles which introduce the Nuc/Rhema in Standard Arabic, I will now consider one further particle in which introduces the Peri/Thema. This is inna. Inna is traditionally described as an emphatic particle. Unlike ammā … fa, inna is not contrastive (for a discussion of some of the specific uses of inna in Modern Standard Arabic, see Dickins and Watson 1999: 419–428). Inna introduces what are in traditional Arabic terms nominal predicands, as in the following: 67. inna hāḏā al-​rajul kabīr inna this  the-​man big This man is big The predicand here is thus the phrase inna hāḏā al-​rajul and the predicate is the single word kabīr, although it may be any other of the more complex predicate types already seen in e­ xamples 54–59.

64

64 Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema in Standard Arabic In combination with the Peri/Thema introducer inna, it is also possible to use the Nuc/Rhema-​introductory particle la-​ previously analysed, in ­example 64, as introducing the Nuc/Rhema after an unreal conditional clause, signalled by law. La-​is traditionally said to further emphasise a clause/sentence in which the nominal Peri/Thema is introduced by inna: 68.

inna hāḏā al-​rajul la-​kabīr inna this  the-​man la-​big This man is [indeed] big (inna hāḏā al-​rajul)→(la-​kabīr)

In this section I have considered two particles – ammā and inna – which may introduce the Peri/Thema4 in Standard Arabic. I have also identified a number of other elements – fa-​, wa-​, illa anna and la-​ – which may introduce the Nuc/ Rhema. The analyses in this section accord with those of Kinberg (2001), who uses ‘topic’ for what I have here referred to as Peri/Thema and ‘comment’ for what I have here referred to as Nuc/Thema. 7.4.1 Marked and unmarked themes in Standard Arabic The adjectives ‘marked’ and ‘unmarked’ and the associated abstract noun ‘markedness’ are used in various ways in linguistics (for a recent survey, see Callies 2013). In this book, I use these terms in the same sense as they are used in Hallidayan linguistics, such that the ‘unmarked’ form is that form which is appropriate to more contexts than any other form, while the marked form (or marked forms if there is more than one such form) is that form (or all those forms) which is appropriate to fewer contexts of occurrence than the unmarked form. Thus, the unmarked form need not be appropriate to the majority of contexts of occurrence; it merely has to be appropriate to more contexts of occurrence than any of the marked forms, or than the marked form if there is only one other form in addition to the unmarked form. 4 Note that while inna always introduces what is in traditional Arabic terms the predicand, there is one case where it does not in an obvious sense introduce the Peri/Thema. This is where the clause/ sentence consists of an indefinite nominal and a prepositional phrase. In this case, the word order is obligatorily prepositional phrase – indefinite nominal, e.g. fī al-​bayt rajul ‘in the house is a man/ there’s a man in the house’ (literally: ‘in-​the-​house man’), i.e. in terms of the current phrase-​ structural para-​syntactic analysis fī al-​bayt→rajul (fī al-​bayt Peri/Thema, rajul Nuc/Rhema). If the clause/sentence begins with inna, this word order is maintained; thus inna fī al-​bayt rajul. Note also, however, that if we consider case-​endings (cf. Chapter 4, Footnote 2, discussing why this is not normally done in this book), inna governs the nominal predicand in inna-​clauses/sentences such that this nominal predicand takes the accusative case, regardless of whether the nominal predicand occurs immediately after inna, as in all the examples in the main body of this book, or whether it occurs after the predicate, as in inna fī al-​bayt rajul. Thus, with case endings, inna fī al-​bayt rajul is inna fī al-​bayt-​i rajul-​an, literally ‘inna in-​the-​house-​GEN. man-​ACC.’, the accusative –an appearing on rajul-​an because of its government by inna (al-​bayt-​i takes the genitive ending –i because all prepositions in Arabic govern in the genitive).

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Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema in Standard Arabic 65 Being appropriate to more or fewer contexts of occurrence implies frequency of occurrence, i.e. realisational frequency. A form is unmarked if it is realisationally more frequent than any comparable form, and it is marked if it is realisationally less frequent than the comparable unmarked form. We can determine comparability in various ways, but the one which is relevant here is that the forms all have in common that they can be realised semantically as themes. Thus, once we have determined two or more forms to be comparable in a way which allows us to assess one as unmarked and the other, or others, as unmarked, we can judge which one is unmarked and which marked by comparing statistically the relative number of utterances which realise the forms in question. In principle, we might want to compare all the utterances ever made involving the language (semiotic system) in question. In practice, natural languages have endless numbers of utterances of their forms, so we can only make use of what we take to be representative samples of the realisations of the forms in question, and compare the frequency of these.i In relation to signs, one of whose elements is realised (or may be realised) as a ‘theme’, markedness or unmarkedness, i.e. appropriacy to more or fewer contexts (measurable by realisational frequency), also implies meaning difference: a marked theme is appropriate to fewer contexts than an unmarked theme, because the meaning of a marked theme is such that it is appropriately used in fewer contexts than a marked theme. Markedness is thus a semantic matter, as well as a matter of realisational frequency, i.e. though an unmarked theme and a marked theme can both be said to be covered by the same ‘global’ meaning ‘theme’ (however we define that meaning), an unmarked theme has a different meaning from a marked theme, and different marked themes (marked themes which are appropriate to different contexts) also have different meanings from one another. (In terms of the semantic relationships between the terms themselves, ‘unmarked theme’ and ‘marked theme’ are both hyponyms of the hyperonym/superordinate ‘theme’.) Subsequently in this section, I will discuss a putative ‘hierarchy of (potential) markedness’, the validity of which would need to be tested by future research. This is presented diagrammatically in Figure 7.1. The categories in Figure 7.1 are likely to be “arbitrary but appropriate” (Hjelmslev 1953: 24–25) – arbitrary in the strictly Saussurean sense that they could have been different (cf. Lyons 1991: 55), but intended to be appropriate in that they should allow for analyses which are both insightful and workable within the chosen contexts of investigation. Thus, I am not claiming that there is likely to be an absolutely clear distinction between the types of theme (e.g. between unmarked theme and weakly marked theme, or weakly marked theme and standardly marked theme). Rather, these are merely being proposed here as what are hopefully useful general analytical distinctions. I have previously (Section 3.2) provisionally defined theme as “element of most immediate concern in an utterance, while the rheme can be reasonably defined as what the speaker [or writer] says about this theme” (Dickins 2009b: 1096). I have suggested that themes (as realisational semantic features) may be either marked or unmarked (Section 7.2). In this section, I will suggest that themes may bear

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Figure 7.1 Hierarchy of markedness of themes in Standard Arabic Type of ‘theme’ Unmarked

Marked Weakly marked

Standardly marked Strongly marked

Category 1

Simple verbal clause, e.g. banā al-​rajul bayt ‘the man built a house’; also banā bayt ‘he built a house’

Category 2

Nominal clause: predicand with non-​verbal-​clause predicate, e.g. naḥnu masākīn ‘we are wretched’

Category 3

Nominal clause: predicand with subjectless verbal-​clause predicate, e.g. al-​rajul banā bayt ‘the man built a house’

Category 4 Category 5

Verbal clause, following preposed adverbial, e.g. al-​sana al-​māḍiya banā bayt ‘last year he built a house’; also al-​sana al-​māḍiya banā al-​rajul bayt ‘last year the man built a house’. 1. Nominal clause: predicand with verbal-​clause predicate having subject, e.g. al-​walad banā wālid-​uh bayt ‘the boy, his father built a house’ 2. Nominal clause: predicand with nominal-​clause predicate consisting of predicand with non-​verbal-​ clause predicate, e.g. hāḏā al-​rajul bayt-​uh kabīr ‘this man, his house is big’ 3. Nominal clause: predicand with nominal clause-​ predicate, consisting of predicand with nominal clause predicate, consisting of nominal clause: al-​ustāḏ ṭullāb-​uh hum al-​mas’ūlūn ʕan al-​faḏ̟ īʕa‘the professor, his students they the responsible [ones] for the outrage’

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Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema in Standard Arabic 67 different potential degrees of markedness. I will consider Standard Arabic, rather than one of the colloquial dialects (although the broad principles are similar, the details are rather different from those of Standard Arabic, and vary from dialect to dialect). I will begin by presenting different types of themes in an ascending ‘hierarchy of (potential) markedness’ from unmarked through to most marked, and then discuss these further. Unmarked themes occur in verbal sentences, by which I mean here full sentences in which the initial element is a verb (i.e. excluding non-​sentential verbal clauses). A case in point is ­example 43 banā al-​rajul bayt ‘The man built a house’ (literally: ‘built the-​man house’), analysed as in ­example 44 banā … bayt Nuc/ Rhema, al-​rajul Peri/Thema, i.e. al-​rajul → banā … bayt. Another case (without a separate subject outside the verb) is ­example 48, banā bayt (‘built[-​he] a-​house’) ‘He built a house’, analysed as banā bayt Nuc/Rhema, Ø Peri/Thema, i.e. Ø → banā bayt. A full verbal clause/sentence (having an unmarked theme) does not involve recursion. This gives us only one category of definitely unmarked theme. This theme (in this example al-​rajul ‘the man’) can be assigned to what can be called: Category 1: Unmarked. Potentially marked themes occur in full clauses/sentences which do not begin with a verb. The only type of potentially marked theme which realises a para-​ syntactic Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema structure without recursion is a simple verbless sentence (i.e. a simple predicand-​predicate sentence in which the predicate is not a verb-​phrase). Such themes have a relatively weak potential for markedness, and in some contexts may be entirely unmarked. An example from Standard Arabic is naḥnu masākīn ‘We are wretched’ (literally: ‘we wretched’; cf. the corresponding example from Sudanese Arabic, 1a. niḥna masākīn). This is to be analysed (assuming primary accent on masākīn) as naḥnu Peri/Thema, masākīn Nuc/ Rhema. Using the symbol ⬌ here and elsewhere to indicate ‘from … to’ (i.e. covering all the possibilities whose end-​points are expressed by the terms to the left and the right of the symbol ⬌), a theme of this type (in this example naḥnu ‘we’) can be assigned to Category 2: Unmarked⬌weakly marked. The reason I have suggested that simple verbless sentences of the type naḥnu masākīn ‘we are wretched’ (literally: ‘we wretched’) may, in some contexts, be unmarked is that they represent the basic way of saying something where there is no obvious need to use a verb. The reason I have also suggested that simple verbless sentences may have a potential for markedness is that they involve a predicand-​predicate structure, this structure being associated generally with markedness in Arabic. The use of ‘semantically light’ verbs such as yuʕtabar ‘is considered’ (cf. Dickins and Watson 1999: 19–22) would be worth considering in this regard. It might be the case, for example, that one of the reasons for using a verbal clause nuʕtabar masākīn ‘we are (considered) wretched’ (literally: ‘we~are~considered wretched’) rather than naḥnu masākīn ‘we are wretched’ (literally: ‘we wretched’), is, in specific circumstances, to avoid the potential markedness of the latter. Certainly, yuʕtabar ‘is considered’ frequently does not convey the same sense of doubt which ‘is considered’ tends to convey in English.

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68 Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema in Standard Arabic Potentially marked themes which realise a single element of para-​syntactic recursion can be divided into five types. The first type occurs in nominal clauses/sentences (i.e. predicand-​predicate sentences) in which the predicate begins with a verb but does not have a non-​recursive subject following this verb (i.e. in which the predicate is a verbal clause/sentence jumla fiʕliyya  – in terms of traditional Arabic grammatical terminology (Section 6.2) – more coherently in this context described as a ‘verbal clause’ from a Western point of view, but this verbal clause lacks a subject within it). A case in point is ­example 45 al-​rajul banā bayt (the-​man built a-​house) ‘The man built a house’ (reproduced here as e­ xample 69), analysed as follows: 69.  al-​rajul   →  (Ø  →  [banā bayt]) main Peri/Thema  main Nuc/Rhema            2nd Peri/Thema  2nd Nuc/Rhema A main theme of this type (here al-​rajul ‘the man’) can be assigned to: Category 3: Unmarked⬌standardly marked. This can be compared to the corresponding simple verbal clause/sentence banā al-​rajul bayt (the-​man built a-​house), which I have analysed in Figure 7.1 as unmarked. The second type of potentially marked theme which realises a single element of phrase-​structural para-​syntactic recursion occurs in sentences in which a verbal clause/sentence (jumla fiʕliyya) predicate (realising a Nuc/Rhema) without a non-​ recursive subject (fāʕil) after this verb follows an adverbial (realising a Peri/Thema). A case in point is al-​sana al-​māḍiya banā bayt (‘the-​year the-​last built[-​he] a-​house’) ‘last year he built a house’. A theme of this type (here al-​sana al-​māḍiya ‘last year’) can be assigned to: Category 4: Weakly marked⬌strongly marked. The third type of potentially marked theme which realises a single element of phrase-​structural para-​syntactic recursion occurs in sentences in which a verbal clause/sentence (jumla fiʕliyya) (cf. Section 6.2) predicate (realising a Nuc/ Rhema) with a non-​recursive subject after this verb follows an adverbial (realising a Peri/Thema). A case in point is al-​sana al-​māḍiya banā al-​rajul bayt (‘the-​ year the-​last built the-​man a-​house’) ‘last year the man built a house’. This can be analysed as in e­ xample 52 above, as: 70. (al-​sana al-​māḍiya) →(al-​rajul → [banā … bayt]) main Peri/Thema main Nuc/Rhema             2nd Peri/Thema 2nd Nuc/Rhema As with the previous example al-​sana al-​māḍiya banā bayt, a theme of this type (here al-​sana al-​māḍiya ‘last year’) can be assigned to: Category 4: Weakly marked⬌strongly marked. The fourth type of potentially marked theme which realises a single element of phrase-​structural para-​syntactic recursion occurs in sentences in which a verbal clause/sentence (Section 6.2) predicate (jumla fiʕliyya) follows a (necessarily nominal) predicand, this verbal clause/sentence predicate containing a subject

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Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema in Standard Arabic 69 within it. A case in point is ­example 50 al-​walad banā wālid-​uh bayt (‘the boy built father-​his a-​house’) ‘the boy’s father built a house’ (or rather more literally: ‘the boy his father built a house’). As noted in Section 7.2, this is analysed as: 71.  al-​walad   →  (wālid-​uh →[banā … bayt]) the-​boy father-​his  built   house The father of the boy built a house main Peri/Thema    main Nuc/Rhema            2nd Peri/Thema 2nd Nuc/Rhema A theme of this type (here al-​walad ‘the boy’) can be assigned to: Category 5: Strongly marked. The fifth type of potentially marked theme which realises a single element of phrase-​structural para-​syntactic recursion occurs in sentences in which in terms of traditional Arabic grammar a main predicand is followed by a main predicate, this main predicate itself being analysable as a secondary predicand-​predicate structure. A case in point is ­example 39 hāḏā al-​rajul bayt-​uh kabīr (‘this the-​man house-​his big’) ‘this man’s house is big’. This is analysed (cf. also the predicand-​ predicate analysis in e­ xample 40) as: 72.

(hāḏā al-​rajul)→(bayt-​uh→kabīr) this the-​man  house-​his big This man’s house is big main Peri/Thema  main Nuc/Rhema         2nd Peri/Thema 2nd Nuc/Rhema

A theme of this type (here hāḏā al-​rajul ‘this man’) can also be assigned to: Category 5: Strongly marked. Beyond this are themes which realise two and more elements of phrase-​ structural para-​syntactic recursion. As noted in Section 6.2, according to Beeston, “A second embedding process, producing a cumulation of three themes [= predicands], is admissable only when the tertiary theme [= predicand] is a pronoun or a pronoun preceded by a preposition (Beeston 1974: 477)”. Beeston (1974: 476) gives the example al-​ustāḏ ṭullāb-​uh hum al-​mas’ūlūn ʕan al-​faḏ̟ īʕa (‘the-​ professor, students-​his they the-​responsible for the-​outrage’) ‘The students of the professor are the ones who are responsible for the outrage’ (or, more literally, ‘The professor, his students are the responsible [ones] for the outrage)’). In terms of traditional Arabic grammar, this can be analysed as al-​ustāḏ (‘the professor’) main predicand, ṭullāb-​uh hum al-​mas’ūlūn ʕan al-​faḏ̟ īʕa(‘his students they the responsible’) main predicate, ṭullāb-​uh (‘his students) secondary predicand (within main predicate), hum al-​mas’ūlūn ʕan al-​faḏ̟ īʕa(‘they the responsible for outrage’) secondary predicate (within main predicate), hum (‘they’) tertiary predicand (within secondary predicate), al-​mas’ūlūn ʕan al-​faḏ̟ īʕa(‘the responsible for the outrage’) tertiary predicate (within secondary predicate). As Dina El Zarka has suggested to

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70 Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema in Standard Arabic me, this might be the answer to a question of the type “Given that the professor is not guilty, who is then responsible for the outrage?”. In Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema terms, this can be analysed as: 73. al-​ustāḏ   ṭullāb-​uh  hum   al-​mas’ūlūn  ʕan al-​faḏ̟īʕa the-​professor students-​his they   the-​responsible for the outrage the students of the professor are the ones who are responsible for the outrage main Peri/Thema main Nuc/Rhema         2nd Peri/Thema 2nd Nuc/Rhema                3rd Nuc/Rhema 3rd Peri/Thema (al-​ustāḏ)→ ([ṭullāb-​uh] →[{hum}←{al-​mas’ūlūn ʕan al-​faḏ̟ īʕa}]) Here the main theme, al-​ustāḏ ‘the professor’ can be assigned to Category 5: Strongly marked (the secondary theme ṭullāb-​uh ‘his students’ can also be regarded as strongly marked). However, the structure is complicated by the fact that within the phrase hum al-​mas’ūlūn ʕan al-​faḏ̟ īʕa, the element hum ‘they’ carries primary accent, and is thus also marked (a secondary accent within hum al-​mas’ūlūn ʕan al-faḏ̟īʕa falling on al-mas’ūlūn ʕan al-faḏ̟īʕa). Hum plus primary accent thus gives the sense ‘they, rather than anyone else’ and as such is also a strongly marked element. Standard Arabic does not seem to allow for any further predicand-​predicate recursion beyond this point (cf. Beeston 1974). In Modern Standard Arabic, one also occasionally comes across examples such as al-​sana al-​māḍiya al-​rajul banā bayt (‘the-​year the-​last the-​man built house’) ‘last year the man built a house’, i.e. where an adverbial (here al-​sana al-​māḍiya) is followed by a nominal (predicand-​ predicate) clause (here al-​rajul banā bayt), in which the predicate is a verbal clause (here banā bayt). In Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema terms, this can be analysed as follows: 74. (al-​sana al-​māḍiya)→(al-​rajul → [Ø→banā bayt]) the-​year the-​last    the-​man    built house Last year the man built a house main Peri/Thema  main  Nuc/Rhema           2nd Peri/Thema  2nd Nuc/Rhema                   3rd Peri/Thema 3rd Nuc/Rhema This kind of structure is rare: in her corpus of around 5,000 words (Benmahdjoub 1991: 224–240), Benmahdjoub found “no cases of sentences where more than one constituent was pre-​posed to the verb” (Benmahdjoub 1991: 208) – although it seems to be becoming commoner, perhaps under the influence of Colloquial Arabic dialects or English (particularly via the news media where frequent reference by Arab journalists to English material as well as translation and semi-​ translation (transediting) of this material has a strong influence on Arabic style). Such structures were, I suspect, impossible in Classical Arabic versions of Standard Arabic. Here the main theme (realisationally), al-​sana al-​māḍiya (‘last year’) can be assigned to Category 5: Strongly marked (the secondary theme al-​ rajul ‘the man’ can also be regarded as strongly marked).

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Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema in Standard Arabic 71 Putative structures involving a non-​zero tertiary Peri/Thema (cf. al-​sana al-​ māḍiya al-​rajul banā bayt, where banā bayt involves a zero (Ø) tertiary Peri/Thema) are, I believe, impossible even in Modern Standard Arabic. Thus, I do not believe it is possible to have forms of the kind al-​sana al-​māḍiya al-​rajul banā wālid-​uh bayt (the-​year the-​last built the-​man built father-​his house’) ‘last year the man’s father built a house’ (or more literally, ‘last year the man his father built a house’). 7.4.1.1 Functions of marked Peri/Themas in Modern Standard Arabic In Section 7.4.1, ‘markedness’ has been treated as a unitary category. It can, however, be more adequately viewed as a cover-​term for a number of ‘functions’. On the basis of the corpus of texts found in their book Standard Arabic: an advanced course, Dickins and Watson (1999: 337–351, 377–387, 419–428, 482–489) list the following main functions of what have been termed in the previous section marked Peri/Themas:5 i. ii. iii. iv. v.

Contrast or parallelism (with previous and/or future material) Stress Scene-​setting (for future material) and organisation of material Linkage (with previous material) Long Peri/Thema

The first four of these categories seem straightfoward semiotically. The fifth one, long Peri/Thema, is rather more problematic. I will consider this issue after I have presented the data. These categories can be illustrated as follows (further examples are found in Dickins and Watson 1999: 337–351, 377–387, 419–428, 482–489; since these are only given in Arabic script, however, they are not accessible to non-​Arabists). It should also be noted that that the model integrates initial adverbials with initial predicands, unlike both traditonal Arabic grammar and those modern approaches which separate out ‘scene-​setter’ (as adverbial only) from ‘topic’ (as predicand only) (cf. Section 7.4.1.1.1). i. Contrast or parallelism (with previous and/or future material) i.i Contrast or parallelism, with initial predicand nominal The following is taken from the novel ‫ مواويل الليلة الكبيرة‬mawāwīl al-​layla al-​kabīra ‘The mawwāls of the Great Night’ (a mawwāl being a traditional Egyptian musical style) by ‫غالي‬ ‫ شكري‬ġālī šukrī, p. 44 (in Dickins and Watson 1999: 334, 347). The text deals with the fire of Cairo, which took place in Ismailiyya on ‘Black Saturday’, January 1952 following a massacre by the British army of at least thirteen auxiliary 5 Dickins and Watson (1999: 337–351, 377–387, 419–428, 482–489) use the terms ‘emphatic’ and ‘emphasis’, rather than ‘marked’ and ‘markedness’. In this book, I have avoided the term ‘emphasis’ (on the advice of a number of readers of drafts), because it is a term with multiple and other rather vague senses.

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72 Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema in Standard Arabic policemen. During the riots which took place on this day, much of Cairo went up in flames. These riots eventually led to the seizure of power in July 1952 by the Free Officers, a secret society of middle-​ranking Egyptian officers. Key phrases in all the examples in this section are picked out by braces (curly brackets). The Arabic original is followed by a transliterated version (in italics), then by a very literal translation (LT) and finally by an idiomatic translation (IT): 75. 

‫ {الشيوعيون} أضافوا‬.‫{الوطنيون} قالوا إن السراي والنجليز هم الذين أحرقوا عاصمة مصر‬ ‫ و{بعض‬.‫ و{البعض} قال إن «الوفد» متواطئ‬.»‫الخوان المسلمين وأحيانا ً «مصر الفتاة‬ .‫البعض} قال إنهم الضباط الحرار‬ {al-​waṭaniyūn} qālū inna al-​sarāy wa-​l-​ingilīz hum allaḏīn aḥraqū ʕāṣimat miṣr. {al-​šuyūʕiyūn} aḍāfū al-​ixwān al-​muslimīn wa aḥyānan »miṣr al-​ fatāt«. wa-​{al-​baʕḍ} qāl inna «al-wafd» mutawāṭi’. wa-​{baʕḍ al-​baʕḍ} qāl inna-​hum al-​ḍubbāṭ al-​aḥrār. LT {The-​nationalists} said that the-​palace and-​the-​English they who burnt capital Egypt. {The-​communists} added the-​Brothers the-​ Muslim and-​sometimes «Egypt the-​girl». And-​{the-​some} said that the «Delegation» involved. And-​{some the-​some} said that-​they the-​ Officers the-​Free. IT {The Nationalists} said that it was the Palace and the British who burnt down the capital of Egypt. {The Communists} added the Muslim Brothers and sometimes Young Egypt. {Some} said that the Wafd [‘Delegation’] Party was involved. And {a few} [lit: ‘some of the some’] said that it was the Free Officers.

Here there is a contrast and parallelism between the four groups which claim various people to have been responsible for the fire of Cairo. i.ii Contrast or parallelism, with initial adverbial With initial adverbials, contrast can be either in time, place or manner. The following from a newspaper text about the assassination of the Lebanese President René Mouawad in 1989 (Dickins and Watson 1999: 440) illustrates contrast in time. The first two paragraphs deal with the general lessons to be drawn from Mouawad’s assassination. The next three paragraphs begin as follows, establishing a contrast (and parallels; see below) between the assassinations of 1. President Kennedy, 2. Indira Ghandi, and 3. Mouawad (discussed in Dickins and Watson 1999: 341). 76. 

‫]…[ {بعد اغتيال كيندي الديمقراطي} خلفه نائبه جونسون‬ {baʕda iġtiyāl kīnidī al-​dīmuqrāṭī} xalafa-​hu nā’ib-​uh jūnsūn LT {After the assassination of the Democrat Kennedy}, succeeded-​him deputy-​his Johnson […] IT {After the assassination of the Democrat Kennedy}, he was succeeded by his deputy Johnson […]

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Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema in Standard Arabic 73 .‫و{لدى اغتيال انديرا غاندي} خلفها ابنها راجيف واستمر حزب المؤتمر بحكم البلد‬ wa-​{ladā iġtiyāl andīrā ġāndī} xalafa-​hā ibnu-​hā rājīf wa-​stamarra ḥizb al-​mu’tamar bi-​ḥukm al-​bilād. LT And {at the-assassination Indira Ghandi} succeeded-her son-her Rajiv and continued Party the-​Congress in-​ruling the-​country. IT {When Indira Ghandi was assassinated}, she was succeeded by her son Rajiv, and the Congress Party continued to govern the country. ]…[ ‫و{بعد اغتيال رينيه معوض} يجب ان يخلفه «ابنه» السياسي او نائبه المفترض‬ wa-​{baʕda iġtiyāl rēnē muʕawwaḍ} yajib an yaxlifu-​h «ibn-​uh» al-​siyāsī aw nā’ib-​uh al-​muftaraḍ […] LT And-​{after the-​assassination René Mouawad} is~necessary that succeeds-​him ‘son-​his’ the-​political or deputy-​his the-​designated […] IT {Following the assassination of René Mouawad}, he must be succeeded by his political ‘son’, or his designated deputy ii. Stress Whereas contrast, as described above, involves a specific relationship between two or more identified entities, stress can be thought of as a ‘non-​specific contrast’, i.e. an implicit comparison of the type: this – rather than anything else which you might imagine could be the case in this context. ii.i Stress, with initial predicand nominal The following is from the start of a newspaper article in the Saudi-​owned, London-​based newspaper ‫ الشرق الوسط‬al-​ šarq al-​awsaṭ (Oct. 24, 1992), dealing with the life of the famous Egyptian literary figure Taha Hussein. 77. 

]…[ ‫{تسعة عشر عاما} مضت على رحيل عميد الدب العربي الدكتور طع حسين‬ {tisʕat ʕašar ʕāman} maḍat ʕalā raḥīl ʕamīd al-​adab al-​ʕarabī ṭaha ḥusayn […] LT {Nine ten year} passed on passing~away doyen the-​literature the-​ Arab Taha Hussein […] IT {Nineteen years have [now] passed}/{It is [now] nineteen years} since the death of the doyen of Arabic literature Taha Hussein […]

Here, the preposing of ‫ تسعة عشر عاما‬tisʕat ʕašar ʕāman ‘Nineteen years have [now] passed’/’It is [now] nineteen years’ gives the sense of ‘this – rather than any other time one might have imagined it to be’. ii.ii Stress, with initial adverbial The following is from a newspaper article in the Saudi-​owned, London-​based newspaper ‫ الشرق الوسط‬al-​šarq al-​awsaṭ (July 23, 1994), dealing with Egyptian Independence Day celebrations (in Dickins and

74

74 Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema in Standard Arabic Watson 1999: 336, 340). Here, the implied contrast in the stress is between an amount of time (not mentioned) and a large number of years (which is mentioned). 78.

.‫ول يظهر المحللون السياسيون في القاهرة اندهاشا ازاء خفوت صوت الثورة في احتفالت ذكراها‬ ‫ خطاب‬:‫ عام على احتفال بسيط للذكرى يضم المثلث التقليدي‬20 ‫فقد اعتادت مصر على مدى‬ .‫ والعطلة‬،‫ والفيلم السينمائي‬،‫الرئيس‬ ]…[ ‫{فمنذ سنوات} اختفت اغاني عبد الحليم حافظ (المطرب الراحل) الوطنية‬ wa-​lā yuḏ̟ hir al-​muḥallilūn al-​siyāsiyūn fī al-​qāhira indihāš izā’ xufūt ṣawt aṯ-​ṯawra fī iḥtifālāt ḏikrā-​hā. fa-​qad iʕtād miṣr ʕalā madā 20 ʕām min iḥtifāl basīṭ li-​l-​ḏikrā yaḍumm al-​muṯallaṯ al-​taqlīdī: xiṭāb al-​ra’īs, wa-​l-​film al-​ sīnamā’ī, wa-​l-​ʕuṭla.   {fa-​munḏu sanawāt} ixtafat aġānī ʕabd al-​ḥalīm ḥāfiḏ̟ (al-​muṭrib al-​ rāḥil) al-​waṭaniyya […] LT and-​not display the-​analysts the-​political in-​the-​Cairo surprise before silence of voice of the-​revolution in celebrations of remembrance-​its. For-​have grown~used Egypt on extent 20 years to celebration small to-​the-​remembrance it~includes the-​triangle the-​traditional: speech the-​President, and-​the-​film the-​cinematic, and-​the-​holiday.   {For since years} disappeared songs Abd al-​Haleem Hafez (the-​ singer the-​late) the-​patriotic […] IT Analysts in Cairo are not surprised at the dying away of the revolutionary spirit [voice] in its anniversary celebrations […]   {It is many years} since the disappearance of the patriotic songs of Abd al-​Haleem Hafez (the late singer) […]

iii. Scene-​setting (for future material) and organisation of material iii.i Scene-​setting and organisation of material, with initial predicand nominal There are no examples in Dickins and Watson (1999) of scene-​setting and organisation of material with an initial predicand nominal not preceded by inna (cf. Section 7.4). The following, accordingly, is an example in which the initial predicand nominal is preceded by inna. This is the beginning of the initial sentence of an article entitled ‫ النفط والتنمية‬al-​nafṭ wa-​l-​tanmiya ‘Oil and development’ (Dickins and Watson 1999: 426, 504). 79. 

]…[ ‫{ان دول العالم الثالث} قد قطعت منذ اوائل الخمسينات حتى الن شوطا في التصنيع‬ {inna duwal al-​ʕālam al-​ṯāliṯ} qad qaṭaʕat munḏu awā’il al-​xamsīnāt ḥattā al-​ān šawṭ fī al-​taṣnīʕ […] LT {inna states the-​world the-​third} have passed since beginnings the-​ fifties until now phase in the-​industrialisation […] TT Since the early fifties {the states of the third world} have passed through a phase of industrialisation […]

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Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema in Standard Arabic 75 In this example, the initial predicand beginning with ‫ ِإ ّن‬inna, presents ‫دول العالم‬ ‫ الثالث‬duwal al-​ʕālam al-​ṯāliṯ ‘the states of the third world’ as the core of the topic of the paragraph which follows. iii.ii Scene-​setting and organisation of material, with initial adverbial The following is the first sentence of the short story ‫ حفنة تراب‬ḥafnat turāb ‘A handful of dust’ (by the Egyptian author ‫ انيس منصور‬anīs manṣūr from his collection ‫بقايا كل‬ ‫ شيء‬baqāyā kull šay’ ‘The remains of everything’, pp. 47–49) for which Port Said constitutes the entire setting; Dickins and Watson 1999: 343, 355): 80. 

]…[ ‫{في بور سعيد} قابلت كثيرا ً من الناس جاءوا من الشمال والجنوب‬ {fī būr saʕīd} qābaltu kaṯiran min al-​nās jā’ū min al-​šimāl wa-​l-​junūb […] LT {in Port Said} met~I many from the-​people came~they from the-​north and-​the-​south […] IT {In Port Said} I met many people who came from both north and south […]

The following is from the start of Naguib Mahfouz’s acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature (Dickins and Watson 1999: 344, 496): 81. 

.‫ أشكر الكاديمية السويدية ولجنة نوبل التابعة لها على التفاتها الكريم لجتهادي المثابر الطويل‬،}‫{في البدء‬ {fī al-​bid’} aškur al-​akādīmiyya al-​siwēdiyya wa-​lajnat nōbal al-​tābiʕa la-​ hā ʕalā iltifāti-​hā al-​karīm li-​jtihād-​ī al-​muṯābir al-​ṭawīl. LT {At-the-start I~thank the-Academy the-Swedish and-Committee Nobel the-​attached to-​it for interest-​its the-​generous for effort-​my the-​ persistent the-​long. IT {Firstly,} I would like to thank the Swedish Academy and the Nobel Committee which is affiliated to it for their gracious interest in my long and persistent efforts.

Here, the phrase ‫ في البدء‬fī al-​bid’ ‘firstly’ does not so much set the scene as serve to organise the material which is being delivered, by defining it as a preliminary statement. iv. Linkage (with previous material) iv.i Linkage, with initial predicand nominal The following is an example of linkage, where an initial predicand nominal picks up a phrase or notion introduced in the previous section of text. This is taken from the short story ‫ حفنـة تـراب‬ḥafnat turāb ‘A handful of dust’ (by the Egyptian author ‫ انيس منصور‬anīs manṣūr from his collection ‫ بقايا كل شيء‬baqāyā kull šay’ ‘The remains of everything’ (pp. 47–49; Dickins and Watson 1999: 347, 356):

76

76 Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema in Standard Arabic 82. 

]…[ ‫ و{البرودة} تعلن حالة الطوارئ في كل الشوارع‬، ‫وكان الليل باردا في بور سعيد‬ wa-​kān al-​layl bārid fī būr saʕīd, wa-​{al-​burūda} tuʕlin ḥālat al-​ṭawāri’ fī kull šāriʕ […] LT and-​was the-​night cold in Port Said, and-​{the-​cold} announces state the-​emergencies in every street […] IT The night was cold in Port Said, and {the cold} announced the state of emergency throughout the streets […]

Here, the initial predicand ‫ البرودة‬al-​burūda ‘the cold(ness)’ links back to the previous ‫ باردا‬bārid ‘cold’. iv.ii Linkage, with initial adverbial Adverbials may be preposed in order to provide a link between what is going to be said in the sentence or clause which begins with the adverbial, and what has been said in the previous sentence(s)/clause(s). Such linkages may involve place, time, manner, or a logical connection. The following is an example of place linkage from a text dealing with botanical issues in the Saudi-​owned London-​based newspaper ‫ الشرق الوسط‬al-​šarq al-​awsaṭ (Aug. 14, 1993) (Dickins and Watson 1999: 344, 557): 83. 

‫ و{من هناك} جمعته أيام كنت هناك‬،‫وكثيرا ً ما ينبت عندهم في جبل ماكوص‬. wa-​kaṯīran mā yanbut ʕinda-​hum fī jabal mākūṣ, wa-​{min hunāk} jamaʕt-​uh ayyām kunta hunāk. LT And-​much ever it~grows among-​them in Mount Makus, and-​{from there} I~collected-​it days I~was there. IT It frequently grows in their part of the world on Mount Makus; and I collected it {[from] there} when I was there.

The following is an example of time linkage, from ‫‘ اليام‬The Days’, the autiobiography of the Arabic literary figure ‫ طه حسين‬Taha Hussein (Dickins and Watson 1999: 344, 539): 84.

‫ و{في هذه الليلة} زعم لهل‬.‫فلما كان ّأو ُل الليل عاد وقضى ساعةً في ضحك وعبث مع إخوته‬ ّ ً ‫البيت جميعا‬ ]…[ ‫أن في أكل الثّوم وقايةً من الكوليرا‬ fa-​lammā kān awwal al-​layl ʕād wa-​qaḍā sāʕa fī ḍaḥk wa-​ʕabaṯ maʕa ixwat-​ ih. wa-​{fī hāḏihi al-​layla} zaʕam li-​ahl al-​bayt jamīʕan anna fī akl al-​ṯūm wiqāya min al-​kōlērā […] LT so-​when was first the-​night he~returned and-​spent hour in-​laughter and joking with brothers-​his. And-​{in this the-​night} he~claimed to-​people the-​house all that in eating the-​garlic protection from the-​cholera […] IT At the start of the night he came back and spent an hour laughing and joking with his brothers. {That night} he told all the people of the house that eating garlic warded off cholera […]

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Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema in Standard Arabic 77 The following is an example of manner linkage from ‫ حفنة تراب‬ḥafnat turāb ‘A handful of dust’ (by the Egyptian author ‫ انيس منصور‬anīs manṣūr from his collection ‫ بقايا كل شيء‬baqāyā kull šay’ ‘The remains of everything’ (pp. 47–49; Dickins and Watson 1999: 344, 356): 85. 

]…[ ‫ و}بهذه الطيبة{ خربت بيت أعز أصدقائي‬،‫وكانت طيبة القلب‬ wa-​kānat ṭayyibat al-​qalb, wa-​{bi-​hāḏihi al-​ṭība} xarrabat bayt aʕazz aṣdiqā’ī […] LT And-​ she was good the-​ heart, and-​{with-​ this the goodness} she~destroyed house most~dear friends-​my […] IT She was good natured; and {with her good nature} she destroyed the house of one of my closest friends […]

The following is an example of logical connection linkage taken from the BBC Arabic radio recordings series ‫ حصاد الشهر‬ḥiṣād al-​šahr ‘Harvest of the Month’, no. 32, side 1, item 3, ‫ عبقرية الحضارة العربية‬ʕabqariyyat al-​ḥaḍāra al-​ʕarabiyya ‘The genius of Arab civilisation’ (Dickins and Watson 1999: 344, 564): 86.

‫بُعيد وفاة الرسول صلى ا عليه وسلم بدأ العرب فتوحهم التي وضعت تحت تصرفهم خلل قرن‬ .‫واحد جميع المنطقة الشاسعة الممتدة من أواسط آسيا وحوض السند شرقًا إلى شمال إسبانيا غربًا‬ ]…[ ‫و{بذلك} أقاموا دولة الخلفة‬ buʕayd wafāt al-​rasūl – ṣallā aḷḷāhu ʕalay-​h wa-​sallam – bada’ al-​ʕarab futūḥa-​hum allatī waḍaʕat taḥt taṣarrufi-​him xilāl qarn wāḥid jamīʕ al-​ minṭaqa al-​šāsiʕa al-​mumtadda min awāsiṭ āsiyā wa-​ḥawḍ al-​sind šarqan ilā šimāl isbānyā ġarban. wa-​{bi-​ḏālik} aqāmū dawlat al-​xilāfa […] LT shortly~after death the-​apostle – bless God on-​him and give~peace – began the-​Arabs conquests-​their which placed under control-​their within century one all the-​region the-​wide the-​extending from centres Asia and basin the-​Indus easterly to north Spain westerly. And-​{with-​ that} they~established state the-​caliphate […] IT Shortly after the death of the Prophet Muhammad the Arabs began their conquests which within one century placed under their control all of the vast area stretching from central Asia and the Indus Basin in the east, to northern Spain in the west. {Thus} [i.e. by doing this] they set up the Caliphal state […]

In this example, ‫‘ بذلك‬thus’ provides logical connection linkage with what has been stated in the previous sentence. v. Long Peri/Thema v.i Long Peri/Thema, with initial predicand nominal There are no examples in the data examined in Dickins and Watson (1999) of a long Peri/Thema with an

78

78 Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema in Standard Arabic initial predicand nominal. As discussed in Section 7.4.1.1.1, however, this pattern is found in both Benmahdjoub (1991) and Pashova (2003). v.ii Long Peri/Thema, with initial adverbial The following is an example of a long Peri/Thema with an initial adverbial taken from an article in the Lebanese newspaper ‫ النهار‬An-​Nahar (Jan. 25, 1990) about political upheavals in Egypt (Dickins and Watson 1999: 345, 363): 87. 

‫ كانت مدينة اسيوط في‬،}‫{في اول اختبار جدي لمحافظها السابق الذي عين اخيرا وزيرا للداخلية‬ ]...[ ‫ مسرحا لصدامات بين مسلمين اصوليين والشرطة‬،‫ الثنين‬،‫جنوب مصر‬ {fī awwal ixtibār jiddī li-​muḥāfiḏ̟ i-​hā al-​sābiq allaḏī ʕuyyin axīran wazīr li-​al-​dāxiliyya}, kānat madīnat asyūṭ fī janūb miṣr al-​iṯnayn, masraḥ li-​ ṣidāmāt bayn muslimīn uṣūliyyīn wa-​l-​šurṭa […] LT {In first test serious for-​governor-​its the-​former who was~appointed recently minister the-​interior}, was city Asyut in south Egypt, Monday, scene for-​clashes between Muslims fundamentalist and the-​police […] IT {In the first serious test for its former governor, who was recently appointed Minister of the Interior}, the city of Asyut in the south of Egypt was the scene of disturbances on Monday, between fundamentalist Muslims and the police […]

I have earlier argued (Section 2.4) that sign status requires both expression and content, and that content implies, realisationally, meaning. If initial (preposed) predicands and adverbial clauses are an element in a para-​syntactic structure – i.e. a structure having sign status, this implies that the categories i. Contrast or parallelism, ii. Stress, iii. Scene-​setting and organisation of material, and iv. Linkage are meaningful. In the following paragraphs, I will try to show that this is in fact the case There are two obvious ways in which the categories i. Contrast or parallelism, ii. Stress, iii. Scene-​setting and organisation of material, and iv. Linkage can be viewed. The first is that they are ‘contextual appropriacy’ labels – i.e. that they describe in what textual context particular forms can be used, and the second is that they are meaningful. Here, I will try to show that contextual appropriacy itself implies meaning, and that therefore the two categories are not ultimately distinct. We can illustrate contextual appropriacy in relation to linkage. Consider the example given earlier in this section […]‫ و{البرودة} تعلن‬،‫وكان الليل باردا في بور سعيد‬ ‫ حالة الطوارئ في كل الشوارع‬wa-​kān al-​layl bārid fī būr saʕīd, wa-​{al-​burūda} tuʕlin ḥālat al-​ṭawāri’ fī kull šāriʕ […] ‘The night was cold in Port Said, and {the cold} announced the state of emergency throughout the streets […]’. It might reasonably be argued that ‫ البرودة‬al-​burūda ‘the cold’ is preposed because the context, in which there is a link to the previous mention of ‫ بارد‬bārid ‘cold’, makes this appropriate (and possibly more or less requires it). On this basis, it could further be argued that contextual appropriacy is all that is required to explain the preposing of ‫ البرودة‬al-​burūda ‘the cold’, and that meaning does not need to be invoked.

 79

Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema in Standard Arabic 79 The problem with this argument is that contextual appropriacy of this kind in fact implies meaning. The reason that ‫ البرودة‬al-​burūda ‘the cold’ is appropriate in this context is that the preposing of ‫ البرودة‬al-​burūda ‘the cold’ conveys a meaning of ‘linkage’ with the previous element ‫ بارد‬bārid ‘cold’. That meaning is involved is perhaps most clearly seen in relation to the functional category of stress. The implication of a stressed element [this] – rather than anything else which you might imagine could be the case in this context is a clearly connotative meaning, adding to the simple meaning expressed by the stressed element, i.e. ‘this’ considered without reference to its being preposed.ii In fact, all forms of ‘contextual appropriacy’ have meaning implications, as do other ‘features’ which might be associated with variable word order, such as register or text type (genre). Thus, there might be a difference in register between a particular order of words, which we can call word order A, as opposed to another possible order of the same words, which we might call word order B, in the same language, word order A being, for example, more formal than word order B. Such a word order difference is, however, also meaningful, such that word order A conveys the connotative meaning ‘greater formality’ (or similar) than word order B. (Issues of the relationship between notions such as contextual appropriacy and formality and connotative meaning are explored in more detail in Dickins 2018.) Like ‘functional’ categories in general (cf. Dickins 2014a: 4, 9), the above categories, i. Contrast or parallelism, ii. Stress, iii. Scene-​setting and organisation of material, and iv. Linkage, therefore are meaningful as connotative notions. They are almost certainly not, however, distinct meaning categories, i.e. this is not a matter of polysemy. Rather, as noted, they are ‘sub-​senses’ of a single global sense of what I have in Section 7.4.1 termed ‘markedness’, shading into one another, such that some examples, at least, might be analysable under two or even more functions. Thus, ‘markedness’ does not have a fixed number of functions/sub-​senses. Rather, any list is fairly ad hoc, and could be expanded or contracted according to the demands of the analysis at hand. The category-​list is thus “arbitrary but appropriate” (Hjelmslev 1953: 24–25) – arbitrary in the strictly Saussurean sense that it could have been different (cf. Lyons 1991: 55), but appropriate (or intended to be so) in that it allows for analyses which are both insightful and workable within the chosen contexts of investigation. (For application of the same principles to the ‘functions’ of the Arabic coordinators, see Dickins 2017; Section 3.2.) While i. Contrast or parallelism, ii. Stress, iii. Scene-​setting and organisation of material, and iv. Linkage are meaningful as connotative notions, category v. Long Peri/Thema is rather more problematic. It is worth considering here in more detail what is meant by ‘semiotic’ in the current approach. In a general sense, anything which yields meaning can be described as ‘semiotic’. The problem with this, however, is that ‘semiosis’ of this kind is unlimited, uncontrolled, and analytically rather arbitrary. Where semiosis becomes much more significant, and also amenable to precise analysis, is where one has not just communication, but what Mulder calls a ‘semiotic system’, i.e. a “system of conventions for communication” (Mulder and Hervey 2009: Def. 1c; cf. Dickins 2009a: Def. 1c).

80

80 Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema in Standard Arabic Here, system can be defined along Saussurean lines as “a network of co-​ existing and mutually opposed alternatives” (Hervey 1982: 13). This rules out ad hoc means of communicating. ‘Conventional’ (from which ‘conventions’) means non-​natural. This rules out two things: (i) conveyance of information by natural phenomena, e.g. the conveyance of information by heavy clouds that rain is imminent (cf. Mulder and Hervey 1980: 178–179, 181; Mulder 1989: 125–132); (ii) conveyance of information by man-​made objects which make sole use of natural processes, e.g. the conveyance of information by a kettle whistle that the water in the kettle has boiled (Mulder and Hervey 1980: 179–181; Mulder 1989: 125, 130–132). ‘For communication’ implies that the system has as its purport – or ‘core purpose’ – communication. This rules out all conventional forms of behaviour which do not have communication as their purport, even though they may on occasion be said to convey information, and even though they may be used deliberately to convey such information – for example when somebody adopts a particular style of dress in order to indicate membership of a particular social group. (For further discusson, see Dickins 1998: 7, from which the discussion in this paragraph is drawn.) The phrase-​structural Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema structures of Arabic are a clearly systematic part of the language, as I have tried to show. The meanings (functions) of the Peri/Thema – i. Contrast or parallelism, ii. Stress, iii. Scene-​ setting and organisation of material, and iv. Linkage – are conventional (as is underlined by the fact that these meanings have shifted historically; cf. Section 7.4.2). Finally, these meaning features belong to the purport of the system: the Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema features of Arabic have as their core purpose the conveying of the meanings which they convey. When we come to the final function which was listed above, v. Long Peri/ Thema, however, matters are rather different. ‘Being long’ is not a meaning, or a matter of meaning; i.e. not a matter of communication. Long Peri/Thema therefore would not appear to be semiotic. There are two ways out of this quandary. The first would be to consider examples involving long Peri/Thema in more detail and to see if these could be fitted into one of the four other ‘functional’ categories: Contrast or parallelism, ii. Stress, iii. Scene-​setting and organisation of material, and iv. Linkage. If so, we can simply say that long Peri/Rhemas show a marked tendency also to convey these meanings. The alternative solution is to say that having established a sign category – in this case a phrase-​structural para-​syntactic structure, we can accept that in some cases this category may have a zero semantic realisation, i.e. although the structure exists, in some cases it may not convey meaning, provided that in other cases it does. This is analogous to the notion with respect to phonology of the zero allophone, i.e. the realisation as nothing of a phoneme which might (and probably would normally) be realised in the same context by phonetic something. An example is the non-​ occurrence of a vowel in an underarticulated, but still phonetically acceptable, speech event, where the normal realisation would involve a vowel – as can be argued to occur in relation to English schwa (e.g. the pronunciation of ‘police’ as [pliːs]; cf. Heselwood 2007, 2008 for an analysis along these general lines).

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Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema in Standard Arabic 81 In practice, I suspect that the great majority of – and perhaps all – long Peri/Themas will be fittable into one of the categories: ii. Stress, iii. Scene-​ setting and organisation of material, and iv. Linkage. Example 87 of a long Peri/Thema given earlier in this section, for instance, fits happily into the category of scene-​setting (‫{في اول اختبار جدي لمحافظها السابق الذي عين اخيرا وزيرا‬ ‫ مسرحا لصدامات بين مسلمين اصوليين‬،‫ االثنين‬،‫ كانت مدينة اسيوط في جنوب مصر‬،}‫للداخلية‬ ]...[ ‫{‘ والشر طة‬In the first serious test for its former governor, who was recently appointed Minister of the Interior}, the city of Asyut in the south of Egypt was the scene of disturbances on Monday, between fundamentalist Muslims and the police […]’). In this section, I have focused on basic Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema structures which do not involve Peri/Thema-​introducers such as inna or Peri/Thema and Nuc/Rhema introducers such as ammā … fa-​(Section 7.4). For further discussion of Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema structures covering all these categories, see Dickins and Watson (1999: 337–351, 377–387, 482–493). 7.4.1.1.1 COMPARISON OF CONTRAST OR PARALLELISM, STRESS, SCENE-​S ETTING AND ORGANISATION OF MATERIAL, LINKAGE AND LONG PERI/THEMA WITH CATEGORIES PUT FORWARD BY OTHER WRITERS

That the list of functions given above could be done differently is underlined by the fact that other writers make use of somewhat different categories to describe similar phenomena. The general viability of the category-​list presented in Section 7.4.1.1 is, however, suggested by the fact that similar categories are put forward by a number of other writers. In the following paragraphs, I will focus on writers who have conducted corpus-​based studies on initial pre-­verbal elements in Modern Standard Arabic: Benmahdjoub 1991, Pashova 2003, and Kohlani 2010. As a point of comparison with Arabic dialects, I will consider the categories of El Zarka (2013) for Egyptian Arabic, and as a point of comparison with mainstream work on other languages, I will also make use of Hasselgård (2014), which deals with initial adjunct adverbials in Norwegian and English. i. Contrast or parallelism (with previous and/or future material) The view that an initial predicand in Arabic can be contrastive with another element goes back at least to Brockelmann (1982 [1904]: 133) in Western literature. Other writers who cite contrast as a function of initial predicands include Abdul-​Raof (1998: 88). Benmahdjoub discusses the contrastive use of an initial predicand or adverbial at a number of points (e.g. Benmahdjoub 1991: 75, 122, 137, 165). Pashova employs a category ‘comparison’ to analyse some semantic aspects of pre-​verbal predicands, with three sub-​categories, ‘contrast’, ‘listing’ and ‘likeness’ (Pashova 2003: 14, 33). These are all illustrated at various points in her article. Pashova’s ‘contrast’ can be taken to be the same as ‘contrast’ in the current analysis, while ‘likeness’ and ‘listing’ can be taken to both fall under ‘parallelism’ in the current analysis – the difference between ‘likeness’ and ‘listing’ being that the former involves similarity between the two parallel elements, while the latter

82

82 Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema in Standard Arabic involves difference (but not opposition, as in the case of contrast) (cf. Pashova 2003: 15; though cf. also ‘parallelism’ in Pashova 2003: 34). For Egyptian Arabic, El Zarka talks about ‘parallel contrastive topics’ (El Zarka 2013: 286), and elsewhere about ‘contrast’ (El Zarka 2013: 308, 368), arguing that “contrast is just a special kind of emphasis” (El Zarka 2013: 366). Hasselgård (e.g. Hasselgård 2014: 89) talks about ‘contrastive focus’. ii. Stress Commenting on a particular case in which a nominal is preposed (i.e. as a predicand) before the verb, Benmahdjoub noted the following: “by giving the subject […] first position, emphasis is placed on it” (Benmahdjoub 1991: 145). Here we can take ‘emphasis’ to mean the same as what is meant in this book by ‘stress’. Pashova uses the term ‘emphasis’ to describe one of the purposes of a pre-​ verbal predicand, meaning apparently the same as what is meant by ‘stress’ in this book (Pashova 2003: 26, 37). She also says that “Another instance of emphatic fronting of the subject is when it refers to a topic of special significance in the text” (Pashova 2003: 27). iii. Scene-​setting (for future material) and organisation of material The term ‘scene-​setter’/‘scene-​setting’ is used by a number of other writers (e.g. Hasselgård 2014: 72), while Kohlani talks about a number of adverbials in the texts she analyses, “each of which provides settings for its proposition by locating it in a certain context of time, place or manner” (Kohlani 2010: 257; cf. also Kohlani 2010: 380). Benmahdjoub talks about “set[ting] the spatial, temporal or individual framework within which the ensuing discourse holds” (Benmahdjoub 1991: 66), of adverbials providing a “temporal setting” (Benmahdjoub 1991: 90), that in a particular case “the scene is set” (Benmahdjoub 1991: 142) by an initial nominal, and of the use of an initial predicand nominal or adverbial to “set the scene” (Benmahdjoub 1991: 199). Pashova once uses the term ‘setting’ (Pashova 2003: 22) for what would be analysed under the current approach as scene-​setting. Other writers use the terms ‘frame’/‘framing’, sometimes synonymously with ‘scene-​setter’/‘scene-​setting’ (e.g. Hasselgård 2014: 72). Benmahdjoub uses the terms ‘framework’ (Benmahdjoub 1991: 13) and the phrase ‘temporal framework’ (Benmahdjoub 1991: 103, 113). El Zarka uses ‘frame’/‘framing’ in relation to initial adverbials, while she describes initial nominals as ‘topics’ (e.g. El Zarka 2013: 23–24, 315, 317, 325). From the current point of view, if there is a semantic difference between a ‘topic’ and a ‘scene-​setter’, it derives solely from the realisational semantic correlates of adverbials, analysed in Dickins (2009b) as semantically backgrounded, as opposed to those of predicands, analysed in Dickins (2009b) as part of the semantically foregrounded main clause. It has nothing to do with the realisational semantic correlates of clause-​initality, which can be regarded as the same in both ‘frame’ (initial adverbial) and ‘topic’ (initial predicand). Another term used as a synonym of ‘frame’/‘framing’ in relation to adverbials is ‘background’/‘backgrounding’ (e.g. Hasselgård 2014: 82). This is a different use of ‘background’/‘backgrounding’ to that in Dickins (2009b).

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Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema in Standard Arabic 83 Another proposed function of Arabic adverbials, which can be subsumed under scene-​setting, is that of “marking shifts and discontinuities between segments of text” (Kohlani 2010: 71; cf. Givón 2001: 330; Thompson, Longacre and Hwang 2007: 295; Khalil 2000: 109). Pashova similarly argues that “A subject may precede the verb when it refers to the main topic for the next part of the text, at a major thematic boundary” (Pashova 2003: 25; cf. also Pashova 2003: 33). Scene-​setting necessarily involves such discontinuity; by introducing what comes next as a new scene, it marks what came before as a ‘scene’ which is no longer current. Benmahdjoub talks about a “change of scene realised through the use of the adverbial” (Benmahdjoub 1991: 129) in an adverbial-​initial clause, about “the establishment of a new scene” (Benmahdjoub 1991: 148) by the use of a pre-​verbal predicand, the marking of “a change of topic” by an initial pre-​verbal predicand (Benmahdjoub 1991: 157), and says of a a pre-​verbal predicand that it “sets the scene” (Benmahdjoub 1991: 157, 174, 181, 186), or “sets a new scene” (Benmahdjoub 1991: 161, 186). Pashova (2003: 26) uses the term ‘text organisation’ in relation to pre-​verbal predicands for what is termed here ‘organisation of material’. Similar notions to ‘organisation of material’ are found in Benmahdjoub, who says that sentence-​ initial elements may “give the direction in which the next part of the argument is going”, or may “give interpersonal information on the ensuing discourse” (Benmahdjoub 1991: 66). iv. Linkage (with previous material) The term ‘linkage’ is used by Hasselgård (2014: 83). She also, however, uses the term ‘cohesion’ in apparently the same sense (e.g. Hasselgård 2014: 88). Benmahdjoub talks about initial pre-​verbal predicands being used to “form a link between the preceding section and the next one” (Benmahdjoub 1991: 175), says of an initial adverbial that it “links two sentences together” (Benmahdjoub 1991: 177), and that certain pre-​verbal predicands “link the non-​thematic and thematic spheres” (Benmahdjoub 1991: 183). Other terms which can be regarded as meaning roughly the same as ‘linkage’ are also used. Benmahdjoub talks about adverbials sometimes being used to “maintain an element on the scene” (Benmahdjoub 1991: 50) and of initial predicands bringing information “back to the scene” (Benmahdjoub 1991: 173), while elsewhere she says that a particular initial adverbial “can be said to act as a recall of the main topic” (Benmahdjoub 1991: 118). Benmahdjoub also talks about pre-​verbal predicands which “either reintroduce a new element adding to it new specifications, or they simply continue a previous topic, thus ensuring continuity of topic or scene” (Benmahdjoub 1991: 199). While Pashova does not use any specific term to describe what I have termed ‘linkage’, she does discuss the use of a pre-​verbal predicand to indicate “relation to the previous sentence”, giving an example in which this predicand is ḏālika ‘that’ (Pashova 2003: 19). She also talks about the use of a pre-​verbal predicand pronoun being explained “by the necessity of establishing its referent as the subject/topic of the current sentence, after having had another syntactic or pragmatic role or no role at all in the previous sentence” (Pashova 2003: 25). Whatever the

84

84 Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema in Standard Arabic role of the pronoun in the previous co-​text, its occurrence as a pronoun underlines that the information is given/known to the reader/hearer, and thus constitutes linkage, as defined under the current approach. Pashova argues in another case that “The purpose of using the demonstrative pronoun here is to confirm the identity of the referent of the subject with a previously mentioned referent and its continuing relevance as a topic” (Pashova 2003: 31). Again, this can be considered a case of linkage under the current approach. For Egyptian Arabic, El Zarka (2013: 185, 256, 275) talks about ‘linking TOPIC’, and about ‘continuous topic’ (El Zarka 2013: 308). V. LONG PERI/THEMA

v.i Long Peri/Thema, with initial predicand nominal Benmahdjoub comments on the tendency for long initial nominals to precede their verbs, i.e. to be predicands, associating this with what she calls the principle of ‘front weight’ (Benmahdjoub 1991: 98). Pashova also notes that in her expository texts: …we can identify another formal factor for S-​V order – the complexity of the subject. A long, complex subject after the verb defers and impedes the identification of the object or the nominal predicate and in this way impedes the processing of the sentence […] In accordance with the Principle of Early Identification of Hawkins, it can be positioned berfore the verb”. (Pashova 2003: 35; cf. Hawkins 1990) v.ii Long Peri/Thema, with initial adverbial There are no examples in the Modern Standard Arabic materials discussed by Benmahdjoub (1991), Pashova (2003) or Kohlani (2010) of a long Peri/Thema with an initial adverbial. As noted in Section 7.4.1.1, however, this pattern is found in Dickins and Watson (1999). In the preceding paragraphs, I have tried to show that the categories adopted by a number of other authors for both Modern Standard Arabic (Benmahdjoub 1991; Pashova 2003; Kohlani 2010), Egyptian Colloquial Arabic (El Zarka 2013) and English and Norwegian (Hasselgård 2014) are compatible with those in Dickins and Watson (1999). In fact, the only category which does not clearly fit with the categories in Dickins and Watson is what El Zarka (2013: 279) terms ‘aboutness’ or ‘addressation’ or ‘anchoring’ – although in some cases, this category fits with Dickins and Watson’s ‘scene-​setting’. As has been noted (Section 3.2), however, ‘aboutness’ is itself a rather problematic concept. 7.4.1.1.2 GIVEN AND NEW IN RELATION TO CONTRAST OR PARALLELISM, STRESS, SCENE-​ SETTING AND ORGANISATION OF MATERIAL, LINKAGE AND LONG PERI/THEMA

Notions which are often associated with initiality and non-​initiality in clauses/ sentences are given and new, there being a recognised general tendency for a speaker/writer to begin their utterances with information which is given – i.e.

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Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema in Standard Arabic 85 already known by the listener/reader. In fact, givenness and newness (or their congeners, such as known and unknown) are much more difficult to describe than the simple given-​new bifurcation would imply, and various attempts have been made to produce more extensive categorisations covering various sub-​types of given-​ new (also known-​unknown, etc.) information (e.g. Prince 1981; Gundel, Hedberg and Zacharski 1993). Detailed consideration of these falls outside the scope of this book. In this section, I will simply underline the fact that not all clause-​initial elements – whether adverbials or pre-​verbal predicands – are given. Accordingly, we cannot use ‘givenness’ as an alternative criterion to ‘theme’ and ‘rheme’ (or similar) for characterising clause-​initial adverbials or pre-​verbal predicands in Standard Arabic. Clearly, some clause-​initial adverbials and pre-​verbal predicands are given. The most obvious cases are those which involve linkage, as in ­example 82 ‫وكان‬ ‫ الليل باردا في بور سعيد و{البرودة} تعلن حالة الطوارئ في كل الشوارع‬wa-​kān al-​layl bārid fī būr saʕīd, wa-​{al-​burūda} tuʕlin ḥālat al-​ṭawāri’ fī kull šāriʕ ‘The night was cold in Port Said, and {the cold} announced the state of emergency throughout the streets’. Here, although there is a difference in word class between bārid ‘cold’ and al-​burūda ‘the cold’ (adjective and noun), the fact of coldness which is relayed by al-​burūda ‘the cold’ is in an obvious sense given by virtue of the previous use of bārid ‘cold’. Not all examples are this simple, of course, and a more developed model of types – and degrees – of givenness and newness is needed to provide a detailed account of the extent to which clause-​initial adverbials and pre-​verbal predicands are given or new. Using the terms ‘known’ and ‘unknown’ rather than ‘given’ or ‘new’, Benmahdjoub provides a model which distinguishes three categories of pre-​ verbal predicands: i. those which are not known, ii. those which are known because they were previously mentioned, and iii. those which are recoverable (i.e. known/knowable for some other, more general reason). She states that the great majority – 27 out of 33 cases in the data which she looked at – belong to either category ii. or iii. However, 6 out of the 33 pre-​verbal predicands are not known. Benmahdjoub’s results for Modern Standard Arabic can be compared to those of El Zarka for a small corpus of Egyptian Colloquial texts. Using a tripartite division, given, accessible (i.e. ‘semi-​given’) and new, El Zarka concludes that: We see that from a total amount of 6861 denotations that were coded for information status, three quarters occur in FOCUS [roughly Nuc/Rhema] domains and one quarter in TOPIC [roughly Peri/Thema] domains (including frame TOPICS). Again three quarters of all denotations were annotated as ‘given’ or ‘accessible’ and only one quarter as ‘new’. Also as expected, given referents or denotations were especially frequent in TOPIC position, even though the absolute numbers of given items are, of course, still higher in FOCI. Accessible denotations behave according to the overall distribution (23% in TOPICS and 77% in FOCI). It also comes as no surprise that new referents were overwhelmingly introduced in FOCI (92%). (El Zarka 2013: 351)

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86 Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema in Standard Arabic Thus, in El Zarka’s data, given that 92% of new referents were introduced in FOCI (roughly Nuc/Rhema), we can conclude that 8% were introduced in TOPICS (roughly Peri/Thema), i.e. neither in Standard Arabic (Benmahdjoub) nor in Egyptian Colloquial Arabic (El Zarka) is there a simple absolute correlation between Peri/Thema and given and Nuc/Rhema and new. Corresponding observations can be made on the relationship between Peri/ Thema and definiteness and Nuc/Rhema and indefiniteness. Givenness correlates closely with definiteness; and since givenness correlates closely with pre-​verbal predicands (as seen above), there is a “valid strong correlation between topical [i.e. pre-​verbal predicand] character and definiteness” (Pashova 2003: 10). As Pashova notes, however, even this is not complete, such that: “There may be definite subjects that are in the information focus [cf. Nuc/Rhema] and indefinite subjects may be topics [i.e. pre-​verbal predicands]” (Pashova 2003: 10). Thus, we cannot (as already argued in Section 2.4.2) simply associate pre-​verbal predicand with definiteness (let alone use definiteness as part of the definition of pre-​verbal predicand) any more than we can use givenness to define pre-​verbal predicand. 7.4.2 Historical changes in Standard Arabic There is evidence of recent change in theme-​rheme ‘values’ of phrase-​structural para-syntactic features in Modern Standard Arabic over the past few decades. Abdelfattah (1990: 76–77) demonstrates that in the Egyptian newspaper Al-​ Ahram, nominal clauses/sentences became increasingly common over the period between 1935 and 1989 and that, correspondingly, verbal clauses/sentences became less common. He argues that this may have been partly due to the influence of Egyptian Colloquial Arabic, in which nominal clauses/sentences are the norm (cf. Section 8.2), and hence not as likely to be marked as they are in forms of Standard Arabic which are not significantly influenced by Egyptian Arabic. He also notes that editorial writers over this period made increasingly frequent use of inna, which requires a following predicand (Section 7.4). The general increase in the use of nominal clauses/sentences, perhaps under the influence of Egyptian Colloquial Arabic, thus suggests that these are becoming more readily available for use in unmarked contexts, and therefore, in broad terms, less marked in nature. This is not a matter of change in the phrase-​structural para-​ syntax of Standard Arabic, which is the same as that of older newspaper Arabic. Rather, it is a matter of a change in the realisational semantic ‘values’ (in terms of markedness, etc.) of the phrase-​structural para-​syntactic structures. The increase in the use of nominal clauses/sentences introduced by inna (cf. Section 7.4) is similarly not to be understood as a matter of change in the phrase-​ structural para-syntax of Standard Arabic: inna-​clauses/sentences in contemporary newspaper Standard Arabic are in phrase-​structural para-​syntactic terms identical to inna-​clauses/sentences in pre-​contemporary newspaper Standard Arabic (at least as evidenced by Al-​Ahram). Nor, in all likelihood, is the increase in the use of nominal clauses/sentences introduced by inna to be understood as a change in the overall amount of markedness to be found in Arabic newspaper

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Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema in Standard Arabic 87 articles over the past few decades – though this cannot entirely be ruled out. Rather, it seems more plausible that, as with nominal clauses/sentences more generally, clauses/sentences introduced by inna have become, in general terms, less marked in contemporary newspaper Standard Arabic than they were in pre-​ contemporary newspaper Standard Arabic: a change has occurred in the realisational semantic ‘values’ (in terms of markedness, etc.) of the phrase-​structural para-​syntactic structures, not in the structures themselves. Further comparisons are worth making with Classical Arabic – i.e. the pre-​ modern version of Standard Arabic (Chapter 1), distinguished mainly from Modern Standard Arabic by the fact that the latter has developed new vocabulary to deal with the modern world, and is stylistically typically rather different from Classical Arabic. In fact, no significant studies seem to have been conducted on changes in the realisational semantic ‘values’ of what are in phrase-​structural para-​syntactic terms identical structures between Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic. However, basing herself on Blau (1977) and Kinberg (2001), Kammensjö (2005: 44) claims that in Classical Arabic “there are […] almost no preposed adverbials”. Kinberg argues that while in Classical Arabic preposed adverbial constructions were found with conditional and temporal clauses only, Modern Standard Arabic allows preposed “adverbial clauses of cause, purpose, concession, comparison, etc.” (Kinberg 2001: 52). There has not therefore been a change in the fundamental phrase-​structural para-syntactic categories of Standard Arabic (between Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic), but there has been a change in terms of which elements can fill which positions (‘slots’).iii Assuming Kammensjö (2005: 44) to be right that in Classical Arabic there were almost no preposed adverbials, this suggests in addition a change in the realisational semantic values of preposed adverbials. We can in all likelihood associate rarity of adverbial preposing in Classical Arabic with markedness. That is to say, preposed adverbials in Classical Arabic were rare not only because only a few types of adverbials could be preposed, but also because they were highly marked, and that in Modern Standard Arabic they have become less rare at least partly because they are less marked.

7.5 A comparison with Arabic dialects and other languages A comparison between Modern Standard Arabic and the modern Arabic dialects in theme-​rheme terms is more difficult than that between Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic. I have argued, in presenting key phrase-​structural para-​ syntactic features of Sudanese Arabic (Sections 2.4–2.4.2) and comparing these to phrase-​structural para-​syntactic features in Standard Arabic (Section 7.2), that there is significant commonality of structure between the dialects and Standard Arabic – and it may be that in terms of their fundamental phrase-​structural para-​ syntactic features, the dialects are identical to Standard Arabic. It falls outside the scope of this book to consider this issue in further detail. It is worth, noting, however, that if we take a distinction between verbal clauses/sentences and nominal clauses/sentences to be fundamental in dialects as well as Standard Arabic (a view

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88 Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema in Standard Arabic typically adopted by Arabic linguists: e.g. Holes 2010; Owens, Young, Rockwood, Mehall, and Dodsworth 2010; Ingham 2010), the frequency of use of these two clause/sentence-​types varies enormously across Arabic dialects. Thus, in Gulf dialects, verbal clauses/sentences are perhaps the norm (e.g. Holes 2010: 73). In Sudanese Arabic, by contrast, the overwhelming majority of clauses/sentences are nominal, and verbal clauses/sentences are virtually confined to clauses/sentences involving the verbs kān ‘to be’ and biga ‘to become’ (Dickins 2010b: 259–260). Given this extreme variation in the frequency of verbal and nominal clauses/sentences in different Arabic dialects, we would expect – even if the abstract phrase-​ structural para-​syntactic structures of different dialects were analysed as being the sameiv – striking differences between different dialects in the theme/rheme-​type semantic correlates of the verbal and nominal clause/sentence structures. We can also note that even in closely related languages, the semantic realisational values of initial elements may be rather different. Thus, in Norwegian, initial adjunct adverbials are significantly more common than in English (Hasselgård 2014: 87), suggesting they are rather less marked. In Dutch, by contrast, initial temporal adjunct adverbials are much less common than in English and much more marked (Wilkinson 1990). Of course, this does not tell us anything about the structures involved in initial adverbials in Norwegian and Dutch – and particularly whether initiality can be related to phrase-​structural para-​syntax as it can in Arabic. It is worth noting, however, that this may well be the case, particularly for Norwegian and Dutch. These are ‘verb-​second’ (or ‘V-​2’) Germanic languages, in which the inflected verb in a standard declarative sentence occurs second after another element, which may be a subject, but may also be something else, such as an adverbial (e.g. Carnie 2007: 281). This partially parallels the situation in Standard Arabic, where only one other element may occur before the verb (though in Arabic, as discussed in this book, the verb may also occur initially, in a verbal clause/sentence, and clauses do not need to contain a verb at all). It is suggestive that, as in Arabic, in Germanic verb-​second languages, word-​sequencing (word-​ordering) between an initial element and a subsequent element introduced by a verb might be analysable in Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema phrase-​structural para-​ syntactic terms.v

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8  Phrase-​structural para-​syntax in Arabic Beyond theme and rheme

8.1 Introduction The notions discussed in Sections 7.4–7.4.1.1 already strain traditional definitions of theme and rheme. Section 8.2 of this chapter looks at other semantic phenomena in Standard Arabic related to Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema structures which are clearly incompatible with traditional notions of theme and rheme, particularly the use of V-​S word order in event-​oriented/events-​based/narrative sentences, and of S-​V word order in topic-​oriented/concept-​based sentences in Standard and Colloquial Arabic. Section 8.3 shows how some semantic realisations of V-​S and S-​V word orders in Arabian Peninsular Arabic are the converse of those in Brazilian Portuguese, and that there are also striking differences between Arabic and Romani. I argue that this presents very serious problems for a Hallidayan theme-​rheme analysis.

8.2 Initiality as non-​thematic discourse marker in Arabic As has been seen in Sections 7.2–7.5, there are some aspects of Arabic which fit in fairly well, though not perfectly, with a traditional Prague-​School theme-​rheme analysis (Hallidayan given-​new analysis). There are, however, other word-​order issues in relation to predicand-​predicate and verbal clause/sentence which cannot be accounted for even by reference to an extended version of notions such as given and new, and theme and rheme, and require consideration of global discourse structure. Most immediately relevant to the current book is Pashova’s analysis of Modern Standard Arabic, which is based on a corpus of 1,731 clauses/sentences (Pashova 2003: 9). While accepting that topic-​focus (cf. theme-​rheme) and related considerations play a role in determining whether a clauses has V-​S or S-​V word order (Pashova 2003: 7), Pashova also argues that there is a correlation between V-​S word order and what she calls event-​oriented material on the one hand, and S-​V word order (i.e. predicand-​verb phrase, where the verb phrase is the predicate) and what she calls topic-​oriented material on the other. Although the term ‘topic’ in Pashova recalls ‘topic’ in the topic-​focus bifurcation (roughly equivalent to the Hallidayan theme-​rheme bifurcation; cf. Section 3.2), her use of this term is only

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90 Phrase-structural para-syntax in Arabic marginally related to the topic-​focus bifurcation, being closer to the notion of ‘discourse topic’ (cf. Fakhry 1995). Pashova also links event-​orientation and topic-​orientation to what she calls ‘foreground’ and ‘background’ (terms she uses in a somewhat different sense to some other writers; e.g. Tomlin 1987: 87; Dickins 2009b). Pashova adopts Hopper’s characterisation of ‘foreground’ and ‘background’: The difference between the sentences in the foreground (the “main line” events) and the ones in the background (the “shunted” events) has to do with sequentiality. The foreground events succeed one another in the narrative in the same order as their succession in the real world […] The background events, on the other hand, are not in sequence to the foregrounded events, but are concurrent with them. Because of this feature of simultaneity, backgrounded events usually amplify or comment on the main narrative. (Hopper 1979: 214) Pashova argues that in her corpus V-​S sentences express foreground, laying emphasis on the sequence of events, while S-​V may express background. V-​S sentences are thus dominant in narrative texts (Pashova 2003: 11), while in expository texts S-​V sentences (though still a minority of sentences overall) are much more common (Pashova 2003: 28). Benmahdjoub uses the terms ‘events-​based texts’ and ‘concept-​based texts’ in a very similar sense to Pashova’s ‘event-​orientation’ and ‘topic-​orientation’, but arrives at the same general conclusion, that nominal clauses/sentences “will, for instance, be more numerous in concept-​based texts through which personal attitudes are expressed, than in events-​based texts centred on events and not on any attitudes to these events” (Benmahdjoub 1991: 14–15). Similar findings have been made for a number of Arabic dialects in which both V-​S and S-​V word orders are common. Dahlgren (1998: 63) shows that in narrative discourse, Eastern Mediterranean and Mesopotamian colloquials employ 70–80% V-​S clauses for foregrounded events relaying the main story line and 70–100% S-​ V clauses for conveying background information (Dahlgren 1998: 168). Owens, Dodsworth and Rockwood (2009) argue that in contemporary Arabian Peninsular Arabic (taking the dialects of Kuwait, the United Arab Emirates, and Jeddah in Saudi Arabia), V-​S order prototypically presents events while S-​V order signals what they call ‘available referentiality’ (Owens, Dodsworth and Rockwood 2009: 39). V-​S word order typically occurs when the subject is ‘unavailable’ in discourse terms. For Bahraini Arabic, Holes associates verb-​initial sentences with sequential action (Holes 2010: 64), while initial nouns and adverbials are used for a variety of purposes, not all of which are compatible with notions such as given/ new or theme/rheme. Interestingly, in Egyptian Arabic, where V-​S sentences are rare, there is not the same correlation between V-​S sentences and event-​orientation/foregrounding and S-​V sentences and topic-​orientation/backgrounding as there is in Eastern

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Phrase-structural para-syntax in Arabic 91 Mediterranean, Mesopotamian and Peninsular Arabic (El Zarka 2013: 264). However, El Zarka also concludes from her data that: it is not enough to operate with narrow notions of information structure of individual sentences, but […] we have to take into account many other factors, such as narrative structures and other discoursal factors such as like the shift in discourse topic, or the beginning of a new episode, foregrounding and backgrounding. (El Zarka 2013: 268) Her more specific provisional conclusions are that in Egyptian Arabic V-​S sentences are mainly restricted to thetic sentences (sentences in which all the information can be regarded as new) “and to narrative discourse where the foregrounded main story is partly expressed by VS sentences” (El Zarka 2013: 269). Initial position in an utterance is likely to have a kind of prominence, independent of considerations of theme and rheme (in the Prague-​School sense). What the interlocutor hears first will create an impact on them, regardless of whether it receives primary accent or not. In one sense, narratives give precedence to events: they are primarily concerned with what happened, rather than with how entities look physically, for example, or how they relate to each other spatially. The prominence through initiality of V-​S sentences in Arabian Peninsular Arabic thus stands in a kind of iconic relationship to the fact that V-​S sentences are typically narrative. Sentence-​initiality, as one type of physical prominence, relays meaningful (semantic) prominence: the presentation of V-​S sentences as being narrative in nature. This kind of semantic prominence, however, is not the same as what is meant by theme in a Prague-​School account, or what is meant by given, or by theme, in a Hallidayan account. There is, as noted in Section 3.2, a problem with determining what is meant by theme in a Hallidayan account (a problem which, in my view, fatally undermines the Hallidayan notion of theme itself). However, we can say for certain that initial verbs in Arabian Peninsular Arabic are not themes in the Hallidayan sense, because they have a different function from the initial elements identified as theme in a Hallidayan analysis of English, where initiality does not play the role of distinguishing different types of text from one another, e.g. narrative from procedural, as in Arabic. (This argument holds true even given that we are not sure what the function/meaning of ‘theme’ is in English.) I suspect that utterance-​initiality does very different things in different languages, some of which may not be semantic (meaningful) at all, even if we adopt a rather ‘generous’ extended view of what counts as semantic, as I have done in this book. Even in Modern Standard Arabic, we may note a further very specific use of S-​V word order. This order is universal in newspaper headlines which contain a main verb (e.g. Dickins and Watson 1999: 154). While we can think of this word order as conveying a connotative meaning in relation to contextual appropriacy (Section 7.4.1.1.1), it does not fit into either a theme-​rheme model

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92 Phrase-structural para-syntax in Arabic or a topic-​orientation (Pashova) etc. model. In fact, the placement of the subject (predicand) initially in newspaper headlines, which are event-​oriented (narrative) in nature, directly contradicts Pashova’s principle that in event-​oriented material the verb comes first.

8.3 Initiality as non-​thematic discourse marker: Standard Arabic compared to other languages Naro and Votre (1999) examine from an information-​structure perspective spoken Brazilian Portuguese, a language which has both V-​S and S-​V word orders . Their results indicate, among other things, that subjects of greater discourse relevance – prototypically indefinite nouns – tend to occur with S-​V word order in spoken Brazilian Portuguese. In Arabian Peninsular Arabic, as seen in Section 8.2, subjects of greater discourse relevance (indefinite subjects) typically occur with V-​S word order. A Prague-​School analysis of theme and rheme might be able to accommodate the differences between Arabian Peninsular Arabic and spoken Brazilian Portuguese, because it is not pre-​committed to analysing the initial element in an utterance as the theme. A Hallidayan given-​new approach could similarly deal with this aspect. It does not seem possible, however, for a Hallidayan theme-​rheme approach to deal with the difference between the placement of indefinite nouns in V-S/S-V utterances between Arabian Peninsular Arabic and spoken Brazilian Portuguese. Because the Hallidayan notion of theme is semantically vague (as argued in Section 3.2), Hallidayan linguistics becomes effectively committed to identifying theme on phonetic grounds alone: i.e. theme is the first element in an utterance. In the case of Arabian Peninsular Arabic and spoken Brazilian Portuguese, this can yield, as seen, diametrically opposed results: in a V-​S sentence with an indefinite subject in Arabic, the verb is the Hallidayan theme, but in an utterance which is for practical purposes communicatively identical in spoken Brazilian Portuguese, with an indefinite subject, the word order is S-​V, and the subject is thus the Hallidayan theme. The notion of theme in such a Hallidayan analysis is not only devoid of meaning: worse, it yields diametrically opposed results when applied to different languages. Comparisons with other languages yield results which are similarly in contrast with Arabic and not compatible with Hallidayan views of theme and rheme. Thus, Matras (1995), for example, suggests that “VS order in Romani has a ‘connective function’ ” while “SV order serves to detach the proposition from the preceding context” (El Zarka 2013: 270).

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9  Phrase-​structural para-​syntactic notions vs. (real) semantic notions

9.1 Introduction In this chapter, I argue that it is necessary to separate phrase-​structural para-​ syntactic from (real) semantic notions. Theories, such as Hallidayan systemic functional linguistics, which fail to do this, thereby also adopting a universalist approach to (real) semantic notions, prejudice their analysis of the data, imposing on it notions which the theory requires it has, but which do not represent the data as it is.

9.2 The necessity of separating phrase-​structural para-​syntactic from (real) semantic notions One of the goals of this book has been to critique Hallidayan theme-​rheme notions, by considering how these work – or fail to work – in relation to Arabic. One fundamental problem with these, as I have argued in this book (Section 3.2), is that Hallidayan theme and rheme are semantically too vague to be coherently applicable across different languages. A further problem (especially Sections 8.2 and 8.3) is that significant aspects of the data cannot be made to fit a Hallidayan theme-​rheme analysis, however generously these notions are interpreted, whether in Arabic or in other languages. In this section, I will explore one final problem, related particularly to the second problem above, with the Hallidayan theme-​rheme approach. This is that theme and rheme in Halliday are conceived of simultaneously as phrase-​ structural and as (real) semantic notions.i The same basic criticism applies also to the Hallidayan notions of given and new – as well as Prague-​School theme and rheme, and notions such as topic-​focus and topic-​comment, when these are conceived as both phrase-​structural and as semantic. Because these notions are not only phrase-​structural but also semantic, they impose a predetermined semantic analysis of what is termed in this book ‘phrase-​ structural para-​syntax’. A review of the real-​semantic (‘real-​world meaning’) notions associated with (and, in terms of the current analysis, realising) the Nuc/ Rhema–Peri/Thema analyses in this book (Sections 7.4.1.1–8.2), has shown that many of them, while fairly demonstrably present, do not fit with Hallidayan

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94 Para-syntactic vs. (real) semantic notions given-​new or theme-​rheme notions, or with Prague-​School theme-​rheme notions (or, by extension, with similar notions in other theories, such as topic-​focus or topic-​comment). Simultaneously phrase-​structural and semantic approaches start from a universalist perspective, imposing basic ‘universal’ semantic notions on language – and individual languages – even when the semantic data of these languages do not in any clear sense accord with these notions. Accordingly, what are essentially extra-​ linguistic notions of real-​world meaning are ‘hardwired’ into the theory, thereby being accorded an abstract generalised status. Thus, i. languages have to have these features, regardless of whether the empirical evidence is that they have them or not; ii. these features have to be regarded as directly structural in all languages, regardless of whether the empirical evidence and considerations such as analytical simplicity suggest that these particular features are structural or not; and iii. other real-​world semantic features which relate to (realise) the kind of para-​syntactic features which I have identified in this book are, at the very least ‘downgraded’, such that they become secondary (regardless of their prominence in particular contexts) to the features which Hallidayan (or Prague-​School-​type) theory has deemed to be the crucial ‘universal’ features. This situation can be compared to that in phonology. As Haspelmath has noted, “The distinctive features of modern phonology were originally conceived of as language-​particular categories (Trubetzkoy 1939), and it was only later in work by Roman Jakobson, Morris Halle, and others that they were reconceptualised as crosslinguistic categories” (Haspelmath 2010: 668), i.e. as members of “a closed universal inventory of possible segment types” (Haspelmath 2010: 668) on the basis of a theoretical commitment to universalism – including universal distinctive feature sets. Only in recent years has the view begun to re-​emerge that universal distinctive features distort phonological analysis, leading to phonologies which are neither maximally simple nor properly adequate to the data (e.g. Port and Leary 2005; Ladd 2011; cf. Haspelmath 2010: 668). This has led to the development of ‘emergent property’ approaches to phonology (e.g. Mielke 2008), which effectively re-​assert pre-​Jakobsonian non-​universalist views. Whether in phonology (distinctive features, etc.) or in semantics, universalist approaches (e.g. Hallidayan universal functions, such as theme and rheme, and given and new, which fall under his ‘textual metafunction’; e.g. Halliday and Matthiessen 2004: 61) do two things. Firstly, they pre-​impose both on the data and the more abstract structural analyses designed to account for those data, features (notions, etc.) which the data themselves may not have, or which they may only partially have, or which they may arguably have, but to a degree which is not particularly prominent, or in a way which the universalist theory does not take proper account of; and secondly, they ignore features which the data have, but which fall outside the scope of the universalist notions pre-​designed to account for those data. Rather than incorporating universals into linguistic theory, the logic of the current argument is that universals need to be kept out of linguistic theory. In order not to pre-​impose features (notions, etc.), such as a particular distinctive feature,

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Para-syntactic vs. (real) semantic notions 95 or ‘theme’ and ‘rheme’ or ‘given’ and ‘new’ on our linguistic data and the structural analyses which inform (give coherent ‘shape’) these data, we need to confine these universal-​type features to the realisational levels, whether these be the phonetic realisations of abstract phonological entities or the semantic realisations (‘real-​world meanings’) of abstract para-​syntactic entities. This allows us both to do the abstract analyses without prejudice, and to relate these abstract analyses to the realisational (real-​world) data as these data actually present themselves, rather than how we pre-​imagine (pre-​determine) them to be. This approach does not deny the possibility of linguistic universals (I personally believe them to exist, both in syntax and in other areas). What it does, rather, is to make plain that by ‘hardwiring’ putative universals into the theory we use to analyse languages, we prejudice our analysis of the data, undermining the supposed discovery of such universals; if we presuppose ‘theory-​driven’ universals’ (e.g. Cristofaro 2005a) we will not be able to properly show that such putative universals do not exist in particular languages. The only universals which can be coherently shown to exist are those which are ‘data-​driven’. By this I mean here those universals which emerge from an analysis of the data of as many languages as possible (ideally of all languages) using a theory which does not presuppose such universals in the first place. It is important to stress that ‘data-​driven’ universals, as I have defined them here, do not, however, simply ‘emerge’ from the data. Rather, they rely on the prior existence of a theory with which to examine these data, and produce hypothetical analyses of them (Popper 1965: 30–33; Mulder 1989: 36–43). Consider in this light the well-​known example of Keenan and Comrie’s (1977) accessibility hierarchy for relativisation: Subject > Direct object > Indirect object > Oblique > Genitive > Object of comparison. This states that “if a language can form relative clauses on any syntactic role on the hierarchy, then it can form relative clauses on all syntactic roles to the left” (Cristofaro 2005b: 226). However, to make this work, we have to be able to reliably identify a subject, direct object, etc. in different languages, and to have a mechanism for ensuring that what we have identified as ‘subject’, for example, in language A really is the same as what we have identified as ‘subject’ in language B – i.e. that ‘subject’ is not something different in the two languages which we have decided to designate by the same name. This ‘mechanism’ is, of course, some kind of theory, and necessarily an ‘overarching’ theory which does not presuppose, and therefore prejudice, our analysis of the data, i.e. a theory which is itself non-​universalist. The more coherent the theory is, the more reliable the results are going to be, suggesting therefore that this theory should be as explicit (formal) as possible. Whether we really can identify notions such as subject and direct object with reliability across languages falls outside the scope of this book. We may note, however, that even among linguists who are not necessarily committed to the non-​universalist theoretical position adopted in this book, there is an ongoing debate about whether subjects exist in Tagalog and other Austronesian languages (e.g. Richards 2000). For further discussion, along the lines of the critique given here, of the problematic nature of Keenan and Comrie’s (1977) accessibility hierarchy for relativisation, see Haspelmath (2010: 672–673).

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96 Para-syntactic vs. (real) semantic notions These principles can be illustrated in relation to specific analyses in this book – both of the semantic realisations (cf. Section 2.2) of the para-​syntactic Peri/ Thema–Nuc/Rhema structure, and of the phrase-​structural para-​syntactic features. I have argued that the semantic realisations of the Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema structure are multi-​faceted. Some of these fit reasonably, though not entirely, within traditional views, including those of Halliday, of theme and rheme (also topic and focus/comment) (Section 7.4.1.1), while others cannot be accommodated even within a very loose and extended interpretation of these categories (Sections 8.1, 8.2). By assuming that notions such as theme and rheme are universal we will inevitably impose these categories on the semantic data. We will accordingly ignore features which are in the data and are similar to, but not identical with, those which our theory presupposes, and we will fail to spot, or even suppress, other features of the semantic data which our theory more clearly does not cover. As El Zarka puts it: I would like to point to an important caveat expressed by Matić & Wedgwood concerning the common practice of subsuming all different kinds of phenomena under the common heading of focus (or, as I should add, information structure) in linguistic analyses (including my own), which could impede descriptive and comparative work. They note that “[a]‌n incorrectly established category thus turns into a Procrustean bed for the variety of linguistic categories found in the phenomenological field of focus across languages”, especially if the “lack of differentiation between causes and effects” leads to the “reification of the latter” (Matić & Wedgwood [2013] p.159). (El Zarka 2013: 423) In relation to the phrase-​structural para-​syntactic Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema analysis itself, we might find that numerous languages have similar phrase-​structural para-​syntactic structures (cf. the discussion of the verb-​second Germanic languages in Section 7.5), and that we could find some kind of general, universal-​ type, tendencies across languages in this regard. To do this, however, we would need first to have a theory which allowed us to investigate this issue without prejudice, such that our theory did not simply pre-​impose on the data for each language a Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema-​type analysis. Here again, a non-​universalist theory is essential for a coherent investigation of what may be universal (or at least widespread) patterns across different languages.

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10  Distinguishing syntax from para-​syntax

10.1 Introduction Chapter 10 demonstrates that because a Peri/Thema in Standard Arabic may be either a predicand or an adverbial, it is necessary to have separate levels of syntax and para-​syntax.

10.2 The necessity of distinguishing syntax from para-​syntax in Standard Arabic The above discussion raises the issue of how syntax (proper) is to be distinguished from para-​syntax (Chapter 2), and particularly from phrase-​structural (Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema) para-​syntax (as opposed to non-​structural word-​order para-​syntax: Section 3.2). More specifically, how do we know that the phenomena identified in this book as phrase-​structurally para-​syntactic are in fact this, and not syntactic? If it were possible to regard these phenomena as purely syntactic, this would result in a simpler overall analysis, since it would reduce the number of structural levels we have in the analysis from two (syntax, plus para-​syntax) to one (syntax only). The necessity of having two levels to describe the relevant phenomena in Standard Arabic is in fact demonstrated by the fact that the phrase-​structural para-​ syntactic Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema analysis produced earlier in this book (Sections 2.1–2.4) covers not only predicand-​predicate structures and verbal clause/sentence structures (as termed in traditional Arabic grammar), but also structures which go beyond these types, in a manner which ‘cross-​cuts’ with them rather than simply extending them. Thus, a Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema structure may, for example, involve a predicand followed by a predicate, where typically the predicand corresponds to Peri/Thema and the predicate to Nuc/Rhema. However, it may also, for example, involve a preposed adverbial followed by a verbal clause (verbal clause/sentence in traditional Arabic grammar terms), where typically (and perhaps always), the preposed adverbial corresponds to the Peri/Thema and the verbal clause to the Nuc/Rhema (cf. Section 7.2). These differential structurings between syntax and para-​syntax make it impossible to have only one phrase-​ structural level of analysis, that of syntax, and require a second structural level of analysis, that of phrase-​structural para-​syntax.

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11  Conclusions

The main areas and arguments covered in this book have been presented in Chapter 1, and repeated in slightly different form in the Introduction section of each chapter (apart from Chapter 5, which merely summarises the contents of Chapters 1–4). I will not therefore further repeat these here. Rather, I will focus on what I think are the crucial conclusions reached in this book. These are: 1. Natural languages have sign-​level organisation which goes beyond syntax: para-​syntax. 2. In at least some languages, some aspects of para-​syntax are phrase-​structural, while others are not. 3. Arabic has phrase-​structural para-​syntax. 4. It is necessary to distinguish abstract levels of linguistic analysis, such as syntax and para-​syntax, from real-​semantic (realisational) notions, such as theme and rheme. 5. Para-​syntactic structures may be recursive, as may intonational structures. 6. Recognition of a para-​syntactic position (‘slot’) which may be unfilled (i.e. a position with zero (Ø) in it) makes possible an adequate phrase-​structural para-​syntactic analysis for Standard Arabic. 7. In Standard Arabic, the narrower semantic realisations of Nuc/Rhema and Peri/Thema (parallelism, stress, scene-​setting and linkage) are inadequately covered by notions such as theme and rheme. 8. Wider discourse-oriented semantic realisations of Nuc/Rhema and Peri/ Thema in Standard Arabic are even less adequately covered by notions such as theme and rheme. 9. Semantic realisations of Nuc/Rhema and Peri/Thema have shifted over time. 10. Only a non-​universalist theory, in which general analytical notions such as ‘theme’ and ‘rheme’ are kept out of the theory, is able to avoid ‘hard-​wiring’ such features into the data, and therefore undermining its own analytical independence. There are three areas in particular where I believe this book suggests further research could yield particularly interesting results:

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Conclusions 99 i. Proposals for intonational recursion in both Standard and Colloquial Arabic (cf. Sections 2.4.1, 4.2, 4.2.1; also Jaradat 2018). ii. The application of the Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema model to a wider data-​set, further testing and developing not only the analyses put forward here, but also those proposed in Alharthi (2010: 96–129, 192–202, 433–572) (cf. Sections 7.2, 7.4). iii. The proposed functions of Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema in Arabic (cf. Section 7.4.1.1).

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Technical appendix Endnotes

Chapter 1 i In the main text of this book, I have used the term ‘sign’ throughout, while in the Technical Appendix, I have used the term ‘signum’. There is technically a distinction between ‘signum’ and ‘sign’ in extended axiomatic functionalism (Dickins 2009a: 13; Def. 2a1, Def. 2a2), a sign being a particular type of signum. Since all the signs discussed in this book are also signa, I have for the sake of simplicity of presentation used the term which is standard in linguistics and semiotics, ‘sign’, in the main text, reserving the more technically precise term ‘signum’ for this Technical Appendix.

Chapter 2 i Figure 2.1 contains eight technical terms: sign (to be read as equivalent to ‘signum’), expression, content, sound (phonetic element), meaning, utterance, abstraction and reality (realisation). ‘Signum’ (‘sign’), ‘expression’, ‘content’ and ‘utterance’ are all technical terms in extended axiomatic functionalism. ‘Sound (phonetic element)’ is used in Figure 2.1 as a synonym for ‘morpho�nete’ (or ‘form’) in extended axiomatic-​functionalist terminology, ‘meaning’ as a synonym for ‘semonete’ (or ‘reference’), ‘abstraction’ as a synonym for (the level of) ‘lexologics’ (also ‘morphologics’ and ‘semologics’) and ‘reality (realisation)’ as a synonym for (the level of) ‘lexonetics’ (also ‘morphonetics’ and ‘semonetics’). For a visual representation of the relationships between these entities, see Figure TA.1. Extended axiomatic functionalism has two theoretical components (or ‘ontologies’ –​ i.e. sets of entities and explicit statements of the relationships between them): the signum ontology and the system ontology. Like many writers, the originator of axiomatic functionalism, Jan Mulder, uses the terms ‘set’ and ‘class’ interchangeably, as synonyms. In mathematics and set theory, however, ‘class’ is sometimes used to mean “a collection of sets (or sometimes other mathematical objects) that can be unambiguously defined by a property that all its members share” (Vialar 2016: 782). In order to avoid potential confusion, I will use the term ‘set’ throughout this book, except when making use of a term used by another author, e.g. ‘position class’ (Mulder 1989: 296).

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Technical appendix 101 LEXOLOGICS signum S=E&C

MORPHOLOGICS SEMOLOGICS content expression C={qRs} E={pRs} PHONOLOGICS ALLOMORPHICS ALLOSEMICS phonological form ( figura) p = {f}Rd

FORM PHONETICS

unascribed phoneticimage correlate α

ALLOPHONICS

phonetic form f = {i}

allophone fRd or {i}Rd

IMAGE PHONETICS

PHONETICS

phonetic image i = αRa

allomorph pRs or ({f}Rd)Rs

ALLOMORPHONICS allomorphon (fRd)Rs or ({i}Rd)Rs

alloseme qRs or ({g}Re)Rs

GENERAL PHONETICS

DELOLOGICS delological form (denotation) q = {g}Re

ALLOSEMONICS ALLODELICS allosemon (reference-type) (gRe)Rs or ({j}Re)Rs

MORPHONETICS SEMONETICS

morphonete (form) semonete (reference)

F= (iRd)Rs

phonete iRd

.

allodele (denotatum-type) gRe or {j}Re

semantic form g = {j}

DELETICS

IMAGE SEMANTICS

R _= (jRe)Rs

LEXONETICS lexonete (utterance) U=F&R _

FORM SEMANTICS

referent/ delete (denotatum) jRe

SIGNUM ONTOLOGY MORPHONTICS SEMANTICS

semantic image (denotable) j = βRa

unascribed semantic-image correlate β

GENERAL SEMANTICS

Figure TA.1 Extended axiomatic functionalism: signum ontology

All of the technical notions (terms) in Figure 2.1 are notions within the signum ontology. The signum ontology can be represented as in Figure TA.1 (from Dickins 2016). This also includes two further areas of analysis which are required for the operation of the signum ontology, but which technically fall outside it: ‘general phonetics’ and ‘general semantics’. The symbols in Figure TA.1 are to be read as follows: R

in relation to

i…n

(a) certain (set of) relation of implication relation of mutual implication relation of transformation distinctive function in phonology distinctive function in lexology distinctive function in delology

& a conjunction of {} a set of ⃗ ⃡ ⇨ d s

e

102

102 Technical appendix In order to fully understand Figure TA.1 and the remainder of this Technical Appendix, the reader will need to read Dickins (2016). This provides a detailed discussion of the signum ontology, developing all the notions presented in Figure TA.1 from first principles, together with exem�plifications, mainly from English, of the phenomena covered. ii While the statement in Section 2.3 that “ ‘grammar’ is a sign-​level phenom�enon” is correct, it needs to be elaborated on for purposes of technical completeness. Saussure put forward the idea of an abstract level of linguistic analysis, which he termed ‘langue’, where linguistic identity is determined by ‘difference’ or ‘oppositionality’: “dans la langue il n’y a que des différences sans termes positifs” (Saussure 1971: 166), which has been translated as “in language [i.e. langue] there are only differences without positive terms” (Saussure 1983: 120). Here langue (‘language’) can be glossed as something like ‘the purely abstract level of language’. This principle can be perhaps most easily seen in relation to phonology. According to this approach, what defines a phoneme in a particular language (used in the general sense, not in the sense of Saussure’s langue here) is its ‘not-​ness’ with respect to other phonemes. Thus, English/p/is such because it is not English/b/​, or English/t/​, or English/d/​, or /f /​, or /v/​, etc. For a formalisation of this principle in terms of set theory, and an accompanying formal notation, see Mulder (1968: 96–​114). This is currently a minority view in phonology (though Haspelmath 2010: 668 notes a significant number of contemporary advocates of it), where the tendency has been to try and define phonological elements, such as distinctive features, phonemes, etc., in terms of a ‘unique underlier’ (Lass 1984: 63), i.e. some specific positive phonetic property which is common to all the elements in question. Thus, in Arabic, it might be argued that the so-​called emphatic phonemes all have in common the specific positive phonetic property of pharyngealisation. The problematicness of this can be shown in a number of ways. Firstly, the approach pre-​defines what phonemes are and are not allowed to be analysed as emphatics. Thus, because/ḥ/and/ʕ/are in Arabic not pharyngealised (and cannot be so, given fundamental physical constraints on the nature of human articulation), they cannot be analysed as emphatic phonemes. There are, however, very good reasons to regard/ḥ/and/ʕ/as emphatic phonemes (i.e. having the distinctive feature/emphatic/​) in many, and perhaps even all, Arabic dialects (cf. Watson 2002). In modern South Arabian Semitic languages such as Mehri, the phonetic reflexes (realisations) of the proposed distinctive feature/emphatic/are even more varied, encompassing pharyngealisation, ejection and other phonetic features (Bellem and Watson 2014; Heselwood and Watson 2016). The attempt to identify a ‘unique underlier’ for the distinctive feature/emphatic/ breaks down. The Saussurean langue approach, which rejects positive terms and looks only for differences, gets around this problem. What distinguishes the distinctive feature/emphatic/according to this approach is that it is not another distinctive

 103

Technical appendix 103

PARA-LEXOTACTICS

unit: para-lexotagm feature: para-lexotactic feature sp base: lexotagm, e.g.{({sb1}, n), ({sb2}, i)}

unit feature base

PARA-PHONOTACTICS

para-phonotagm para-phonotactic feature dp phonotagm ,e.g. {({db1}, n), ({db2}, i)}

PHONOTACTICS

unit

phonotagm, e.g

basic entity unit basic entity

{({db1}, n), ({db2}, i)} phoneme {db}

PHONEMATICS

.

basic entity/unit unit

LEXOTACTICS

PARA-DELOTACTICS

unit: lexotagm, e.g.{({sb1}, n), ({sb2}, i)} para-delotagm basic entity: lexeme {sb} para-delotactic feature ep delotagm, e.g. LEXEMATICS {({eb1}, n), ({eb2}, i)} unit: lexeme {sb} basic entity: lexid sb

phoneme {db} phonid db

LEXIDICS

basic entity/unit: lexid sb

LEXOLOGY unit: lexo s

PHONIDICS phonid db

PHONOLOGY phono d

DELOTACTICS delotagm, e.g.

{({eb1},n), ({eb2},i)} deleme {eb}

DELEMATICS

deleme {eb} delid eb . .

DELIDICS delid eb

DELOLOGY .

delo e

Figure TA.2 Extended axiomatic functionalism: system ontology

feature, or other distinctive features, with which it contrasts (stands in opposition) in a particular language (cf. Heselwood, Watson, Al-​Azraqi, Naim, Maghrabi, 2012), not that it has its own specific positive phonetic content. The same principle can be applied to grammar (lexologics; Figure TA.1; cf. also lexology, Figures TA.2 and TA.3), where it is most simply illustrated in relation to vocabulary (lexis). Unlike the phonemes of a language which are a closed set, the vocabulary of a language constitutes an essentially open set: it can simply continue to be added to, and there are no clear boundaries between what is and is not a word in a particular language. We can, however, happily think of a word in a particular language being defined by its not being another, different, word in the same language, even factoring in the open-​set nature of that language’s vocabulary. Indeed, this approach avoids us having to reify what a word is; we do not need, for instance, to attempt to identify a unique allomorphic (phonological) underlier for English ‘either’ (whether this is to be identified as/aiðr/or/iRðr/​, assuming these to be reasonable phonological

104

104 Technical appendix analyses; see Mulder and Hurren 1968). Nor do we have to attempt to identify a unique ‘semantic underlier’ for a word like ‘funny’ (whether the ‘semantic underlier’ should be taken to be ‘funny’ = amusing, or ‘funny’ = odd, for example). All we need to say is that the words ‘either’ and ‘funny’ in English are identified (i.e. have their identity) by virtue of not being (being different from, being opposed to) all other words in English. Corresponding arguments apply to a word like ‘garage’, which is both polymorphic/​polymorphous (has more than one allomorph) and polysemic/​polysemous (has more than one alloseme) (for an analysis, see Dickins 2016: 8–​11). In the list of definitions above Figure TA.1 and in Figure TA.1 itself, there are three basic notions of most direct relevance to this discussion: d –​ defined as ‘distinctive function’ in phonology, s –​ distinctive function in lexology, and e –​distinctive function in delology (where ‘lexology’ can, for current purposes, be regarded as roughly meaning ‘grammar’, or ‘connotational grammar’; cf. Dickins 1998: 159–​160; and where ‘delology’ can, for current purposes, be roughly defined as ‘abstract semantics’, or ‘denotational grammar’; cf. Dickins 1998: 159–​160; see also Figure TA.2 and further discussion in this endnote, below). ‘Distinctive function’ is Saussure’s différences sans termes positifs (‘differences without positive terms’), i.e. the pure differentiality which makes the phoneme/b/not/p/in English or the word ‘either’ not the word ‘funny’. I will not go into detail about how distinctive function operates within the signum ontology (Figure TA.1). For details of this, see Dickins (2016). Suffice it to say that distinctive function is present in all the notions within this ontology (as can be seen from the fact that all the notions within this ontology are defined in relation to either d, s, or e, i.e. as SOMETHINGRd, SOMETHINGRs, or SOMETHINGRe. Thus, a phonete, for example, is iRd, an allomorph is pRs, and an allodele (denotatum-​ type) is gRe, while a number of notions involve more complex relations; thus allomorphon is (fRd)Rs.The entities in the signum ontology are not, accordingly, purely differential (i.e. they are not langue, or perhaps better, not purely langue, in Saussurean terms). Rather they are all anchored ultimately to features of the real world, whether this be the real world of sound (whose basic notion in general phonetics is the unascribed phonetic-​image correlate: α) or the real world or meanable ‘entities’ (whose basic notion in general semantics is the referent/ unascribed semantic-​image correlate: β). The entities in the signum ontology thus relate purely differential langue entities to sounds or to ‘meanable entities’ in the real world, showing (at various levels of abstraction) how purely differential langue entities are realised, ultimately in actual language occurrences.The right-​hand elements, d, s, and e, in the signum ontology do however imply another component of analysis –​a purely differential langue component –​from which they themselves derive. In extended axiomatic functionalism this purely differential (langue) component is termed the system ontology, since it is a component at which language is analysed purely as a system, or, rather, three systems –​the system of d (phonology), that of s (lexology), and that of e (delology –​ abstract semantics, roughly). Figure TA.2 (from Dickins 2014a) presents the system ontology of extended axiomatic functionalism.

 105

Technical appendix 105 Figure TA.2 is to be interpreted as follows. Phonology, on the left of Figure TA.2, is the area of analysis of phonos, a phono (or phonological entity) being a semiotic entity which is purely form-​related (i.e. non-​meaning related). d, as seen earlier in this endnote, is the right-​hand term in morphontic features in the signum ontology –​a phonete, for example, is iRd, while an allophone is fRd or {i}Rd. All of phonids, phonemes, phonotagms and para-​phonotagms are types of phono, which is thus a cover-​term (hyperonym/​superordinate). Delology, on the right-​hand side of Figure TA.2, is the area of analysis of delos, a delo (or delological entity) being a semiotic entity which is purely meaning-​related. e, as seen earlier in this endnote, is the right-​hand term in semantic features in the signum ontology (a delete/​denotatum, for example, is jRe, while an allodele is gRe or {j}Re). All of delids, delemes, delotagms and para-​delotagms are types of delo, which is thus a cover-​term. Lexology, in the centre of Figure TA.2, is the area of analysis of lexos, a lexo (or lexological entity) being a semiotic entity which is both form-​related and meaning-​related. s, as seen earlier in this endnote, is the right-​hand term in lexology-​related features in the signum ontology (a morphonete/​form, for example, is (iRd)Rs, while a semonete/​reference is (jRe)Rs). All of lexids, lexemes, lexotagms and para-​lexotagms are types of lexo, which is thus a cover-​term. All of phonos, lexos and delos can be referred to ‘ontos’. Correspondingly, ‘ontid’ can be used as a cover-​term for phonid, lexid and delid, ‘onteme’ as a cover-​term for phoneme, lexeme and deleme, ‘ontotagm’ as a cover-​term for phonotagm, lexotagm and delotagm, and ‘para-​ontotagm’ as a cover-​term for para-​phonotoagm, para-​lexotagm and para-​delotagm. Other analogous terms with ‘onto’can be generated as required. An ontid (phonid, lexid, delid) is a basic, unanalysable, entity in an ontology (phonology, lexology, delology). Phonids are what are traditionally known as ‘distinctive features’, while lexids are what are traditionally known as ‘morphemes’ (standard caveats for the ‘non-​translatability’ between different linguistic theories being noted). As a type of phono (i.e. a type of d), a phonid can be symbolised as db, where subscript b stands for ‘basic’. A phonidics consists of the complete set of phonids (distinctive features) of a language. Corresponding analyses apply to lexidics (where a lexidics consists of the complete set of lexids/​morphemes of a language), and delidics. In ontidics (phonidics, lexidics, delidics), the basic entity is also the unit, since no organisation of these basic enities is analysed. An onteme (phoneme, lexeme, deleme) is an entity consisting of an unordered set of ontids (phonids/​distinctive features, lexids/​morphemes, or delids), with the proviso that this set may itself consist of only one member, i.e. it may be a monontidic onteme (a monophonidic phoneme, monolexidic/​monomorphemic lexeme, or monodelidic deleme –​ a monolexidic lexeme, for example, being, roughly, a word which consists of only a single morpheme; see also Dickins 2014a, Section 2). The basic entity in an ontematics is thus an ontid, while the unit is an onteme. A phoneme, as an example of an onteme, can be symbolised

106

SYSTEM ONTOLOGY PARA-LEXOTACTICS

unit: para-lexotagm feature: para-lexotactic feature sp base: lexotagm, e.g.{({sb1}, n), ({s b2}, i)}

LEXOTACTICS

PARA-PHONOTACTICS

unit feature base

para-phonotagm para-phonotactic feature dp phonotagm ,e.g. {({db1}, n), ({d b2}, i)}

PARA-DELOTACTICS

unit: lexotagm, e.g.{({sb1}, n), ({sb2}, i)} para-delotagm basic entity: lexeme {sb} para-delotactic feature ep delotagm, e.g. LEXEMATICS unit: lexeme {sb} {({eb1}, n), ({eb2}, i)} basic entity: lexid sb

PHONOTACTICS

unit

DELOTACTICS

phonotagm, e.g

basic entity

phoneme {db}

DELEMATICS

deleme {e b} delid eb

LEXOLOGICS signum S=E&C

PHONIDICS phonid db

. .

MORPHOLOGICS SEMOLOGICS content expression C={qRs} E={pRs}

phonological form ( figura) p = {f}Rd

unascribed phoneticimage correlate α

allomorph pRs or ({f}Rd)Rs

ALLOMORPHONICS

ALLOPHONICS

phonetic form f = {i}

allophone fRd or {i}Rd

IMAGE PHONETICS

PHONETICS

phonetic image i = αRa

phonete iRd

allomorphon (fRd)Rs or ({i}Rd)Rs

delo e

DELOLOGICS

alloseme qRs or ({g}Re)Rs

delological form (denotation) q = {g}Re

ALLOSEMONICS ALLODELICS allosemon (reference-type) (gRe)Rs or ({j}Re)Rs

MORPHONETICS SEMONETICS

morphonete (form) semonete (reference)

F= (iRd)Rs

GENERAL PHONETICS

delid eb

.

PHONOLOGICS ALLOMORPHICS ALLOSEMICS

FORM PHONETICS

DELIDICS

DELOLOGY

PHONOLOGY phono d

unit

deleme {eb}

unit: lexo s

.

basic entity/unit

{({eb1},n), ({eb2},i)}

LEXOLOGY

PHONEMATICS phoneme {db} phonid db

unit basic entity

delotagm, e.g.

LEXIDICS

basic entity/unit: lexid sb

{({db1}, n), ({db2}, i)}

allodele (denotatum-type) gRe or {j}Re

semantic form g = {j}

DELETICS

IMAGE SEMANTICS

delete (denotatum) jRe

semantic image (denotable) j = βRa

R _= (jRe)Rs

LEXONETICS lexonete (utterance) U=F&R _

FORM SEMANTICS

referent/

SIGNUM ONTOLOGY MORPHONTICS SEMANTICS

unascribed semantic-image correlate β

GENERAL SEMANTICS

Key to symbols R: in relation to

& : a conjunction of

relation of implication

i…n : (a) certain (set of)

{ } : a set of

relation of mutual implication

d: distinctive function in phonology

s: distinctive function in lexology

b: basic (minimum) systemontological entity

p: basic para-tactic entity

UPPERCASE WORD

system or area of analysis

relation of transformation e: distinctive function in delology

lowercase word

entity

Figure TA.3 Extended axiomatic functionalism: complete model (system ontology and signum ontology)

 107

Technical appendix 107 as {db}, i.e. an (unordered) set of basic phonological entities (phonids). In recognition of the fact that phonemes are standardly represented in slant brackets, we might also represent this as/{db}/​. Corresponding symbolisations apply to lexemes and delemes. An ontotagm (phonotagm, lexotagm, delotagm) is an entity which consists of orderable entities, i.e. entities which can enter into ordering relations –​ basic orderable entities being ontemes (i.e. phonemes, lexemes, or delemes). The basic entity in ontotactics is thus an onteme and the unit an ontotagm. Ordering relations (to be discussed further in Chapter 2, Endnote vi below) involve (unordered) sets, each of whose members is an ordered pair comprising an orderable entity (such as a phoneme) plus a position in which this entity stands. Thus, in phonology, we might, in a phonotagm, have two phonemes, which we can call {db1} and {db2} (or/{db1}/and/{db2}/​). The first of these might be the nucleus, i.e. it might occur in nuclear position (to be discussed further in Chapter 2, Endnote vi below), which we can call n, while the second might appear in a ‘post-​nuclear’ peripheral position, which we can call i. The phoneme {db1} and the nuclear position, n, in which it stands can be represented as the ordered pair ({db1}, n), while the phoneme {db2} and the peripheral position in which it stands can be represented as the ordered pair ({db2}, i). The overall phonotagm is an (unordered) set consisting of these two ordered pairs, i.e. {({db1}, n), ({db2}, i)}. This situation can be illustrated by ‘on’, i.e./ɔn/​, in Southern British English. Here/ɔ/(corresponding to {db1} above) is in nuclear position (i.e. n), while/n/is in ‘post-​nuclear’ peripheral position, i.e. i (for an analysis along these lines, see Mulder 1989: 228–​235). In Southern British English/ɔn/​, ‘ɔ’ is thus analysed as the ordered pair (ɔ, n), while ‘n’ is analysed as the ordered pair (n, i). The phonotagm/ɔn/is analysed as an (unordered) set consisting of these two ordered pairs, i.e. as {(ɔ, n) (n, i)}. For further explanation of this approach to ontotactics (phonotactics, lexotactics, delotactics) –​an approach which might initially appear to be unnecessarily complex –​see Chapter 2, Endnote vi. Para-​ontotactics (para-​phonotactics, para-​lexotactics, para-​delotactics) is the area of analysis of all relevant phenomena which go beyond ontotactics (phonotactics, lexotactics, delotactics). Here the ontotagm (phonotagm, lexotagm, delotagm) constitutes a base, upon which are superimposed further para-​ontotactic features (para-​phonotactic features, para-​lexotactic features, para-​delotactic features). The combination of the para-​ontotactic base (i.e. para-​ phonotactic/​para-​lexotactic/​para-​delotactic base) and the para-​ontatactic features yields a para-​ontotagm (para-​phonotagm, para-​lexotagm, para-​delotagm). Figure TA.3 (from Dickins 2013) presents the complete model of extended axiomatic functionalism, comprising both the signum ontology (already given in Figure TA.1), and the system ontology (already given in Figure TA.2). (A downloadable copy of Figure TA.3 is available at the time of writing from https://​ahc.leeds.ac.uk/​languages/​staff/​711/​professor-​james-​dickins.): Features of the system ontology which are relevant to this book are further explained below in this and subsequent endnotes. Readers who wish to

108

108 Technical appendix pursue fuller technical details of the system ontology should read Dickins (2014a), which also proposes a possible alternative to the model of the system ontology presented here. Two things do, however, need be emphasised here in relation to the system ontology: (i) all entities in the system ontology are purely differential (purely langue), i.e. they are all just d, s, or e (distinctive function in phonology, lexology or delology; as can be seen from Figure TA.3, general terms for such purely differential entities are phono, lexo and delo, or alternatively phonological entity, lexological entity and delological entity); and (ii) the different levels within the system ontology (phonidics, phonematics, phonotactics, para-​phonotactics; lexidics, lexematics, lexotactics, para-​lexotactics; delidics, delematics, delotactics, para-​ delotactics) simply involve different degrees and types of complexity of these d, s and e. For further discussion, see Dickins (2014a). iii Why intonational melody/​tune is a separate area of semiotic analysis from the issues covered in this book is explained below in Chapter 2, Endnote vii. i v What is meant by ‘syntax’ in this book is, in the terminology of extended axiomatic-​functionalism, lexotactics (see Figure TA.3). The following, from Dickins (2009a), gives examples from English to illustrate the differences between lexotactics (syntax) and para-​lexotactics: Consider ‘he jumped the gun’ in various senses: 1. ‘he jumped over the tubed weapon’; 2. ‘he acted prematurely’; and 3. ‘he jumped over the gunman’ (‘gun’ = ‘gunman’, as in ‘he’s a hired gun’). Under an extended axiomatic-​functionalist analysis, these are all the same lexotactically (the same morphemes in the same combinations with the same ‘subject-​verb-​object’ lexotactic structure). The fact that ‘jump the gun’ in the sense ‘act prematurely’, for instance, is an idiom is irrelevant here (for a semantic analysis of idioms in terms of what I have called allosemic amalgamation, see Dickins 1998: 241–​244). More interesting is a form like ‘The gun he jumped’ (as in, for example, ‘The gun he jumped, but the cannon was too big, so he had to go round it’). I believe that this should be regarded as lexotactically the same as ‘He jumped the gun’, albeit that ‘He jumped the gun’ can mean 1. ‘he jumped over the tubed weapon’; 2. ‘he acted prematurely’; and 3. ‘he jumped over the gunman’, while ‘The gun he jumped’ can only mean, out of the senses given above 1. ‘he jumped over the tubed weapon’; and 3. ‘he jumped over the gunman’ (it cannot have the idiomatic sense 2. ‘he acted prematurely’). If this proposal is reasonable, the analytical domain of lexotactics would correspond closely to that of traditional syntax –​covering areas of traditional syntactic concern such as the analysis of subject, verb and object for English. (Dickins 2009a: 5)

Elsewhere, I have suggested that an alternative term for lexotactics would be ‘connotational syntax’ (Dickins 1998: 160). It would also be possible to use

 109

Technical appendix 109 the term ‘syntax’ in a different sense to refer to delotactics (Figure TA.3) in extended axiomatic functionalism. I have suggested that a more precise term for ‘syntax’ in the sense of delotactics would be ‘denotational syntax’ (Dickins 1998: 160). By analogy with the use of ‘syntax’ to mean either lexotactics (connotational syntax), as it does in this book, or ‘delotactics’ (denotational syntax), ‘para-​syntax’ could mean either para-​lexotactics or para-​delotactics (see Figures TA.2 and TA.3) –​the former being also termable ‘connotational para-​ syntax’ and the latter ‘denotational para-​syntax’. In this book, the term ‘para-​ syntax’ is used to mean para-​lexotactics. In Dickins (2009a), I characterised para-​lexotactics (‘connotational para-​syntax’) as follows: Para-​lexotactics by definition deals with the organisation of grammatical entities beyond the lexotactic, and will certainly include intonation within its domain. It appears, however, that para-​lexotactics also includes word order patterns which are functional, and which go beyond the analytical notions covered by lexotactics. Thus, ‘He jumped the gun’ and ‘The gun he jumped’ are, as argued, the same lexotactically. There is a grammatical difference between them: this, however, is para-​ lexotactic, rather than lexotactic. That this kind of word order difference should be part of grammar seems clear in an extended axiomatic-​functionalist approach. Signa (i.e. grammatical entities) have both a formal [i.e. morphontic] and a semantic aspect. The word order difference between ‘He jumped the gun’ and ‘The gun he jumped’ clearly involves a formal difference: in the first case ‘the gun’ is realised at the end of the sentence, and in the second at the beginning. This word order difference also involves semantic difference: one obvious semantic difference is that in ‘He jumped the gun’, ‘jump […] the gun’ can be interpreted idiomatically, but in ‘The gun he jumped’ it cannot. Of more generalisable semantic importance however, is that the fact that in ‘The gun he jumped’, ‘The gun’ is an emphatic [cf. marked, as used in this book], contextually known, element. In functional sentence perspective terms, ‘The gun’ might be described as an emphatic [cf. marked] theme. While there is apparently no denotative meaning difference between ‘He jumped the gun’ and ‘The gun he jumped’ (at least if we ignore the idiomatic sense of the former), there is a connotative meaning difference. Mulder (e.g. 1989: 80, 148, 164, 195–​196) specifically excludes connotative meaning, of which functional sentence perspective features are an aspect, from the scope of standard axiomatic functionalism. Inasmuch as these features belong to the system of conventions for communication, extended axiomatic functionalism, by contrast, recognises them as semiotic.

(Dickins 2009a: 5–​6).

110

110 Technical appendix This is how the distinction between syntax (lexotactics) and para-​syntax (para-​lexotactics) is understood in this book. v I have used ‘definite’ and ‘indefinite’ here as if they were lexos/​lexological entities (in the system ontology; to which correspond signa in the signum ontology), i.e. entities having identity with both morphontic and semantic realisations. It will be seen, however, that ‘definite’ and ‘indefinite’ are both properly speaking purely meaning-​related entities, i.e. delological entities (delos/​ delological entities in the system ontology, to which correspond delological forms/​denotations in the signum ontology), having meaningful realisations (in allodelics and deletics), rather than lexos/​lexological entities. (For more specific arguments along these lines, see Dickins 2009d: 546–​547. See also Chapter 2, Endnote ii). Properly speaking, the lexos/​lexological entities (in the system ontology), corresponding to signa (in the signum ontology) whose allosemes have, either wholly or partially, the delological form/​denotation definite, are things like the definite particle al-​ and pronoun suffixes, such as -​u ‘his//​it’s (m.sg.)’ (with various allomorphs, which do not concern us here). In fact, al-​seems to have only one alloseme whose delological form/​denotation is ‘definite’. Pronoun suffixes, such as -​u, are more complex. Normally, ‘definite’ is part of the delological form/​denotation of the alloseme of pronoun suffixes, another part involving, realisationally (in allodelics and deletics), the reference to a person –​ here a third person, ‘masculine’ entity (cf. also the discussion of objective vs. subjective reference in Dickins 2009d: 542–​544). To further complicate matters, while pronoun suffixes are normally unambiguously definite (and always so in Standard Arabic), there are also contexts in Sudanese Arabic in which they are unambiguously indefinite; for example, in a phrase such as zōl ṣāḥb-​u ‘a man who is a friend of his’ (literally: ‘man friend-​his’), the pronoun suffix -​u ‘his’ on ṣāḥb-​‘friend’ (the independent non-​ suffixed form of which is ṣāḥib) is indefinite. This can be seen in the fact that in zōl ṣāḥb-​u ‘a man who is a friend of his’, ṣāḥb-​u ‘his friend’ agrees with the indefinite zōl ‘a man’. It also agrees with a following indefinite relative clause (cf. Dickins 2009d; also Section 6.2), e.g. zōl ṣāḥb-​u bidrus fī jāmʕa ‘a man who is a friend of his who studies at a university’ (literally: ‘man friend-​his studies in university’). For current purposes, in order to avoid these and other complications, I will treat ‘definite’ and ‘indefinite’ as if they were lexological entities (lexos, corresponding to signa in the signum ontology), or at least shorthand for sets of lexological entities, rather than delological entities (delos, corresponding to delological forms/​denotations in the signum ontology). v i I will consider here in more detail the analysis of bipartite clauses in Sudanese Arabic as equatives –​an analysis which I believe also applies to other forms of Arabic. In considering bipartite clauses, we are dealing with what are known in axiomatic functionalism as syntagmatic entities (Dickins 2009a: 20; Def. 7b2; Mulder and Hervey 2009: 6; Def. 7b2). Syntagmatic entities are entities which are capable of entering into ordering relations, in the first instance in

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Technical appendix 111 the system ontology, these entities being either phonos (phonological entities), symbolised as d, lexos (lexological entities/(connotational) grammatical entities), symbolised as s, or delos (delological entities/(denotational) grammatical entities), symbolised as e (Figures TA.2 and TA.3). However, entities in the system ontology also constitute the ‘right-​hand element’ of entities in the signum ontology (see Figure TA.3); thus, for instance, a lexo/lexological entity/(connotational) grammatical entity in the system ontology, symbolised as s, constitutes the ‘right-​hand element’ of an expression, in the signum ontology, symbolised as {pRs} or a content, symbolised as {qRs}. Similarly, a phono/phonological entity in the system ontology, symbolised as d, constitutes the ‘right-​hand element’ of a phonological form (or figura) in the signum ontology, symbolised as {f}Rd. The system ontology thus dominates the signum ontology. It provides the basic abstract analytical entities (the phonos, lexos and delos, i.e. the ‘ds’, ‘ss’, and ‘es’) to which are related (cf. Figure TA.3) the models for real sounds and real meanings (the entities at the ‘etic’-​level –​i.e. the entities of phonetics, lexonetics [including morphonetics and semonetics] and delectics, and generalising abstractions from these [the entities at the ‘allo’-​levels, i.e. the entities of allophonics, allomorphonics, allosemonics, allodelics, allomorphics and allosemics]). Recall that entities in the system ontology are purely differential (oppositional), i.e. solely defined by their ‘not-​ness’ with respect to other entities in the system ontology (cf. Chapter 2, Endnote ii). Relations between such ‘propertiless’ entities can only be treated mathematically, and mathematics offers two basic relations between entities; either they are unordered with respect to one another, or they are ordered. In the first case, when two or more entities are not ordered with respect one another we have an unordered set, and in the second, when two entities are ordered with respect to one another, we have an ordered pair. An example of an unordered set is a set of distinctive features (phonids) constituting a phoneme. See Dickins (2007: esp. 90–​96, 107–​109) for arguments in support of the traditional view that phonemes are unordered sets (simultaneous bundles) and why phenomena which are typically regarded as phonological, such as ‘emphasis spreading’, are more coherently to be regarded as allophonic. Ordered pairs are more interesting and challenging in relation to axiomatic functionalism, and I will deal with them at the very end of this endnote. Firstly, I will consider the possible logical relations which can obtain between ‘propertiless’ entities, and realisational notions, particularly what constitutes a ‘transparent’ realisation of a system-​onological entity (i.e. a phono/phonological entity, lexo/lexological entity, or delo/delological entity: d, s, or e). Then, at the end of this endnote I will link the discussion of logical relations between entities in the system ontology to ordering. Mulder (1989: 289) points out that there are only three ways logically in which two orderable entities –​which we can call here a and b –​can relate to one another, as follows:

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112 Technical appendix i.

a implies b (but b does not imply a): notatable as a→b (or, equivalently, as b←a) –​also the converse of this: b implies a (but a does not imply b): notatable as b→a (or, equivalently, as a←b). Mulder terms this ‘subordination’. ii. a implies b, and b implies a: notatable as a↔b (or, equivalently, as b↔a). Mulder terms this ‘interordination’. i ii. a does not imply b, and b does not imply a: notatable as a↮b (or, equivalently, as b↮a). Mulder terms this ‘coordination’. (In fact, as will be discussed later in this endnote, it is only subordination which involves ordering.) This terminology is somewhat confusing, suggesting, falsely, a direct relationship between these notions and what is traditionally meant in linguistics by ‘subordination’ and ‘coordination’. I will, however, retain it here, rather than invent further new terminology, merely underlining that what is meant here by these terms has no intrinsic link to more traditional uses of the same terms in linguistics. Syntax (‘lexotactics’ in the current approach) deals with orderable entities (just as do phonotactics and delotactics), i.e. entities which can stand in different relationships to one another (or which themselves already involve internal ordering; cf. Mulder 1989: 110, 191, 210). Accordingly, all entities in syntax which directly relate to one another (i.e. stand in a direct tactic relation: Mulder 1989: 276–​288; Dickins 1998: 62, 72, 386), must be related via subordination, interordination, or coordination. Lexotactic relations yield more complex lexos from simpler ones. All lexos, as system-​ontological entities, correspond to signa in the signum ontology having both morphontic and semantic (see Figure TA.3) realisations in the signum ontology. That is to say, they can be related to two things. This first is to real-​world features of sound (in spoken language; writing in written language) and meaning (via models for these real-​world features): this is the domain of phonetics, lexonetics (subsuming morphonetics and semonetics), and deletics. Phonetics and morphonetics fall within morphontics, while semonetics and deletics fall within semantics. Lexonetics, as a conjunction of morphonetics and semonetics, falls within both. The second realisational ‘thing’ that lexos can be related to is generalisations about real-​world features of sound (in written language, writing) and meaning: this is the domain of ‘allo-​levels’: allophonics, allomorphonics, and allomorphics within morphontics, and allodelics, allosemonics and allosemics within semantics. There is, beyond the realisational levels within the signum ontology, a third category of levels, whose entities correspond directly to entities in the system ontology. Within morphontics these levels are phonologics (corresponding to phonology in the system ontology) and morphologics (corresponding to lexology in the system ontology); within semantics, they are delologics (corresponding to delology in the system ontology), and semologics (corresponding

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Technical appendix 113 to lexology in the system ontology). Finally, lexologics in the signum ontology (corresponding to lexology in the system ontology), as a conjunction of morphologics and semologics, falls within both morphontics and semantics. For details of all these notions see Dickins (2016). Within morphontics, in the signum ontology, we can talk of phonologics being realised by allophonics and phonetics, and correspondingly, therefore, of phonological forms being realised by allophones and phonetes. Within morphontics also, we can talk of morphologics being realised by allomorphics, allomorphonics and morphonetics, and correspondingly, therefore, of expressions (and signa as conjunctions of expression and contents) being realised by allomorphs, allomorphons and morphonetes.Within semantics, in the signum ontology, we can talk of delologics being realised by allodelics and deletics, and correspondingly, therefore, of delological forms/denotations being realised by allodeles/​denotatum-​types and deletes/​denotata. Within semantics also, we can talk of semologics being realised by allosemics, allsemonics and semonetics, and correspondingly, therefore, of contents (and signa as conjunctions of expressions and contents) being realised by allosemes, allosemons and semonetes. For details of all these notions, see Dickins (2016). Realisations, whether morphontic or semantic, can be transparent or non-​ transparent. Transparent realisations are those in which the realisational features directly mirror those of the more abstract entities –​in the current case signa, in the signum ontology (corresponding to lexos/lexological entities in the system ontology; Figure TA.3). Thus, in Turkish, the allomorphic realisations of verb morphemes are almost all transparent (a ‘morpheme’ being a basic lexo/​signum in extended axiomatic functionalism; an alternative, terminologically integrated, term for ‘morpheme’ is ‘lexid’; see Chapter 2, Endnote ii). In the case of a word such as güldürecekler ‘they will make laugh’, the phonological form/gül/is, in this context, unambiguously the phonological form of the allomorph of the morpheme (lexid) gül ‘laugh’;/dür/is unambiguously the phonological form of the allomorph of the morpheme (lexid) dür ‘cause’; /ecek/ is unambiguously the phonological form of the allomorph of the morpheme (lexid) ecek ‘will/​FUTURE’; and/ler/is unambiguously the phonological realisation of the allomorph of the morpheme (lexid) ler ‘PLURAL’. And in all these cases, the phonological form involved corresponds to a clearly defined (and, more precisely, ‘self-​contained’; Dickins 2009a, Def. 1b1; Mulder and Hervey 2009: Def. 1b1) phono (phonological entity), such as a syllable. (I take the phonological forms used in these examples to be acceptable for current purposes. In representing the morphemes/​lexids, I have also ignored issues of vowel-​harmony, which are irrelevant for the current analysis.) It is also to be noted that allomorphs have phonological forms (this is the interpretation of the ‘arrow of transformation’ ⇨, pointing from ‘phonological form’ to ‘allomorph’), rather than being phonological forms. The commonsensicality of this is evident from the fact that in English the single phonological form/ bɪn/may be the phonological form of an allomorph (in fact the sole allomorph) of the lexo (signum) bin (= storage container), or it may be the phonological

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114 Technical appendix form of an allomorph of the lexo (signum) ‘been’ (i.e. be+PAST PARTICIPLE) (cf. Dickins 1998: 97–​98). If an allomorph were defined as being a phonological form, we would have to say that there was only one allomorph here (there being only one phonological form), and that therefore bin and been were the same lexo (signum). In other languages, phonological realisations may be much less transparent than they are in Turkish. In Arabic, for instance, there is often a ‘mismatch’ between signa and the syllabic phonological realisations of their allomorphs (cf. Section 4.2.2). Transparent realisations are to be regarded as simpler than non-​transparent ones. We can apply the notions of transparency and non-​transparency to semantic realisations of signa, just as to morphontic (sound/​written-​form) realisations. Consider a form such as ‘outside hospitals’ (as in ‘Ambulances often wait outside hospitals’). We can analyse this in signum terms as outside←hospitals, i.e. ‘hospitals’ here implies ‘outside’ but not vice versa. This is thus an example of subordination (for an analysis along these lines, see Mulder 1989: 360). This analysis is compatible with the fact that ‘hospitals’ is here an expansion of ‘outside’; we can say ‘ambulances often wait outside’ (as well as ‘ambulances often wait outside hospitals’), but not *‘ambulances often wait hospitals’ (this is, in fact, what Mulder terms ‘occurrence dependency’, rather than true ‘functional dependency’, i.e. in this context genuine structural ‘ordination’; however, occurrence dependency can be taken as a partial guide to functional dependency; cf. Mulder 1989: 291–​293). Semantically, the most transparent realisation of syntactic (lexotactic) subordination is ‘semantic subordination’, i.e. a situation in which the meaning of an a←b lexotactic structure can also be said to be ‘a←b’. What I mean by this is that an a←b lexotactic structure is most transparently realised semantically by the entity/​notion being relayed by (realising) the lexo (signum) a being conceptually central to the overall meaning of the phrase, and the entity/​notion being relayed by (realising) the lexo (signum) b being conceptually peripheral (non-​central). In the case of ‘outside hospitals’, it is clear that ‘outside’ is conceptually central, while ‘hospitals’ is conceptually peripheral. Thus, all cases of ‘outside hospitals’ are also cases of ‘outside’ (i.e. ‘outside something’), while not all cases (in fact no cases, as far as I can see) of ‘outside hospitals’ are also cases of ‘hospitals’. Set-​theoretically, this corresponds to the fact that semantically ‘outside hospitals’ is properly included in ‘outside’, but not in ‘hospitals’. Equivalently, using linguistic notions, ‘outside hospitals’ is a hyponym of ‘outside’, but not a hyponym of ‘hospitals’. Coordination, as noted, involves the relationship a↮b. Given that a here does not imply b, nor does b imply a, the most transparent semantic realisation in this case would be one in which neither a nor b is semantically central. This is, in fact, the case with respect to bipartite clauses in Sudanese Arabic (also other varieties of Arabic). Take the example bēt-​u kiwayyis ‘his house is nice’ (literally: ‘house-​his nice’). Given an analysis of coordination, the relationship between bēt-​u and kiwayyis here is bēt-​u↮kiwayyis (for simplicity’s

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Technical appendix 115 sake, I will ignore the internal structure of bēt-​u, though see Dickins 2013 for arguments for Standard Arabic; these are, I believe, with some modifications also applicable to Sudanese and other Arabic dialects). It can be shown that in bēt-​u kiwayyis ‘his house is nice’ (‘house-​his nice’), neither bēt-​u ‘his house’ nor kiwayyis ‘nice’ are realised semantically as central (or, equivalently, that both are realised semantically as peripheral). To do this, we need to place bēt-​u kiwayyis in a larger recursive structure (cf. Dickins 2010b; Section 4.2.2), for example al-​rājil bēt-​u kiwayyis ‘the man’s house is nice’ (literally: ‘the-​man house-​his nice’). (As with bēt-​u, I will, for simplicity’s sake, not consider the internal structure of al-​rājil, treating it as a single unit; as with bēt-​u, the arguments in Dickins (2013) are, with some modifications, also applicable to Sudanese Arabic and other dialects.) This involves recursion of the bipartite clause structure (cf. Dickins 2010b). Thus, overall al-​rājil bēt-​u kiwayyis can be analysed syntactically (lexotatically) into two (bipartite) elements: 1. al-​rājil and 2. bēt-​u kiwayyis. Within the second element bēt-​u kiwayyis, we can, however, make a further analysis into two elements (which we can call 2.1 and 2.2), 2.1 bēt-​u and 2.2 kiwayyis. Assuming coordination, this can, of course, also be represented as al-​rājil↮(bēt-​u↮kiwayyis).Turning now to the semantic realisation, we can now see that if bēt-​u ‘his house’ were conceptually central in bēt-​u kiwayyis ‘his house is nice’, al-​rājil bēt-​u ‘the man is his house’ (literally: ‘the-​man house-​his’) would be true, with kiwayyis ‘nice’ providing some kind of further semantic delimitation (hyponymic, or conceivably, perhaps, of another type) on bēt-​u ‘his house’. It is clearly, however, not the case that what is meant is the man is his house. Correspondingly, if kiwayyis-​u were conceptually central in bēt-​u kiwayyis, the statement al-​rājil kiwayyis ‘the man is nice’ (literally: ‘the-​man nice’) would be true, with bēt-​u ‘his house’ providing some kind of further semantic delimitation (hyponymic, or conceivably, perhaps, of another type) on bēt-​u ‘his house’. It is clearly, however, not the case that what is meant by al-​rājil bēt-​u kiwayyis is that the man is nice (although the man may also in fact be nice, this has nothing to do with the meaning of this sentence). Thus, in bēt-​u kiwayyis ‘his house is nice’, neither bēt-​u ‘his house’ nor kiwayyis ‘nice’ are conceptually central. Rather, both are conceptually peripheral –​ i.e. bēt-​u kiwayyis illustrates a transparent semantic realisation of syntactic (lexotactic) coordination. As noted earlier in this section, Mulder also notes a third logical possibility for relations between orderable entities, which he terms ‘interordination’ (symbolised a↔b). I will not consider the question of transparency of realisation of interordination in this book. A further issue now presents itself. I have so far talked somewhat vaguely about ‘semantic realisation’ of signa –​ where ‘semantic realisation’ in fact covers all of allosemics, allsemonics, semonetics, allodelics and deletics (Figure TA.3). This can be contrasted with the much more precise discus�sion of the morphontic realisation of lexos (signa) in terms of allomorphs having phonological form (corresponding directly to phonos/phonological entities in the system ontology (Figure TA.3). To parallel the discussion of the

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116 Technical appendix morphontic realisations of lexos (signa) in terms of allomorphs having phonological form (corresponding to phonos/phonological entities in the system ontology), we need to consider the semantic realisations of signa (corresponding to lexos/lexological entities, in the system ontology) in terms of allosemes having delological forms/denotations (corresponding to delos/delological entities in the system ontology; Figure TA.3). The basic entities of phonology are smaller than those of grammar (lexology, lexologics). Or, to be more precise, lexological entities (lexos/​signa) –​ and most obviously morphemes (also termed ‘lexids’ in extended axiomatic functionalism; Figure TA.3) –​ are typically realised by allomorphs having phonological forms which are more complex than the lexos (signa) themselves. Thus, the single Turkish plural morpheme (lexid) ‘ler’ is realised by an allomorph having three phonemes,/l/​,/e/and/r/​, and each of these phonemes could probably be further analysed into distinctive features (technically known as ‘phonids’ in extended axiomatic functionalism; Figure TA.3). This situation, which seems to obtain in all natural languages, is motivated by communicative efficiency; it allows a very small number of basic phonos/ phonological entities, i.e. phonids/​distinctive features (14 in my analysis of Sudanese Arabic, for example; Dickins 2007: 57) to ‘produce’ a potentially unlimited number of lexids/​morphemes (and therefrom words, etc.) in the language. Were natural languages not organised like this, their phonologies would be exceedingly difficult for speakers to learn –​ as can be seen by analogy in the difficulty speakers have in learning a ‘logographic’ writing system such as Chinese compared to an alphabetic writing system. While lexos/lexological entities (corresponding to signa, in the signum ontology) are typically realised by allomorphs having phonological forms which are more complex than the lexos themselves, the converse does not so clearly hold true of the relationship between lexos and their realisational allosemes having delological forms/denotations in semantics. It is thus not so obviously the case that delos/delological entities (corresponding to delological forms/denotations, in the signum ontology) are less complex than are lexos. This is very difficult to assess, largely because very little work has been done in delology in extended axiomatic functionalism. There is, however, good reason communicatively to believe that delos should be less complex –​ and certainly less structured –​than lexos. We might, for example, be inclined to believe that a cat (‘small domesticated feline animal, Felis catus (or domesticus) […]’; Collins English Dictionary) is by definition an animal. In set-​theoretical terms this would mean that the delological form (denotation) of the relevant alloseme of cat (‘small domesticated feline animal, Felis catus (or domesticus) […]’; Collins English Dictionary) was properly included within the (delological form/ denotation) of the relevant alloseme of animal (‘living organism, characterised by voluntary movment [etc.]’; Collins English Dictionary). Cat in the relevant alloseme (sense) would be a hyponym of animal in the relevant alloseme (sense) (and animal a hyperonym/​hypernym/​superordinate of cat).

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Technical appendix 117 In a truth conditional-​oriented approach to semantics, ‘That’s a cat’ would entail ‘That’s an animal’. However, consider the following (based on Putnam 1962: 162): Suppose that cats were discovered one day not to be animals at all, but highly sophisticated self-​replicating robots, introduced to earth millions of years ago by visitors from outside our galaxy. Would this discovery lead us to exclaim ‘Aha! Cats do not exist!’? Or would we not continue to call the referents ‘cats’, and say that cats were not what we took them to be? Surely the latter is the case.. (Cruse 1986: 141)

This suggests that it is not part of the definition of cat that it is an animal. Consequently, a proposition such as ‘All cats are animals’ is not an analytic proposition, i.e. a proposition which is true in all possible worlds (cf. Lyons 1977: 787), as it appears to be at first sight, and as it had been traditionally regarded. Rather, it is a synthetic proposition, i.e. a proposition which simply happens to be true of the world, or the state of the world, that is being described (cf. Lyons 1977: 787). Analytic propositions –​ i.e. propositions in which the subject and the complement of the copula are defined in respect of one another in a basic semantic relationship such as hyperonymy/​hyponymy or synonymy –​communicate no information. The fundamental purpose of language (its purport) is to communicate information (although language can, of course, also be used for other purposes, or even on occasion not to communicate information). It follows that the fewer propositions in a language which are analytic, the more communicative (and effective) the language is. In other words, the fewer words which have senses (allosemes) which are defined with respect to one another in terms of hyperonymy/​hyponymy, synonymy or other basic semantic relationships, the more effective natural language lexical semantics is. In this respect at least, the less structured a lexical semantic system is (i.e. the less systematic it is), the better it is for the purpose of communication. Having said this, it seems clear that delotactics (what I have elsewhere termed ‘denotational syntax’: Dickins 1998: 159–​160; Chapter 2, Endnote iv) is structured, and that this structuring largely, but not entirely, mirrors that of lexotactics (also termed connotational syntax in Dickins 1998: 159–​160; though cf. Chapter 2, Endnote iv, above, for a case in which delotactic structure does not mirror lexotactic structure, see Dickins 2013). I believe that this is the case for bipartite clauses in Sudanese Arabic (and other varieties of Arabic). Thus, I believe that the lexotactic analysis of bēt-​u kiwayyis ‘his house is nice’ (literally: ‘house-​his nice’) as bēt-​u↮kiwayyis with coordination between bēt-​u and kiwayyis is mirrored by the delotactic analysis, which is also bēt-​u↮kiwayyis, i.e. this is even formally a maximally transparent realisation in terms of delological form/denotation. Words (as a type of lexo/​signum) have one or more allosemes having different delological forms/denotations. Thus, bēt has allosemes having delological

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118 Technical appendix forms/denotations which we can call ‘house’, ‘people of the house’, ‘line of poetry’, etc., while kiwayyis perhaps has only one alloseme having the delological form/denotation which we might call ‘nice, good, okay, pretty, handsome’. We can similarly think of lexotactic relations (relations between orderable lexos/​signa; see Chapter 2, Endnote ii above) as having allosemes having delological forms/denotations. Thus, let us take it, as argued above, that bēt-​u kiwayyis ‘his house is nice’ is analysed lexotatically as bēt-​u↮kiwayyis and the corresponding delological forms/denotations of bēt, -​u and kiwayyis are analysed as bēt-​u↮kiwayyis, where all of bēt, -​u and kiwayyis represent not words (i.e. lexos/​signa of a specific type), but meanings (i.e. delological forms/denotations) which correspond to the allosemes which realise these words (lexos, signa). In this case, we can say that lexotactic coordination (↮) in bēt-​u↮kiwayyis is realised as an alloseme having the delological form (denotation) ‘coordination’ (↮), the occurrence of coordination at both lexotactic and delotactic levels constituting a maximally transparent realisation. It should be emphasised that just as allomorphs in morphontics have phonological form, rather than being phonological form, correspondingly in semantics, allosemes have delological form (denotation), rather than being delological form (denotation) (cf. Figure TA.3). The commonsensicality of this is evident from a consideration of the fact that ‘formaldehyde’ and ‘ethanal’, both of which are monosemic/​monosemous (i.e. they both have only a single alloseme), denote the same chemical compound (CH2O), i.e. they are synonyms (cf. Dickins 2016). If we were to say that allosemes are delological forms (denotations), we would have to say that ‘formaldehyde’ and ‘ethanal’ were the same alloseme, since the delological form/denotation is the same in both cases (CH2O). It also needs to be stressed that delological forms/denotations, such as can be represented by using bēt ‘house’, -​u ‘his’ and kiwayyis ‘nice’, are purely semantic. All that obtains are issues relating to meaning. Thus, if the Sudanese Arabic word (a type of lexo, signum) samiḥ in the particular sense (alloseme) ‘nice’ (etc.) (perhaps its only sense) could be reasonably hypothesised to have exactly the same range of potential referents as the Sudanese word kiwayyis in the particular sense (alloseme) ‘nice’ (etc.) (perhaps its only sense), there would only be one delological form/denotation involved here. The fact that Sudanese has two different words here is of no relevance for a delological/ denotational analysis which, by definition, involves only semantic considerations. (In fact, I think that samiḥ and kiwayyis in the relevant sense (alloseme) for each –​perhaps their only sense (alloseme) –​could be shown fairly easily to have different ranges of potential referents, and thus not to be synonyms, in terms of the definition of ‘synonym’ adopted in extended axiomatic functionalism (Dickins 2009a: Def. 28), the sense of samiḥ subsuming the notion of ‘pretty’, which is not subsumed by kiwayyis.) Earlier in this endnote, I considered aspects of transparency of realisation in respect of morphontics (i.e. morphologics, allomorphics, allomorphonics, morphonetics, phonologics, allophonics and phonetics; cf. Figure TA.3),

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Technical appendix 119 looking at the realisations of the morphemes/​lexids making up the word (as a type of lexo/​signum) güldürecekler ‘they will make laugh’ in Turkish. I also considered aspects of transparency of realisation in respect of semantics (i.e. semologics, allosemics, allosemonics, semonetics, delologics, allodelics and deletics; cf. Figure TA.3). I took as examples the allosemic realisation of lexo�tactic subordination in ‘outside hospitals’, i.e. outside←hospitals and of lexotactic coordination in bēt-​u kiwayyis, i.e. bēt-​u↮kiwayyis (and by extension bipartite clauses in Sudanese Arabic generally). I want now to return to transparency of realisation in morphontics, and consider what would constitute a maximally transparent morphontic realisation of lexotactic subordination, as in outside←hospitals, and coordination, as in bēt-​u↮kiwayyis (and bipartite clauses in Sudanese Arabic generally). As noted above in this endnote, in respect of syntax (lexotactics), a maximally transparent morphontic realisation is one in which the syntactic ordering is mirrored by the phonological and ultimately phonetic ordering, i.e. the allomorph has a phonological form which mirrors the syntactic (lexotactic) ordering, this phonological form being realised allophonically, and ultimately phonetically (see Figure TA.3) –​ where allophonics in extended axiomatic functionalism involves a simple generalisation away from phonetic reality, while phonetics (in the technical sense of area of analysis of phonetes, i.e. iRd in Figure TA.3) involves the analysis of actual ‘sound utterances’ (i.e. the sounds which are produced in an actual utterance). We may recall (this endnote, above) that there are only three types of relationship beweeen syntactic entities which are possible in extended axiomatic functionalism: subordination (symbolised a←b), interordination (symbolised a↔b) and coordination (symbolised a↮b). In relation to subordination (a←b), we might start by proposing that the maximally transparent morphontic realisation is one in which a and b are realised as allomorphs which have phonological forms which are themselves realised in a specific order allophonically and ultimately phonetically. Thus, for example, if there are two words constituting a syntactic (lexotactic) structure, one is realised initially (first) and the other finally (second). This, however, is vacuous, since in syntax words are necessarily realised in a specific order. There is, nonetheless, a non-​vacuous way of interpreting transparent realisational word order with respect to syntax. This is to consider the typical morphontic realisational ordering of syntactic structures in particular languages. Thus, in Arabic, nuclei are typically realised morphontically initially (first) and peripheral elements finally (second). So, in a phrase such as fī bēt ‘in a house’ in Sudanese Arabic, the nucleus fī is realised initially and the peripheral element bēt is realised finally (assuming the analysis that fī ‘in’ is the nucleus and bēt ‘house’ the peripheral element to be correct). Arabic is fairly consistent in having nuclei realised initially and peripheral elements finally, and any syntactic structure in which this occurs can be said to be maximally transparent in terms of its morphontic realisations. Taking ‘nucleus’ to be roughly the same as what is meant by ‘head’ in other approaches, and

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120 Technical appendix ‘peripheral element’ to be roughly the same as what is meant by ‘modifier’, we can see that Sudanese Arabic is what is sometimes described as a ‘head-​ initial’, or ‘head-​first’, language in other approaches (e.g. Polinsky 2012). Morphontic realisational transparency of syntactic structures in relation to coordination (i.e. a↮b) is much easier to assess. Since a does not imply b here, nor does b imply a, we should expect there to be no particular order in which the a element is realised relative to the b element; both orders should be possible. In fact, this is the case in respect of typical bipartite clauses in Sudanese Arabic. Thus, it is possible to say both bēt-​u kiwayyis and kiwayyis bēt-​u ‘his house is nice’ (paralleling niḥna masākīn ‘we are wretched’, and masākīn niḥna ‘wretched are we’, which are argued to be syntactically identical in Section 2.4, but para-​syntactically different; Section 2.4.1). Bipartite clauses, such as bēt-​u kiwayyis/kiwayyis bēt-​u, i.e. bēt-​u↮kiwayyis (equally representable as kiwayyis↮bēt-​u), thus have a maximally transparent morphontic (phonological, and then allophonic and ultimately phonetic) realisation. With interordination (i.e. a↔b), we should also expect there to be free variation in word order as the maximally transparent phonological and ultimately phonetic realisation. This is because, as with coordination, a and b stand in the same relationship to one another (in coordination, neither a nor b imply one another, and in interordination, both a and b imply one another). It should further be noted that coordination and interordination are like subordination, in that all involve relations between orderable entities, i.e. between entities which do, in some context(s), enter into ordering relations. However, only subordination actually involves ordering between these entities (cf. Mulder 1989: 210). The relationship between the entities in both coordination and interordination is unordered. Thus, it is only in the case of subordination that the entities involved are in different positions; in the case of coordination and interordination, they are in the same position. This is a simple corollary of the fact that it is only in the case of subordination that the relationship between the two elements is not mutual. A complex entity which involves ordering relations (subordination) between constituent entities is a syntactic entity, while a complex entity which does not involve ordering (i.e. it is an unordered set) can be termed a syntheme (cf. Dickins 2009b: 116; Dickins 2010b: 259). It is also important here to clarify the lexotactic (syntactic) analysis of al-​rājil bēt-​u kiwayyis ‘the man’s house is nice’ (literally: ‘the-​man house-​ his nice’) as al-​rājil↮(bēt-​u↮kiwayyis), i.e. as involving recursive coordination (↮), with coordination (↮) between al-​rājil and (bēt-​u kiwayyis) and within bēt-​u kiwayyis of coordination (↮) between bēt-​u and kiwayyis. As noted above, coordination (↮) involves non-​ordering between the coordinated elements; bēt-​u kiwayyis thus involves an unordered set, whose members are 1. bēt-​u and 2. kiwayyis. In this case, it might be thought that al-​rājil bēt-​u kiwayyis ‘the man’s house is nice’ (literally: ‘the-​man house-​his nice’) involves an unordered set, whose members are 1. al-​rājil, 2. bēt-​u and 3. kiwayyis. This does not look right, from the recursive analysis involved in al-​rājil↮(bēt-​u↮kiwayyis). More than this, however, it can be shown

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Technical appendix 121 Figure TA.4 Position classes for attributive adjective coordination in English Position X Position Class A big huge enormous small tiny    etc. Position Class B black white green blue red    etc.

Figure TA.5 Position classes for attributive adjective coordination in English: alternative representation Position X Position Class A Position Class B

{big, huge, enormous, small, tiny, etc.} {black, white, green, blue, red, etc.}

to be an inadequate analysis. This is best seen by looking at an example parallel to that of al-​rājil bēt-​u kiwayyis ‘the man’s house is nice’ (literally: ‘the-​man house-​his nice’), such as walad-​u ṣāḥb-​u kiwayyis ‘his boy, his friend is nice’ (or, more grammatically but less accurately in English ‘the friend of his boy is nice’; and more literally: ‘boy-​his friend-​his nice’). Just as as al-​rājil bēt-​u kiwayyis is analysed lexotactically (syntactically) as al-​rājil↮(bēt-​u↮kiwayyis), so walad-​u ṣāḥb-​u kiwayyis is to be analysed as walad-​u↮(ṣāḥb-​u↮kiwayyis). However, it is also possible in Sudanese Arabic to have ṣāḥb-​u walad-​u kiwayyis ‘his friend, his boy is nice’ (or, more

122

122 Technical appendix Figure TA.6 Position class for bipartite clauses in Arabic Position Class X rājil bēt walad

‘man’ ‘house’ ‘boy’    etc. –​i.e. nominals kiwayyis ‘nice’ kabīr ‘big’ ġarīb ‘strange’    etc. –​i.e. adjectivals fī al-​bēt ‘in the house’ hina ‘here’ juwwa ‘inside’ hassi ‘now’ baʕad al-​ġada ‘after [the] lunch’    etc. –​i.e. adverbials jara ‘he ran’ maša ‘he walked’ biga ‘he became’    etc. –​i.e. verbals al-​bēt ‘the house’ bēt-​u ‘his house’ al-​kiwayyis ‘the nice one’ al-​fī al-​bēt ‘the one in the house’ al-​hina ‘the one here’ al-​jara ‘the one who ran’    etc. –​i.e. definites (All of nominals, adjectivals, adverbials and verbals are indefinite; cf. Section 2.4, and Dickins 2010b.)

grammatically but less accurately in English ‘the boy of his friend is nice’; and more literally: ‘friend-​his boy-​his nice’); i.e. this involves the same lexotactic (syntactic) elements as walad-​u ṣāḥb-​u kiwayyis ‘his boy, his friend is nice’ but in a different configuration, with a different meaning. It is thus a different overall lexo (signum). We might be tempted to say that ṣāḥb-​u walad-​u kiwayyis involves an unordered set whose members are 1. ṣāḥb-​u, 2. walad-​u and 3. kiwayyis, and to also say that walad-​u ṣāḥb-​u kiwayyis ‘his boy, his friend is nice’ involves an unordered set whose members are 1. ṣāḥb-​ u, 2. walad-​u and 3. kiwayyis (since these are unordered sets, it is irrelevant in which sequence we present the members). This analysis, however, would imply that walad-​u ṣāḥb-​u kiwayyis ‘his boy, his friend is nice’ and ṣāḥb-​u walad-​u kiwayyis ‘his friend, his boy is nice’ are the same lexo (signum), since they consist of the same elements combined in the same unordered set. This cannot be right, because walad-​u ṣāḥb-​u kiwayyis ‘his boy, his friend is nice’ and ṣāḥb-​u walad-​u kiwayyis ‘his friend, his boy is nice’ both sound different and mean different –​ these two differences in combination being a priori evidence for a difference in lexo (signum) identity.

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Technical appendix 123 Set-​theoretically, this problem is solved very simply. Sets may consist of members which are themselves sets (e.g. Devlin 2012: 7). Thus, the correct lexotactic (syntactic) analysis of ṣāḥb-​u walad-​u kiwayyis ‘his friend, his boy is nice’ is that it compṙises two members: 1. ṣāḥb-​u, 2. walad-​u kiwayyis, and that the member walad-​u kiwayyis is itself a set (a subset of the overall set) which consists of two members (which we can call 2.1 and 2.2): 2.1 walad-​u, 2.2 kiwayyis. This, of course, brings the analysis in terms of set membership into line with the ‘ordinational’ analysis, i.e. walad-​u↮(ṣāḥb-​u↮kiwayyis). This is what we would expect, since the two are essentially the same analysis, the walad-​u↮(ṣāḥb-​u↮kiwayyis) analysis merely providing the additional information not contained in the 1. ṣāḥb-​u, 2. walad-​u kiwayyis, 2.1 walad-​u, 2.2 kiwayyis analysis that the unordered sets are of the coordinating (i.e. ↮) type, rather than the interordiating (i.e. ↔) type. A further issue which arises in relation to bipartite clauses is identifying what Mulder calls the position classes (Mulder 1989: 296), i.e. paradigmatic sets which the members of these classes belong to. A good initial point of comparison is Mulder’s analysis of ‘big’ and ‘black’ in ‘big black vase’ as being in coordination (↮) with one another (Mulder 1989: 287–​288). ‘Big’ and ‘black’ do not necessarily co-​occur, i.e. we can say ‘big vase’ or ‘black vase’ and their order is generally fixed: ‘big black’ but not *‘black big’ (for the relationship between what Mulder terms occurrence dependency, and what he treats as true, i.e. functional, dependency, see Mulder 1989: 288–​293). There is thus no possibility of an alternative order with different meaning, which would be an a priori reason to recognise different signum identity. In the case of ‘big black’ in ‘big black vase’, we can easily set up two position classes (paradigmatic sets) –​ where ‘big’ is a member of one, and ‘black’ is a member of the other. Other members of the ‘big’ position class include ‘huge’, ‘enormous’, ‘small’, ‘tiny’, etc., while other members of the ‘black’ position class include ‘white’, ‘green’, ‘blue’, ‘red’, etc. Since coordination (↮) involves non-​ordering (unordered sets), these two position classes relate to the same lexotactic (syntactic) position, which we can (simply in order to give it a name) refer to as ‘Position X’. They are, however, quite separate position classes (sets), and we can refer to the ‘big’, etc. position class as Position Class A and the ‘black’, etc. position class as Position Class B. This situation can be represented as in Figure TA.4. Using a more standard set-theoretical representation, Figure TA.4 can be re-​represented as Figure TA.5. In the case of bipartite Arabic clauses, the situation is rather more complex. Here it makes better sense to think of there being only a single position class from which two elements are ‘selected’ to produce a bipartite clauses. We can diagrammise this, albeit in a very skeletal and inadequate manner, as in Figure TA.6. As argued in Section 2.4 (and in more detail in Dickins 2010b), there are various constraints on the members of what I have called here Position Class X. Two indefinite elements (nominals, adjectivals, adverbials and verbals)

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124 Technical appendix (‘INDEFINITE+INDEFINITE’) can only co-​occur, for example, in very restricted combinations, while a definite element plus indefinite element (‘DEFINITE+INDEFINITE’) can occur without restriction, and a definite plus definite element (‘DEFINITE+DEFINITE’) is somewhat more restricted. One advantage of establishing only a single position class for bipartite clauses is that the same position class can be used for monopartite clauses, i.e. clauses which consist of only one element. In respect of ‘big black vase’, we do not need to have both ‘big’ and ‘black’; we can also say either ‘big vase’ or ‘black vase’. Similarly, in Sudanese Arabic, we do not have to have a bipartite clause, i.e. a clause with two elements. It is also possible to have a monopartite clause, i.e. a clause with only one element. Traditionally, scholars have, I believe, tended to think that a monopartite clause has to consist of a verbal, and thus that maša ‘he walked’ is an acceptable monopartite clause, but that a clause consisting only of an adjectival, such as the active participle māši ‘going’, is not. If this is the case, it in practice reflects the view not only of traditional western grammar, but also of traditional Arabic grammar. In fact, as I have tried to show in Dickins (2010b), Sudanese Arabic –​like also, I believe, other varieties of Arabic –​ allows a far wider range of monopartite clauses than just verbals (or even just verbals and some adjectivals such as the participial māši ‘going’). Regardless of whether one has a monopartite or a bipartite clause in Sudanese Arabic, the entity/​entities ‘selected’ is/​are drawn from the same single position class. In Chapter 2, Endnote ii, in relation to ontotactics (phonotactics, lexotactics, delotactics), I presented ordering relations in terms of ordered pairs, each ordered pair consisting of an entity and a position in which that entity stands. Thus, the Southern British English phonotagm/ɔn/was analysed as {(ɔ, n) (n, i)}, i.e. as an (unordered) set consisting of two ordered pairs (ɔ, n) and (n, i) –​ i.e./ɔ/in nuclear position (symbolised as n), and/n/in ‘post-​nuclear’ peripheral position (symbolised as i). In this endnote, I have talked about relations of ‘ordination’: subordination (symbolised as a←b), interordination (symbolised as a↔b), and coordination (symbolised as a↮b). In fact, these two apparently different approaches are one and the same. Recall (this endnote, above) that while subordination, interordination and coordination are all relations in ontotactics (phonotactics, lexotactics, delotactics), only subordination involves different positions. It should also be stressed that what we name something in a linguistic analysis is essentially arbitrary (i.e. we could have named it differently); this point is discussed in some detail in Chapter 2, Endnote xii, below. Thus, for example, in naming one position in phonotactics ‘nuclear’ and another ‘post-​nuclear’ peripheral position, we are applying ultimately arbitrary labels to talk about two positions whose identity is in fact determined by their phonotactic relationship, i.e. their relationship in terms of subordination, interordination or coordination. Thus, in Southern British English/ɔn/​, the relationship between/ɔ/and/n/is one of subordination where/ɔ/is the nucleus, i.e./ɔ/​←/​n/​. The position terms ‘n’ and ‘i’, as in the formula {(ɔ, n) (n, i)}, are merely arbitrary ‘labels’ to express this relationship.

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Technical appendix 125 When we come to coordination, as noted in this endnote, the two enities in question are in the same position (since coordination, like also interordination, does not involve ordering relations). Thus, taking Mulder’s analysis (Mulder 1989: 287–​288) for the sake of the current argument to be correct, in lexotactics, ‘big’ and ‘black’ in ‘big black vase’ are both subordinate to ‘vase’. Thus, the lexotactic relationship between ‘big’ and ‘vase’ is big←vase, while the lexotactic relationship between ‘black’ and ‘vase’ is correspondingly black←vase. We can here call the nuclear position ‘n’ (as we did with the phonotactic nuclear position occupied by/ɔ/in/ɔn/​). We can call the lexotactic position occupied by both ‘big’ and ‘black’ -​1. Both namings are arbitrary, and are simply designed to identify the position in question in opposition to (i.e. as not) any other position; as with all semiotic features, ‘not-​ness’ is the criterion of identity. We can then say that ‘vase’ and the nuclear lexotactic position, n, in which it stands constitute the ordered pair (vase, n). Similarly, ‘big’ and the peripheral lexotactic position in which it stands, -​1, constitute the ordered pair (big, -​1), while ‘black’ and the peripheral lexotactic position in which it stands, also -​1, constitute the ordered pair (black, -​1). To repeat, ‘big’ and ‘black’ here occupy the same peripheral position, -​1, because the relationship by which they are related, coordination (a↮b), does not involve ordering. Lexotactically, ‘big black vase’ can thus be represented as an (unordered) set consisting of the ordered pairs (vase, n), (big, -​1) and (black, -​1), i.e. as {(vase, n), (big, -​1), (black, -​1)}. The same basic analysis can be applied to the lexotactics of bēt-​u kiwayyis ‘his house is nice’ (literally: ‘house-​his nice’) and al-​rājil bēt-​u kiwayyis ‘the man’s house is nice’ (literally: ‘the-​man house-​his nice) in Sudanese Arabic. bēt-​u kiwayyis ‘his house is nice’ is to be analysed lexotactically as bēt-​u↮kiwayyis (this endnote, above), i.e. bēt-​u and kiwayyis stand in a relation of coordination with one another. (For the sake of simplicity, I ignore the lexotactic analysis of bēt-​u ‘his house’ itself, simply treating this is if it were one element. As noted earlier in the endnote, a lexotactic, and delotactic, analysis of forms like bēt-​u is provided for Standard Arabic, in Dickins (2013). A generally similar analysis also holds for Sudanese Arabic.) Since bēt-​u and kiwayyis in bēt-​u kiwayyis ‘his house is nice’ are lexotactically coordinated with one another (bēt-​u↮kiwayyis), bēt-​u and kiwayyis are in the same lexotactic position (coordination involving non-​ordering of orderable entities). We may arbitrarily call this position 0. bēt-​u and its position 0 thus constitute an ordered pair here (bēt-​u, 0), while kiwayyis and its position 0 also constitute an ordered pair (kiwayyis, 0). The bipartite clause bēt-​u kiwayyis ‘his house is nice’ is thus to be analysed lexotactically as an (unordered) set, comprising these two ordered pairs, i.e. as {(bēt-​u, 0), (kiwayyis, 0)}. In the lexotactic analysis of al-​rājil bēt-​u kiwayyis ‘the man’s house is nice’ (literally: ‘the-​man house-​his nice), I will, for simplicity’s sake, ignore the lexotactic relations involved in al-​rājil ‘the man’, simply treating al-​rājil, like bēt-​u ‘his house’ as it were one element (again, see Dickins 2013). As noted earlier in this endnote, al-​rājil bēt-​u kiwayyis is to be analysed lexotactically as al-​rājil↮(bēt-​u↮kiwayyis), with recursion of the same structure

126

126 Technical appendix as has been established to analyse bēt-​u kiwayyis ‘his house is nice’. This means, given that in bēt-​u kiwayyis both of bēt-​u and kiwayyis stand in position 0, in al-​rājil bēt-​u kiwayyis, all of al-​rājil, bēt-​u and kiwayyis stand in position 0; i.e. the ordered pairs here are (al-​rājil, 0), (bēt-​u, 0) and (kiwayyis, 0). Recall also, however, that in al-​rājil bēt-​u kiwayyis ‘the man’s house is nice’ bēt-​u kiwayyis constitutes a separate set lexotactically from al-​rājil (this endnote above). We thus need to represent al-​rājil bēt-​u kiwayyis lexotactically as an (unordered) set comprising ordered pairs as follows: {(al-​rājil, 0), {(bēt-​u, 0), (kiwayyis, 0)}}, with {(bēt-​u, 0) and (kiwayyis, 0)} as a set constituting a single member of the overall set, rather than as {(al-​rājil, 0), (bēt-​u, 0), (kiwayyis, 0), in which all of (al-​rājil, 0), (bēt-​u, 0) and (kiwayyis, 0) are simple members of the same set. vii In this endnote, I will consider why it makes sense to treat intonational melody/​ tune separately lexologically (i.e. in signum terms) from intonational phrasing. The separation of intonational melody from intonational phrasing has a long history. The Hallidayan approach (e.g. Halliday 1967b), for example, recognises three distinct domains –​tonality, tonicity and tone, where tonality involves intonational phrasing, tonicity is the use of pitch to single out a word or syllable as informationally prominent, and tone is what is called here intonational melody/​tune. In terms of phonetic realisation, there is significant amalgamation (i.e. commonality of phonetic material; to be discussed further below) between intonational phrasing and intonational melody/​tune. Intonational melody/​tune is realised by pitch change. The major ‘marker’ of intonational phrasing is, however, also pitch change, although other phonetic features may also be involved, such as pause and slowing of speech tempo (e.g. Nolan 2006: 438). There is, however, a crucial difference between intonational phrasing and intonational melody/​tune which makes it necessary to regard them as distinct semiotically, i.e. to analyse them as involving distinct para-​lexotactic (signum-​level) features. This is that intonational phrasing involves distinct categories, as argued in detail in this book (cf. intonation unit, intermediate phrase; Section 2.4.1), while intonational melody/​tune involves non-​discrete categories. As Nolan puts it, intonational melody/​tune features: […] are essentially gradient. For instance each of the following ways of saying an utterance conveys progressively greater involvement (whether or not this is the speaker’s true feeling): I’d LOVE to meet him

I’d LOVE to meet him

I’d LOVE to meet him

but identifying three gradations (rather than four, or seven, or more) is arbitrary; pitch range here behaves as a continuum.

(Nolan 2006: 439)

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Technical appendix 127 Accordingly, “the systems involved are infinite, i.e. there is no discrete set of members” (Mulder and Hervey 1980: 55). The logic of this is that we must analyse each of the potentially infinite number of intonational melodies/​tunes in a language as a separate para-​lexotactic feature (in the system ontology, corresponding to a signum feature at the signum level), each with a distinct phonetic realisation. (I believe this conclusion to be correct, though for objections, see Gardner 1985: 7–​9.) More than this, there will be a simple one-​to-​one correspondence between each of these potentially infinite melodies/​tunes as para-lexotactic features and each of an equivalent potentially infinite number of para-​phonotactic features (in the system ontology, corresponding to phonological forms/​figurae in the signum ontology), i.e. in relation to intonational melody/​tune there is a ‘primitive’, trivial situation of simple one-​to-​one correspondence between para-​lexotactic features and para-​phonotactic features (cf. Mulder and Hervey 2009: 4; Def. 3c2). On the semantic side (content-​side) of the signum, we have the same gradient realisational phenomena. Thus, as Nolan (2006: 439) says of the various intonational melodies/​tunes associated with ‘I’d LOVE to meet him’ (above), each “conveys progressively greater involvement” –​ with gradience of meaning associated directly with gradience of sound (melody) difference. Since intonational phrases are discrete (as argued), it is logically impossible to treat them analytically as a single feature at the para-​syntactic (para-​ lexotactic) level together with non-​discrete intonational melodies/​tunes. We are forced therefore to say that phrase-​structural para-​syntactic Nuc/​Rhema–​ Peri/​Thema structures (as established in Section 2.4.2, and realised phonologically, and ultimately phonetically, in terms of intonational phrasing) are different para-​syntactically from intonational melodies/​tunes (realised phonologically, and ultimately phonetically, in terms of pitch change). As noted (this endnote, above), the major realisational phonetic aspect of ‘intonational phrasing’ is itself pitch change (with other features such as pause or slowing of speech tempo playing only a secondary role), while the only realisational phonetic aspect of intonational melody/​tune is pitch change. That is to say, phrase-​structural (and therefore by definition, discrete) para-​lexotactic (para-​syntactic) Nuc/​Thema–​Peri/​Rhema features and non-​phrase-​structural, non-​discrete para-​lexotactic (para-​syntactic) features of intonational melody/​tune share pitch change in terms of their phonetic realisations. This situation in which one realisational feature simultaneously realises two ‘abstract’ features (i.e. phonological features, lexological features or delological features in the system ontology, corresponding to phonological forms/figurae, signa, or delological forms/denotations in the system ontology) is known as amalgamation. Cases of allophonic, allomorphic, allosemic and allodelic amalgamation can all be identified. An example of allophonic amalgamation is the possible realisation of the phoneme sequence/ay/in Standard Arabic as [eː], e.g. the realisation of /bayt/ ‘house’ as [beːt]. Here the two

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128 Technical appendix different phonemes,/a/and ‎/​y/are realised by a single long monothong [eː], such that it is impossible to say which ‘part’ of the [eː] realises the phoneme/a/ and which realises the phoneme /‎​y/(cf. Dickins 2007: 72–​77). An example of allomorphic amalgamation is the realisation of the complex lexo (signum) au in French (assuming we take this to consist of the of the two signa à+le) as/o/​, which is a phonological form corresponding to a phonological entity having only one distinctive feature (cf. Mulder and Hervey 1980: 148). An amalgamated allomorph corresponds closely to what Hockett (1947: 333) termed a portmanteau morph (cf. Dickins 1998: 89). An example of an amalgamated alloseme is ‘kick the bucket’ in its idiomatic sense of ‘die’. Here the three lexos (signa) ‘kick’, ‘the’ and ‘bucket’ do not have individual senses (allosemes) each, but correspond as a whole to the single sense (alloseme) ‘die’ (cf. Dickins 1998: 241). In Dickins (1998: 182), I suggested that a possible example of allodelic amalgamation is “the event happened”, where there is arguably in the real (extra-​linguistic) world only one entity which is denoted by both ‘event’ and ‘happen’. In this endnote, I have considered in terms of their para-​lexotactic (para-​ syntactic) status, intonational phrasing (Halliday’s ‘tonality’) and intonational melody/​tune (Halliday’s ‘tone’). I have not, however, considered the ‘nuclear accent’ (Halliday’s ‘tonicity’), i.e. the “last, most prominent accent within a phrase” (Chahal and Hellmuth 2014: 367), also known in the British tradition as the nucleus (El Zarka 2017: 218). It is sufficient to say here that this is to be regarded in extended axiomatic-​functionalist terms as a third, and non-​ structural, para-​lexotactic (para-​syntactic) feature, alongside the other aspects of intonation considered in this endnote, Nuc/​Rhema–​Peri/​Thema (realised morphontically as intonational phrasing) and intonational melody/​tune). viii I have already noted that axiomatic functionalism rejects the notion of a ‘unique underlier’, something which follows from, among other things, the recognition that phonos (phonological entities), lexos (lexological entities) and delos (delological entities) are non-​positive, purely oppositional forms (Chapter 2, Endnote ii). Accordingly, as can be seen from Figure TA.1, a phonological form (figura) is simply a set of allophones, an expression a set of allomorphs, a content a set of allosemes, and a delological form (denotation) a set of allodeles (denotatum-​types). Each allophone, allomorph, alloseme or allodele of a particular phonological form, expression, content or delological form has, by definition, as members of a set (itself by definition unordered), equal status to any other allophone, allomorph, alloseme or allodele of the same phonological form, expression, content or delological form. Having said that, it is possible, by courtesy as it were, to recognise one particular ‘allont’ (i.e. allophone, allomorph, alloseme or allodele), in some cases at least, as being the ‘basic’ or ‘canonical’ allont –​ a kind of ‘first among equals’. Thus, in the case of Sudanese Arabic kalib ‘dog’, which has allomorphs of phonological form/kalib/and/kalb/​, we might regard/kalib/as the canonical (‘basic’, etc.) allomorph and/kalb/as the non-​canonical (‘non-​basic’, ‘secondary’, etc.) allomorph, on the basis, for example, that/kalib/is the only form which can

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Technical appendix 129 normally occur independently, and is the standard citation form. It is in this sense which one might legitimately talk about the/i/being ‘deleted’ in the allomorph/kalb/under the current approach. For further discussion of canonical allont (allophone, allomorph, alloseme, allodele), see Dickins (1998: 253–​ 257, 310–​315; Dickins 2007: 20, 79–​96). ix If primary accent were merely one of the features realising indefiniteness (vs. def� initeness) in a DEFINITE+INDEFINITE bipartite clause structure in Sudanese Arabic and if DEFINITE+INDEFINITE were the only possible bipartite clause structure, it would not be an entity at the level of phonology or lexology (in the system ontology (cf. Figure TA.3), i.e. it would not be a d (a distinctive function in phonology), or an s (a distinctive function in lexology). Nor, by extension, would it be an e (a distinctive function in delology). Accordingly, it would not also occur as the right-​hand term in any of the features (d, s, or e) in the signum ontology. As a (purely) realisational feature, primary accent would, however, occur as an aspect of the left-​hand features in the signum ontology: i.e. as part of the i in the relevant phonete, and by extension as part of the i in the relevant morphonete and lexonete, as well the f (itself derived from i) in the relevant allophone and allomorphon, and the p (derived from f and ultimately i) in the relevant phonological form, allomorph and expression. Thus, if the INDEFINITE element in a DEFINITE+INDEFINITE structure in Sudanese Arabic were necessarily realised by primary accent and if DEFINITE+INDEFINITE were the only possible bipartite clause structure, part of the phonetic realisation (and, more generally, morphontic realisation; see Figure TA.3) of a INDEFINITE element in a DEFINITE+INDEFINITE bipartite structure would be primary accent. This could simply be represented, as are the phonetic realisations of phonemes, in square brackets. Thus, if in the case of al-​walad zaʕlān ‘the boy is angry’, the INDEFINITE element zaʕlān were necessarily realised with primary accent, we could represent a particular instance of a phonetic realisation of this –​ i.e. a phonete (see Figure TA.3)  –​ as [zaʕlānPRIMARY ACCENT]. Here, the non-​superscripted form ‘zaʕlān’ represents the realisations of the individual phonemes (which we can take to be/z/​,/a/​,/ʕ/​ ,/l/​,/ā/​, and/n/for current purposes). Similarly, the superscripted form ‘PRIMARY ACCENT ’ represents the fact that this realisation has primary accent. I have stated in this endnote (above) that if primary accent were merely one of the features realising indefiniteness (vs. definiteness) in a DEFINITE+INDEFINITE bipartite clause structure in Sudanese Arabic and if DEFINITE+INDEFINITE were the only possible bipartite clause structure, primary accent would not be an entity at the level of phonology or lexology in the system ontology. I have explained above why primary accent would not be an entity at the level of lexology in the system ontology (i.e. why it would not correspondingly be a signum at the level of lexologics in the signum ontology). The reason why primary accent would not be an entity at the level of phonology in the system ontology (and why it would not correspondingly be an entity in phonologics in the signum ontology) also needs to be explained.

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130 Technical appendix To do this, we need to know that for something to be an entity (or other feature) in phonology/​phonologics, that something potentially, though not necessarily actually in all cases, makes a difference to identity in lexology/​ lexologics, i.e. it potentially makes a difference to signum identity (cf. Dickins 1998: 201; Dickins 2016: 21). The reason that potentiality is essential to this definition can be seen from a consideration of forms like ‘scone’, realisable phonetically as either [skɒn] or [skoʊn] (cf. Dickins 1998: 173–​176). ‘Scone’ is a single signum (in lexologics; corresponding to a single lexo in lexology). The distinction between ‘ɒ’ and ‘oʊ’ here thus makes no difference to signum/​ lexological identity. This, however, does not demonstrate that ‘ɒ’/‘oʊ’ does not involve a phonological difference in English. Rather, we have to look at the potential of ‘ɒ’/‘oʊ’, i.e. the full range of cases in which they contrast. When we do so, we find numerous cases where ‘ɒ’ vs. ‘oʊ’ does make a difference to (lexological) identity, for example ‘con’ vs. ‘cone’. In the light of phonological identity (difference) being determined by the potential to make a difference to signum (lexological) identity, we can now consider the putative situation where in a DEFINITE+INDEFINITE bipartite lexological structure in Sudanese Arabic primary accent was merely one of the features realising indefiniteness. That is to say, the putative situation in Sudanese Arabic would be one where primary accent only ever realised INDEFINITE in a DEFINITE+INDEFINITE bipartite lexological structure. In this situation, primary accent would never potentially make a difference to signum (lexological) identity, and would not therefore itself have phonological identity; i.e. it would not be a phonological form in the signum ontology, corresponding to a phono in the system ontology. x For the overall status of para-​syntax (para-​lexotactics) within extended axiomatic functionalism, see Figures TA.2 and TA.3. I will deal with tech�nical issues relating to para-​syntax in subsequent endnotes in this Technical Appendix. x i In this book, I have taken it that the units of intonational phrasing (intonation unit and intermediate phrase) are –​when viewed as purely ‘formal’, i.e. non-​ meaningful notions –​ phonological in nature. Recall that for something to be an entity (or other feature) in phonology/​phonologics, that ‘thing’ potentially, though not necessarily actually in all cases, makes a difference to identity in lexology/​lexologics, i.e. it potentially makes a difference to signum identity (cf. Dickins 1998: 201; Dickins 2016: 21) (cf. Chapter 2, Endnote ix). Thus, in the case of intonational phrasing, for the difference between an intermediate phrase and an intonation unit to be phonological, that difference potentially has to make a difference to signum identity. I believe it could be shown that the difference between having two intonation units and having one intonation unit (containing two intermediate phrases) is phonological in both Sudanese Arabic and Standard Arabic, i.e. that it can make a difference to signum identity. The corollary of this, of course, is that there must be cases where two signa have heteromorphs (a heteromorph being an allomorph of one signum in comparison with and having a

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Technical appendix 131 different phonological form from an allomorph of another signum; cf. Dickins 2009a: 38; Def. 26b), which are distinguished by the fact that one of them has a phonological form consisting of one intonation unit, and the other a phonological form consisting of two intonation units. To be distinct signa at all, these two signa would also have to have distinct semantic realisations (a signum being a bi-​unity of expression and content; cf. Section 2.2, and Chapter 2, Endnote i); otherwise we would merely be talking about a formal (morphontic) realisational difference (to be discussed further in this endnote, below). I believe it can be fairly easily shown that the difference between one and two intonation units in Arabic can make a difference semantically. This may well be of a connotative (rather than a denotative) nature, e.g. the relative ‘prominence’ given to the informational element. However, since connotation falls within the purview of extended axiomatic functionalism (e.g. Dickins 1998: 318–​320), this is sufficient to establish signum difference. If, however, there were no semantic difference (whether connotative or denotative) to be established in Sudanese and/​or Standard Arabic between one and two intonation units, one would have to conclude that the difference between one and two intonation units (viewed purely formally, i.e. morphontically) was not phonological, but purely allophonic, and, by extension, phonetic. Thus, with respect to Sudanese and/​or Standard Arabic, the notions ‘one intonation unit’ and ‘two intonation units’ (with the accompanying notions of recursion) would be two different allophones in allophonics, each allophone consisting of a set of phonetes, each phonete modelling an instantation (i.e. a single realisation) of the allophone in question. These allophones would, by definition, have their origin purely in general phonetics (rather than phonology in the system ontology, to which corresponds phonologics in the signum ontology): they would have as their left-​hand term two different phonetic forms, i.e. two different fs, in form phonetics (Figure TA.1) each phonetic form f comprising a set of phonetic images, is, and each phonetic image i modelling a single instantiation, i.e. occurrence, of one or two intonation units (viewed as language-​independent models), and each having as its ‘left-​hand term’ an unascribed phonetic-​ image correlate, α. An analysis of the difference between one intonation unit and two intonation units as allophonic (having its origin purely in general phonetics) might also imply that the distinction between one and two intonation units is fairly arbitrary. This would mirror the situation of/l/in English where, at least for some varieties, detailed phonetic research suggests that the general darkness or lightness (degree of velarisation) of the ‘l’ varies non-​discretely and predictably as a factor in its specific phonetic environment (Sproat and Fujimura 1993; though for complications relating to this analysis, see Turton 2017). That is to say, for these varieties of English, we could establish as few or as many allophones of/l/as was felt to be appropriate for the analysis at hand (rather than simply the dark [ł] and light [l]‌which are traditionally recognised in descriptions of English).

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132 Technical appendix In fact, it is not always the case that lack of phonological opposition is mirrored by non-​discrete (or gradient or non-​categorical) realisations. A good example is German/x/​, which is often said to have two allophones: [ç] (after front vowels) and [x] (after back vowels). [x] and [ç] are discrete realisations; there are no intermediate realisations between [x] and [ç] (e.g. Féry 2004: 57). It is therefore, by analogy not sufficient in order to demonstrate phonological opposition between one and two intonation units to demonstrate that the two are phonetically discrete; as noted above, what is required is a demonstration that the difference can make a difference to signum identity. It is also important to note that non-​discreteness may also be a realisational ‘function’ of two distinct phonological entities. Thus, in most dialects of American English,/d/and/t/are normally both realised intervocalically with a medial flap (or median tap in the IPA system) [ɾ]. Accordingly, pairs like ‘ladder’ and ‘latter’ are typically pronounced identically. In careful speech, however, the former will have a [d] and the latter a [t] (as noted in Port and O’Dell 1985: 465; cf. also discussion in Dickins 2007: 15–​16). The fact that/ d/and/t/are typically realised intervocalically non-​discretely does not, however, demonstrate that they are phonologically non-​distinct (neutralised, as an archiphoneme: Dickins 2009a: 20; Def. 7a4b) in this position. Rather, the fact that they can be realised distinctly in this position demonstrates that/d/and/ t/are opposed to one another, as separate phonemes, even intervocalically. The implications of this for the distinction between the analysis of one and two intonation units as phonologically different (by virtue of potentially making a difference to signum identity) in Sudanese and/​or Standard Arabic are that even if there is a non-​discrete intonational realisation, such that it is unclear whether the realisation should be regarded as one intonation unit or two, this does not, by itself, invalidate the claim that there is a phonological distinction between one and two intonation units. It might, however, be necessary to recognise an intonational ‘super-​feature’, along the lines of the ‘super-​ phoneme’ suggested in Dickins (2016: 27–​28), subsuming the categories of both one and two intonation units in cases where: 1. a realisation was not clearly one or two intonation units (but equally describable as both); 2. the distinction between one and two intonation units in this context did not make a difference to signum identity. Recall here that it is the potential to make a difference to signum identity which demonstrates phonological difference, but that phonological difference does not necessarily indicate signum difference; thus, as noted in Chapter 2, Endnote ix, the fact ‘scone’ is ‘associated with’ two different phonological forms/skɒn/and/skoʊn/in English does not mean that English has two signa ‘scone’. Rather, it has one signum ‘scone’,/ skɒn/and/skoʊn/being the phonological forms of the two allomorphs of this signum (cf. Dickins 1998: 173–​176). xii As noted in Chapter 2, Endnote ii, semiotic entities (e.g. grammatical entities, phonological entities) in the system ontology are defined in purely oppositional terms, i.e. what makes the phoneme/b/in English is that it is not/p/​, not/d/​, not/t/​, not/f/​, not/g/​, not/h/​, etc., i.e. not any other phoneme of English

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Technical appendix 133 (and the same, mutatis mutandis, is true also for/p/​,/d/​,/t/​,/f/​,/g/​,/h/​, etc.). It will be seen that what we name a semiotic entity is essentially arbitrary; the name given in no way determines the entity’s identity, since, as seen (Chapter 2, Endnote ii), that identity is purely one of ‘not-​ness’ with respect to all other entities to which it is opposed. Thus, all that is ultimately needed is a name which distinguishes each semiotic entity from all others. The name given should, however, be appropriate –​ i.e. it should do its job of identifying the entity in question in a simple and clear way. ‘Simplicity’ here merely means that we do not want to give semiotic entities over-​complex names. Clarity involves giving the entity in question a name which helps us to easily distinguish that entity from the other entities to which it is opposed and, more specifically, to which it is directly opposed. Normally the best way of doing this is to name the entity in terms of its realisation and perhaps its most basic or canonical realisation (see Chapter 2, Endnote viii). The principles of simplicity and clarity can be easily illustrated in the case of phonemes. Thus, Sudanese Arabic has a phoneme which is typically (basically, canonically) realised (allophonically and ultimately phonetically) as [voiced], [pharyngealised], [apico-​alveolar], [stop] (Dickins 2007: 80). To call this phoneme/voiced, pharyngealised, apico-​alveolar, stop/would be to provide a very clear name, since it would state the realisation very precisely (to the extent that any phonetic labels of this kind really are precise). However, the name is very complex, involving 41 characters (and four words, including one hyphenated word). A simpler name can be produced by using the symbol ‘d’ followed by the symbol ‘ˤ’, i.e./dˤ/​. In the IPA system ‘d’ represents voiced dental/​alveolar/​postalveolar plosive (stop), which moderately well corresponds to [voiced], [apico-​alveolar] and [stop], while ‘ˤ’ represents pharyngealised. An even simpler name for this phoneme can be produced by using traditional Arabist notation, which involves putting a dot under the pharyngealised phonemes, thus giving the name /​ḍ/​. While phonemes (and by extension other phonos/phonological entities) are standardly named using a representation of their typical (basic, canonical) realisation, lexos (grammatical entities, corresponding to signa in the signum ontology) have a double realisation, i.e. both morphontic and semantic. In the case of a word, which we can take to be a kind of lexo (signum) in both English and Arabic (though cf. Dickins 1998: 15, 120, 426, for some complications with this), we might name the signum simply using its standard spelling, e.g. ‘happiness’. This names the lexo (signum) in terms of its written allomorph. Complications may arise when a word has more than one written allomorph, e.g. ‘eyrie’ and ‘aerie’ (‘nest of a bird of prey’: Oxford English Dictionary Online). Here, one might use a combination of both written allomorphs, e.g. ‘eyrie/​aerie’, to name the signum. More serious complications arise when the written allomorph of a particular word (lexo, signum) has the same graphological form (the written equivalent of a phonological form) as the graphological form of the written allomorph of another word (lexo, signum), i.e. in cases of (graphological)

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134 Technical appendix homonymy (cf. Dickins 2009a: 40; Def. 27c). An example is provided by the following three words ‘plane’ (as three different signa) in English: 1. ‘[…] any tree of the genus Platanus (family Platanaceae) […]’; 2. ‘A tool consisting of a wooden or metal block with an adjustable metal blade projecting slightly from the base at an angle, used to level down and smooth a wooden surface […]’; and 3. ‘A flat geometrical surface which has the property that every straight line joining any two points of the surface lies wholly in the surface, the intersection of two such surfaces being a straight line […]’ (all examples from the Oxford English Dictionary Online; Collins Dictionary also lists all three as different words). In this case, we might need to name the lexo/​signum (word) in question using not only its written allomorph, but also using a representation of its alloseme (or what is deemed to be its canonical alloseme, if it has more than one alloseme), in each case. Here we can use the ‘conjunction of’ symbol, i.e. &, which is found in the definition of signum: S=E&C (Figure TA.1), i.e. a signum is a conjunction of an expression and a content. Thus, we might name the three different lexos/​signa (words) in question as follows: ‘plane’& ‘[…] tree of the genus Platanus (family Platanaceae) […]’ ‘plane’& ‘A tool consisting of a wooden or metal block with an adjustable metal blade projecting slightly from the base at an angle, used to level down and smooth a wooden surface […]’ ‘plane’& ‘A flat geometrical surface which has the property that every straight line joining any two points of the surface lies wholly in the surface, the intersection of two such surfaces being a straight line […]’ In practice, of course, briefer elements to the right of the & are to be preferred to the rather long ones given here. Here again, semiotic entities are being named in terms of their realisations. The same general principle that semiotic entities are named in terms of their realisations applies to delological entities (delos), just as it does to phonological entities (phonos) and signa, with the name expressing the meaning of the delological entity. There is, however, an exception to the convention of naming entities in terms of their basic/​canonical realisation. This occurs in the case of ‘tactics’ (what I have elsewhere termed ‘ontotactics’; see Dickins 2009a: 17; Def. 3b –​ or, more precisely here, para-​ontotactics), and specifically subordination, i.e. the relationship in which entity implies another, represented as → (or, equally, ←) (see Chapter 2, Endnote vi). Here, the entity which is implied is termed in axiomatic functionalism the ‘nucleus’ and the entity which implies is termed the ‘peripheral entity’. (Other terms could, of course, have been used, e.g. ‘head’ and ‘modifier’ –​terms used for rather similar notions in other linguistic theories.) If we are looking at two entities which stand in a nucleus –​peripheral entity relationship, we can thus use the terms ‘nucleus’ and ‘peripheral entity’ to name the positions in which these two entities stand with respect to one another.

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Technical appendix 135 We can now consider ‘Peri/​Thema’ and ‘Nuc/​Rhema’ as names which are used in this book. It will be seen that the first bit of each name, the ‘Peri’ and ‘Nuc’ elements –​ short for ‘peripheral element’ and ‘nucleus’ respectively –​involve naming the entity in question in strict positional (in fact para-​ syntactic) terms; the entities are named in terms of their para-​syntactic position (‘slot’) relative to one another. The second half of the names, the ‘Thema’ and ‘Rhema’ elements, are reminiscent of ‘theme’ and ‘rheme’, which we can consider semantic notions (though, as discussed, they are also regarded as structural notions in some approaches, such as systemic functional linguistics; Section 2.4.1). ‘Theme’ and ‘rheme’ can thus be regarded as semantic-​ realisational of the para-​syntactic peripheral entity and nucleus in question. Since ‘Thema’ and ‘Rhema’ recall ‘theme’ and ‘rheme’, rather than themselves being actual semantic notions, we can call ‘Thema’ and ‘Rhema’ quasi-​ semantic notions, and thus quasi-​realisational of the relevant para-​syntactic peripheral entity and nucleus. The names ‘Peri/​Thema’ and ‘Nuc/​Rhema’ are thus hybrid names, which are designed simultaneously to express the para-​syntactic relationship between the two entities in question (peripheral entity vs. nucleus) and also to name the entities in question quasi-​semantically –​i.e. quasi-​realisationally –​i.e. in terms reminiscent of their putative semantic realisations (‘Thema’ and ‘Rhema’ being reminiscent of ‘theme’ and ‘rheme’, which, as noted, I take to be semantic notions). xiii For technical discussion of Nuc/​Rhema and Peri/​Thema as phrase-​structural para-​syntactic notions, belonging to the signum and having abstract expression and content aspects, see Chapter 2, Endnote vii. xiv In this endnote, I will consider further the idea that from the current perspec�tive, notions such as theme and rheme are concrete notions, which may realise semantically the phrase-​structural para-​syntactic notions of Peri/​Thema and Nuc/​Rhema. ‘Theme’ and ‘rheme’ understood from this perspective are general semantic notions and, specifically, semantic forms (Figure TA.1), i.e. meaning-​notions which are conceived independently of any particular language. They are thus, with respect to semantics (as defined in Figure TA.1), analogous to phonetic forms, with respect to morphontics (Figure TA.1). A phonetic form –​f in Figure TA.1 –​ such as ‘voiced’ or ‘alveolar’ is defined independently of any particular language, but is established with a view to being deployable as a model for the description of realisations within particular languages, i.e. as the left-​hand term in the analysis of an allophone –​ fRd in Figure TA.1. Phonetic form and allophone are generalisations. For spe�cific instances –​ instantiations –​ of these, extended axiomatic functionalism has the corresponding models 1. phonetic image, symbolised as i, where a phonetic form is a set of phonetic images, i.e. f={i}; and 2. phonete, symbolised as iRd, where an allophone is a set of phonetes, i.e. {i}Rd) (Figure TA.1). A crucial point about both general phonetic and general semantic notions is that if they are to be of general applicability across different languages, they

136

136 Technical appendix require a clear and unequivocal definition which is language-​independent, and in this specific sense ‘universal’ –​ as, for instance, is attempṫed by the International Phonetic Alphabet. Specific general phonetic (Figure TA.1) notions like ‘voiced’ or ‘pharyn� geal’ may prove to be very useful for describing allophonic and phonetic realisations (i.e. entities in the domains of allophonics and phonetics, as defined in Figure TA.1) in some languages, but less useful, or even not useful at all for describing these realisations in others. Thus, ‘voiced’ for example, is very useful for French, but proves extremely problematic, and of only very partial value in describing phonetic realisations in English, where the realisations of pairs like/d/and/t/which are sometimes defined in terms of ‘voiced’ vs. ‘voiceless’ are in fact phonetically a complex of different phonetic features of which voicing plays only a relatively minor role (Docherty 1992). ‘Pharyngeal’ is similarly a useful general phonetic category for describing the allophonic and phonetic (Figure TA.1) realisations of certain phonemes in Arabic, but plays only a marginal role in describing the allophonic and phonetic (Figure TA.1) realisations of phonemes in English, where its only relevance is a degree of tongue root retraction in some realisations of /r/ (Heselwood 2009: 78–​79) and some analyses of English/ɑ/​, which is sometimes classified as a ‘pharyngeal vowel’ (e.g. Catford 1977). Corresponding considerations apply to notions in general semantics (Figure TA.1), such as theme and rheme. If these are to be of general applic�ability across different languages, they require a clear and unequivocal definition which is language-​independent, and in this specific sense ‘universal’. Thus, let us take it for the sake of argument that the following definitions of theme and rheme are clear and unequivocal: “theme [is] the element of most immediate concern in an utterance, while the rheme can be reasonably defined as what the speaker [or writer] says about this theme” (Dickins 2009b: 1096). ‘Theme’ and ‘rheme’ here are semantic forms (Figure TA.1), i.e. general semantic (Figure TA.1) notions, analogous to the notions of the phonetics forms in general phonetics (Figure TA.1) to which correspond the symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet. Both the general phonetic notions to which correspond the symbols of the International Phonetic Alphabet and the general semantic notions ‘theme’ and ‘rheme’ as defined above are language-​independent, and in this specific sense ‘universal’. Thus, ‘theme’, as defined above, is to be understood as a semantic form, within form semantics (Figure TA.1), i.e. a g. In relation to a specific language, this might reasonably be regarded as the semantic form of a particular allodele/​denotatum-​type (Figure TA.1), i.e. gRe. Semantic forms and allodeles/denotatum-​types are generalisations (just as are phonetic forms and allophones). The individual instantiation corresponding to a semantic form is a semantic image/denotable, symbolised j, where a semantic form is a set of js; i.e. g={j}, while the individual instantiation corresponding to an allodele/​denotatum-​type is a delete/​denotatum (symbolised jRe) (Figure TA.1).

 137

Technical appendix 137 For some languages, the notions ‘theme’ and ‘rheme’ as defined above might work very well as semantic forms (and semantic images) providing the left-​ hand terms for allodeles/denotatum-​types (and deletes/​denotata), covering the full range of meanings of the relevant phenomena. For other languages, however, they might only cover one aspect of the relevant phenomena, providing therefore only a partial model. Or they might rather inaccurately cover the phonemena, in which case the use of the terms ‘theme’ and ‘rheme’ (as defined above) would distort the semantic account. Or they might be so marginal to the relevant phenomena that their use would involve a huge distortion of the semantic data. As I argue in this book, for Standard Arabic, the use of ‘theme’ and ‘rheme’ to describe (provide the semantic forms) for the semantic realisations of Peri/​Thema and Nuc/​Rhema involves a very significant distortion of the semantic phenomena, covering only some of the semantic phenomena, and even these not in a fully adequate manner (Sections 7.4–​7.4.1.1.2, Chapter 8). xv In Chapter 2, Endnote vi, I have analysed the syntax of bipartite clauses in Sudanese Arabic in terms of ordered pairs. Thus, the bipartite clause bēt-​u kiwayyis ‘his house is nice’ (literally: ‘house-​his nice’) is to be analysed lexotactically as an (unordered) set, comprising two ordered pairs, i.e. as {(bēt-​u, 0), (kiwayyis, 0)}, as is also a form kiwayyis bēt-​u ‘his house is nice’/‘how nice his house is’ (literally: ‘nice house-​his’). Correspondingly, niḥna masākīn ‘we are wretched’ (literally: ‘we wretched’) and masākīn niḥna ‘how wretched we are’ (literally: ‘wretched we’) are both to be analysed syntactically (lexotactically) as an (unordered) set, comprising two ordered pairs, i.e. as {(niḥna, 0), (masākīn, 0)}. In Section 2.4.2, I have argued that forms of this kind involve not only syntactic (i.e. lexotactic), but also para-​syntactic (para-​lexotactic) structuring. I have further argued that if primary accent falls on masākīn in both cases, niḥna masākīn ‘we are wretched’ and masākīn niḥna ‘how wretched we are’ are also phrase-​structurally para-​syntactically (para-​lexotactically) identical. By analogy, of course, bēt-​u kiwayyis ‘his house is nice’ (literally: ‘house-​ his nice’) and kiwayyis bēt-​u ‘his house is nice’/‘how nice his house is’ (literally: ‘nice house-​his’) are also both phrase-​structurally para-​syntactically (para-​lexotactically) identical provided that primary accent falls on kiwayyis ‘nice’ in both cases. In Section 2.4.2, I have also argued that given primary accent on masākīn in both cases, in niḥna masākīn ‘we are wretched’ and masākīn niḥna ‘how wretched we are’, masākīn is the para-​syntactic (para-​lexotactic) nucleus, and niḥna is the para-​syntactic (para-​lexotactic) peripheral entity. In Chapter 2, Endnote vi, I used ‘0’ to name (notate) the syntactic (lexotactic) nucleus (both elements in bipartite clauses being nuclear, since they involve lexotactic coordination). I will use ‘0p’ here to name (notate) the para-​syntactic (para-​ lexotactic) nucleus, while I will use ‘1p’ to name (notate) the para-​syntactic (para-​lexotactic) peripheral entity. Here, ‘p’ can be understood to refer to ‘phrase-​structual para-​syntax’.

138

138 Technical appendix As noted above in this endnote, niḥna masākīn/masākīn niḥna ‘we are wretched (etc.)’ is syntactically (lexotactically) analysed as {(niḥna, 0), (masākīn, 0)}, i.e. as an unordered set in which the element (niḥna, 0) is an ordered pair consisting of the lexo (grammatical entity) niḥna ‘we’ and the position ‘0’ in which it stands, and the element (masākīn, 0) is an ordered pair consisting of the lexo (grammatical entity) masākīn ‘wretched’ and the position ‘0’ in which it stands. To analyse the phrase-​structural para-​syntactic (para-​lexotactic) features in niḥna masākīn/masākīn niḥna (with primary accent on masākīn in both cases) ‘on top of’ this syntactic (lexotactic) analysis, we need to treat the ordered pairs (niḥna, 0) and (masākīn, 0) as elements rather than pairs. Accordingly, the phrase-​structural para-​syntactic (para-​lexotactic) nucleus masākīn can analysed as (masākīn, 0), 0p, i.e. as an ordered pair, consisting of (masākīn, 0) and the position 0p (the element (masākīn, 0) itself already being an ordered pair, as noted). Similarly, the phrase-​structural para-​syntactic (para-​lexotactic) peripheral entity niḥna can analysed as (niḥna, 0), 1p, i.e. as an ordered pair, consisting of (niḥna, 0) and the position 1p (the element (niḥna, 0) itself already being an ordered pair, as noted). An overall analysis of niḥna masākīn/masākīn niḥna (with primary accent on masākīn in both cases) incorporating both syntactic (lexotactic) and phrase-​ structural para-​syntactic (para-​lexotactic) analyses is thus as follows: {((niḥna, 0), 1p), ((masākīn, 0), 0p)}. That is to say, we have an unordered set whose members are the ordered pair ((niḥna, 0), 1p) and the ordered pair ((masākīn, 0), 0p), the first element of these ordered pairs consisting of the ordered pairs (niḥna, 0) and (masākīn, 0), respectively. Corresponding analyses can be made of bēt-​u kiwayyis ‘his house is nice’ and kiwayyis bēt-​u ‘his house is nice’/‘how nice his house is’ assuming primary accent falls on kiwayyis ‘nice’ in both cases, and all other similar bipartite clauses. More complex cases will involve more complex analyses. I have, in this endnote, however, attempted to lay out the principles of how phrase-​structural para-​syntactic analysis can be formally integrated with syntactic analysis. xvi Taking it that ‘initiality’ in Sudanese Arabic, in combination with Nuc/​Rhema, is a non-​phrase-​structural para-​syntactic (para-​lexotactic, signum-​level) feature in Sudanese Arabic, we might notate this for masākīn niḥna with primary accent on masākīn as follows: {((niḥna, 0), 1p), ((masākīn, 0), 0p)} | INITIALITY This contrasts in terms of signum identity with we might notate this for niḥna masākīn with primary accent on masākīn, which could be annotated as follows: {((niḥna, 0), 1p), ((masākīn, 0), 0p)}

 139

Technical appendix 139 That is to say, according to this analysis, what differentiates masākīn niḥna with primary accent on masākīn with niḥna masākīn with primary accent on masākīn is the additional para-​lexotactic (para-​syntactic, signum-​level) feature in the case of the former of INITIALITY. As noted, the para-​lexotactic (para-​syntactic, signum-​level) feature INITIALITY co-​occurs with a Nuc/​ Rhema. It does not co-​occur with a Peri/​Thema. Chapter 3 i What is meant by models for the semantic (communicative, informational) realisations of abstract structural para-​syntactic features is models which belong to general semantics (Figure TA.1) (i.e. the domain of referent/unascribed semantic-​image correlate, image semantics and form semantics). There is a precise parallelism between general semantics and general phonetics. General phonetics (Figure TA.1) falls outside the scope of the ‘theory proper’, i.e. outside the scope of the system ontology (Figures TA.2 and TA.3), but also of the signum ontology, strictly speaking. However, general phonetics provides models for the analysis of morphontic entities within the signum ontology. These are principally phonetic models for single realisations (‘phonetes’) of phonological forms, within ‘phonetics’ (as technically defined in extended axiomatic functionalism; Figure TA.1), but also gener�alisations for these in allophonics, for allophones. These models are then further incorporated into the other models of the morphontics, by either the member-​to-​set (member-​to-​class) member-​to-​set/​class operator (providing generalisations, like that already noted between phonetics and allophonics, and represented by vertical difference and a double-​headed vertical arrow ↕ in Figure TA.1), or by the distinctive function operator, yielding a ‘relation of transformation’ (represented in Figure TA.1 by an unfilled single-​headed arrow ⇨). Like general phonetics, general semantics falls outside the scope of the ‘theory proper’, i.e. outside the scope of the system ontology, and of the signum ontology, strictly speaking (Figures TA1, TA.2 and TA.3). However, gen�eral semantics provides models for the analysis of semantic entities within the signum ontology. These are principally semantic models for single realisations (deletes, denotata) of delological forms, within deletics (Figure TA.1), but also generalisations for these in allodelics, for allodeles (denotatum-​ types). These models are then further incorporated into the other models of the semantics, by either the member-​to-​set (member-​to-​class) operator (represented by vertical difference and a vertical arrow ↕ in Figure TA.1), or by the distinctive function operator, yielding a ‘relation of transformation’ (represented in Figure TA.1 by an unfilled arrow ⇨).

140

140 Technical appendix

Chapter 4 i See Figures TA.2 and TA.3. ii See Chapter 2, Endnote vi for detailed discussion of the fact that the sim�plest and most straightforward phonological/​phonetic realisation of a signum (sign) –​ whether this signum be grammatical (meaning here: morphological or syntactic) or para-​syntactic (para-​lexotactic) –​ is a transparent one, i.e. one in which the signum has an allomorphic realisation having a phonological form, itself realised ultimately as a phonetic realisation which unambiguously mirrors the signum.

Chapter 7 i

Extended axiomatic functionalism incorporates a model for the utterance (lex��onete) within the theory (cf. Figure TA.1) which is connected in a way which is both coherent and transparent to more abstract notions in the theory, including the purely abstract ‘langue’ notions in the system ontology (Figures TA.2 and TA.3). It is accordingly possible to deal with frequency of occurrence of par�ticular realisations (on the basis of what is taken to be representative sampling) while coherently relating these frequencies to more –​and ultimately the most –​abstract notions in the theory. ii Under an extended axiomatic-​functionalist approach, all phenomena which fall within a “system of conventions for communication” (Mulder 1989: 436; cf. Dickins 2009a: 12; Def. 1c) are semiotic. A fundamental distinction can be drawn between denotation/delological form, and connotation. The former can be taken to involve meaning in terms of extensional (referential) range while the latter involves all other aspects of meaning, such as differing tendencies to mean within this denotational range, or what is sometimes termed ‘associative meaning’ (for detailed discussion of associative meaning in extended axiomatic-​functionalist terms, see Dickins 2014b). When the relevant element is placed in a declarative sentence, denotative meaning can be generally equated with truth-​conditional meaning (e.g. Dickins 2018; though for some problems with this, see Dickins 2009d: 542–​ 546). Thus, if two declarative sentences which differ only with respect to a single word (appearing in the same syntactic position) have the same truth conditions, the only two different words used in these two declarative sentences are synonyms (in the sense, i.e. alloseme, in which they are being used). As syonynms, these two words (as signa, in the signum ontology corresponding to lexos/lexological entities in the system ontology) are the same in terms of denotative meaning, i.e. their relevant senses (allosemes) have the same denotation/delological form (in the signum ontology, corresponding to the same delo/delological entity in the system ontology). This does not, however, necessarily mean that the two words (signa) are the same semantically. Thus:

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Technical appendix 141 […] the two verbs vernielen and vernietigen “to destroy, bring to nought” in nineteenth-​century Dutch […] appear to have referred to exactly the same range of situations and exhibited identical selection restrictions, even in the writings of one and the same author. Were these two words, then, “perfect synonyms”? Geeraerts [1988] argues they were not. Differences emerged when the frequencies of different senses were compared, vernietigen being used predominantly in an abstract sense, while vernielen referred predominantly to an act of physical destruction. Remarks in contemporary handbooks of good usage also pointed to a difference in the conceptual centres of the two words. (Taylor 1989: 56)

Under an extended axiomatic-​functionalist approach, vernielen and vernietigen are denotatively identical, i.e. they are synonyms, i.e. their (relevant) alloseme has the same delological form/denotation. They are, however, not semantically identical, being connotatively different in terms of their ‘tendency to mean’. For a discussion of how this semantic difference is analysed using ‘representative allosemon-​sets’, see Dickins (2016: 37–​39). These principles can be extended beyond the use of single words to cover variations in word order which involve differing ‘tendencies to mean’ but the same denotation/delological form, where the same denotation/delological form is interpreted to mean the same truth-​conditional meaning. An example is the difference between the nominal clause/​sentence ‫البرودة تعلن حالة الطوارئ‬ al-​burūda tuʕlin ḥālat al-​ṭawāri’ ‘the cold announced the state of emergency’ (literally: ‘the-​cold announces state the-​emergencies’) and the corresponding verbal clause/​sentence ‫ تعلن البرودة حالة الطوارئ‬tuʕlin al-​burūda ḥālat al-​ṭawāri’ ‘the cold announced the state of emergency’ (literally: ‘announces the-​cold state the-​emergencies’). (For ease of exemplification, I have here simplified the example from the longer one in Section 7.4.1.1: ،‫وكان الليل باردا في بور سعيد‬ ‫ ]…[ و{البرودة } تعلن حالة الطوارئ في كل الشوارع‬wa-​kān al-​layl bārid fī būr saʕīd, wa-​{al-​burūda} tuʕlin ḥālat al-​ṭawāri’ fī kull šāriʕ […] ‘The night was cold in Port Said, and {the cold} announced the state of emergency throughout the streets […]’. The principles, however, remain the same.) Here, I believe that the nominal clause/​sentence ‫ البرودة تعلن حالة الطوارئ‬al-​ burūda tuʕlin ḥālat al-​ṭawāri’ ‘the cold announced the state of emergency’ (literally: ‘the-​cold announces state the-​emergencies’) and the corresponding verbal clause/​sentence ‫ تعلن البرودة حالة الطوارئ‬tuʕlin al-​burūda ḥālat al-​ṭawāri’ ‘the cold announced the state of emergency’ (literally: ‘announces the-​cold state the-​emergencies’) are truth-​conditionally identical, i.e. their ‘global alloseme’ (with the relevant sense of all words and relations between them) has the same delological form/denotation. As I have argued in Section 7.4.1.1, however, the nominal clause/​sentence ‫ البرودة تعلن حالة الطوارئ‬al-​burūda tuʕlin ḥālat al-​ṭawāri’ ‘the cold announced the state of emergency’ (literally: ‘the-​ cold announces state the-​emergencies’) involves (in the context given) a linkage, which the verbal clause/​sentence would not have, i.e. the nominal clause/​

142

142 Technical appendix sentence and the verbal clause/​sentence, while denotatively the same, are connotatively different. iii The fact that there has been a change in respect of which elements can fill which positions (‘slots’), i.e. a change in the position classes (Chapter 2, Endnote vi), between Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic, implies a change in the semiotic (linguistic) system –​since position classes are a feature of this system. i v The idea that “abstract phrase-​structural para-​syntactic structures of different dialects [can be] analysed as being the same” is rather vague. It is best understood as meaning that the structural similarity between two dialects is so great that the structures of the two dialects can be reasonably equated with one another, while at the same time recognising that such equation (‘sameness’) is not in reality complete. Different dialects are to be regarded as different semiotic systems, unless they are so close to one another that it is possible to reasonably subsume them under a single unified analysis, treating them as a single semiotic (linguistic) system. v As noted in Chapter 7, Endnote iv, immediately above, there is in reality no complete ‘sameness’ between semiotic systems. Accordingly, while identical terminology, e.g. the use of Peri/​Thema–​Nuc/​Rhema for different languages, is useful for highlighting similarities, it disguises the fact that as different languages, the two semiotic systems are in a fundamental sense incommensurable. See Haspelmath (2010) for an attempt –​which is largely compatible with the current approach –​to resolve what he calls “the apparent paradox of comparability of incommensurable systems” (Haspelmath 2010: 664).

Chapter 9 i It is worth re-​emphasising that axiomatic functionalism makes a clear dis��tinction between phrase-​structural para-​syntactic (para-​lexotactic) notions and realisational semantic (‘real-​semantic’) notions. Phrase-​structural para-​ syntactic (para-​lexotactic) notions are purely oppositional elements of ‘langue’ (Chapter 2, Endnote ii), i.e. elements of the system ontology, corresponding to elements at the level of the signum within the signum ontology. Realisational semantic notions are all those features within the signum ontology which either model semantic reality –​semonetes, and deletes, or provide generalisations about semantic reality: allosemons and allodeles, and at a more abstract level of generalisation, allosemes (cf. Figures TA.2 and TA.3). General language-​non-​specific notions of meaning are features of general semantics (image semantics, and by generalisation from these, form semantics), just as general language-​non-​specific phonetic notions are features of general phonetics (image phonetics, and by generalisation from these, form phonetics) (cf. Figures TA.1 and TA.3).

 143

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Index

Abdelfattah, Nabil Mohamed Saber, 86 Abdul, as de facto proper name, 35 Abdul-​Raof, Hussein, 81 aboutness, 28, 84 abstract, abstract level, 1, 2, 5, 18, 22, 25, 34, 38, 64, 87, 94, 98, 100, 102, 104, 111, 113, 127, 135, 139, 140, 142 abstract semantics (delology), 104 accent, as general notion in intonation, 15, 16, 17, 20, 21; see also non-​primary accent; primary accent; secondary accent; unaccented accent pattern, 11, 13 accessibility hierarchy for relativisation, 95 accessible (information), 85 active participle (Arabic) see participle (Arabic) adequacy of theory/​description, 1, 3, 21, 29, 94, 98, 120 adjectival (phrase), 8, 9, 10, 14, 41, 42, 43, 44, 47, 122, 123, 124 adjective, 14, 24, 31, 46, 47, 52, 59, 85, 121 adjective phrase, 59 adjunct adverbial, 62, 81, 88 adverb, 59 adverbial, 3, 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 41, 42, 43, 44, 47, 49, 57, 59, 62, 63, 66, 68, 70, 71, 72, 73, 75, 76, 78, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 87, 88, 90, 97, 122, 123; see also adjunct adverbial; initial adverbial; temporal (adverbial, clause, framework, setting, etc.) agreement (in Arabic), 14, 42, 43, 52, 110 al-​see definite particle (Arabic) Al Herz, Komail, 57 Al-​Azraqi, Munira, 102 Alfraidi, Tareq Rubaye Khalaf, 62 Alharthi, Nasser Raddad, 50, 52, 53, 99

Ali, Abdel-​Khalig, 12, 13 allaḏī-​set, in Standard Arabic, 41, 42, 43, 44, 55, 56 allodele, allodelic, 104, 105, 113, 127, 128, 136, 137, 139, 142 allodelic amalgmation, 128 allodelics, 110, 111, 112, 113, 115, 118, 139 allo-​level, 111, 112 allomorph, allomorphic, 8, 12, 13, 34, 35, 44, 103, 104, 110, 113, 114, 115, 116, 118, 119, 127, 128, 129, 130, 132, 133, 140 allomorphic amalgamation, 128 allomorphics, 111, 112, 113, 118 allomorphon, 104, 113, 129 allomorphonics, 111, 112, 113, 118 allomorphy, 34 allont, 128 allophone, allophonic, 80, 105, 111, 113, 119, 120, 127, 128, 129, 131, 132, 133, 135, 136, 139 allophonic amalgmation, 127 allophonics, 111, 112, 113, 118, 119, 131, 136, 139 alloseme, allosemic, 103, 108, 110, 113, 115, 116, 117, 118, 127, 128, 133, 140, 141, 142 allosemic amalgamation, 108, 127, 128 allosemics, 111, 112, 113, 115, 118 allosemon, 113, 141, 142 allosemonics, 111, 112, 113, 115, 118 alphabetic writing system, 116 Althumali, Sami Jameel, 57 amalgamation, 108, 126, 127, 128; see also allodelic amalgamation; allomorphic amalgamation; allophonic amalgamation; allosemic amalgmation American English, 132

152 Index ammā … fa​, in Standard Arabic, 49, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 81; see also fa-​, in Standard Arabic analytic proposition, 117 Andrason, Alexander, 54 animal, in English, 116, 117 appropriateness, in naming entities, 132 Arabian Peninsula Arabic dialects, 4, 89, 90, 91, 92 Arabic dialect(s), general, 1, 3, 4, 18, 31, 37, 44, 49, 50, 55, 62, 65, 70, 81, 84, 85, 86, 87–​8, 89, 90, 99, 102, 114, 115, 142 arbitrariness, arbitrary, 65, 79, 124, 125, 126, 131, 132 archiphoneme, 132 arrow of implication, 23, 36, 39; see also relation of implication arrow of mutual implication, 139; see also relation of mutual implication arrow of transformation, 113, 139 associative meaning, 140 attenuated accent, 11 attributive, 24, 42, 43, 121 au, in French, 128 Austronesian languages, 95 ‘available referentiality’, 90 axiomatic functionalism, 1, 100, 101, 103, 104, 106, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 113, 116, 118, 119, 128, 130, 131, 134, 135, 139, 140, 142; see also extended axiomatic functionalism; standard axiomatic functionalism background, backgrounded, backgrounding, 82, 90, 91 Bahraini Arabic, 90 Baker, Mona, 3, 49, 57, 58 balāġa (traditional Arabic rhetoric), 48, 52 banā, in Standard Arabic, 46, 47, 48, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 60, 61, 62, 63, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71 base, in para-​ontotactics, 107 basic entity, level, structure, etc., 1, 7, 8, 30, 33, 48, 62, 81, 105, 107, 111, 113, 116, 128, 132, 133, 134 bayt, in Standard Arabic, 31, 42, 46, 47, 48, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 76, 77, 127 been, in English, 35, 113, 114 Beeston, Alfred Felix Landon, 30, 31, 48, 61, 69, 70 Bellem, Alex, 102

Benmahdjoub, Ilham, 56, 70, 77, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 90 Berry, Margaret, 6 bēt, in Sudanese Arabic, 8, 9, 10, 30, 36, 37, 39, 42, 50, 55, 114, 115, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 125, 126, 137, 138 big, in English, 121, 123, 124, 125 biga, in Sudanese Arabic, 88 Bildhauer, Felix, 28 bin, in English, 35, 113, 114 bipartite clause (in Arabic), 2, 5, 7, 10, 11, 13, 17, 40, 41, 43, 44, 45, 54, 62, 110, 114, 115, 117, 118, 120, 122, 123, 124, 125, 129, 130, 137, 138 bitt, in Sudanese Arabic, 12 bi-​unity, 5, 7, 31, 130 black, in English, 121, 123, 124, 125 Blau, Joshua, 87 Bohas, Georges, 47, 48, 52, 59 boundary, grammatical, 17 boundary, prosodic, 32, 33 boundary, thematic, 83 braces (use of, in this book), 71 Brockelmann, Carl, 81 bungalow, in English, 34, 35 Callies, Marcus, 64 canonical allomorph, 128 canonical allont, 128, 133, 134 canonical allophone, 133 canonical alloseme, 133 canonical realisation, 132, 133 Carnie, Andrew, 88 Carter, Michael, 46, 47 case (grammatical), 31, 35, 64 cat, in English, 116, 117 Catford, John C., 136 centrality see communicative centrality; conceptual centrality; semantic centrality Chahal, Dana, 11, 128 Chandler, Daniel, 18 Chinese, 116 Chomsky, Noam, 29 citation form, 128 clarity, in naming entities, 132, 133 class, 100, 121, 122, 123, 124, 139, 142 Classical Arabic, 1, 3, 44, 49, 70, 87, 142 clause/​sentence (in Arabic grammar), 3, 40, 48, 54, 56, 57, 59, 61, 64, 67, 68, 87, 88, 89, 97; see also nominal clause/​ sentence (in Arabic); verbal clause/​ sentence (in Arabic) cleft sentence, 14

Index 153 closed set, 94, 103 coherence of theory/​description, 29, 95, 140 cohesion, 83 Colloquial Arabic see Arabic dialect(s), general comment, as linguistic notion, 15, 64, 93, 96 communication, 79, 80, 109, 117, 140 communicative centrality (conceptual centrality; semantic centrality), 19, 20, 21, 38 communicative efficiency, 116 communicative non-​centrality (conceptual non-​centrality; semantic non-​centrality), 21 comparability of incommensurable systems, 142 comparison, in Pashova, 81 complement, 50, 117 complementary distribution, 43, 44 complex feature, entity, structure, etc., 2, 3, 7, 29, 31, 49, 60, 61, 63, 107, 112, 116, 120, 128, 136, 138 component (theoretical, of extended axiomatic functionalism), 100, 104 Comrie, Bernard, 95 conceptual centrality (communicative centrality; semantic centrality), 114, 115 conceptual non-​centrality (communicative non-​centrality; semantic non-​centrality), 114 conceptual peripherality (conceptual non-​ centrality), 114, 115 concrete level, notion, etc., 1, 6, 22, 135 conditionals, 62, 64, 87 conjunction (in Arabic), 59, 63 conjunction (in extended axiomatic functionalism), 2, 5, 21, 38, 101, 112, 113, 133 connotation see connotative meaning connotational grammar (lexology), 104, 110, 111 connotational para-​syntax (para-​lexotactics), 109 connotational syntax (lexotactics), 108, 109, 117 connotative meaning, 79, 91, 109, 131, 140, 141 constituent, 7, 35, 70, 120 content, in extended axiomatic functionalism, 5, 7, 11, 18, 19, 22, 31, 33, 39, 56, 78, 100, 111, 113, 127, 128, 130, 133, 135

context (verbal, situational), 18, 19, 20, 26, 27, 56, 58, 59, 64, 65, 67, 73, 78, 79, 82, 86, 91, 92, 109, 141 context, (intra-​)linguistic, 35, 43, 59, 80, 94, 110, 113, 114, 120, 132 contextual appropriacy, 64, 65, 78, 79, 91 contrast (as function of marked Peri/​ Thema), 53, 71, 72, 73, 78, 79, 80, 81, 84 contrast in manner, 72 contrast in place, 72 contrast in time, 72 contrastive (focus, etc.), 18, 59, 63, 81 convention, conventional, 79, 80, 109, 134, 140 Cook, Philippa, 28 coordination, in axiomatic functionalism, 112, 114, 115, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 123, 124, 125, 137 coordination, as general notion in linguistics, 33, 34, 79, 112 core purpose, 80 corpus, 28, 70, 71, 81, 85, 89, 90 correspondence relationship (between signum ontology and system ontology entities), 21, 97, 110, 112, 113, 115, 116, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 133, 140, 142 cover-​term, 71, 105 creaky voice, 12 Cristofaro, Sonia, 95 Cruse, David Alan, 117 Cruttenden, Alan, 18 curly brackets (use of, in this book), 71 d (/​d/​), in American English, 132 ḍ (/​ḍ/​), in Sudanese Arabic, 133 Dahlgren, Sven-​Olof, 19, 25, 90 data, 4, 29, 30, 71, 93, 94, 95, 96, 98, 137 data-​driven universals, 95 declarative sentence, 88, 140 definite (in Arabic), 2, 7, 8, 9, 10, 13, 14, 17, 35, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 53, 54, 56, 86, 110, 122, 123, 129, 130 definite article see definite particle definite particle (Arabic), 8, 9, 10, 14, 35, 41, 42, 44, 54, 110 delematics, delematic, 107 deleme, 105, 107 delete, 105, 113, 136, 137, 139, 142 deletics, deletic, 110, 112, 113, 115, 118, 139 deletion see vowel deletion

154 Index delid, 105 delidics, delidic, 105, 107 delo, 105, 107, 110, 111, 115, 116, 128, 134, 140 delological entity (delo), 105, 107, 110, 111, 115, 116, 118, 128, 134, 140 delological form, 110, 115, 116, 117, 118, 127, 128, 139, 140, 141 delologics, 112, 113, 118 delology, 101, 104, 105, 107, 112, 116, 118, 127, 129, 134 delotactics, delotactic, 107, 108, 109, 112, 117, 124, 125 delotagm, 105, 107 denotable (semantic image), 136 denotation (delological form), 110, 113, 115, 116, 117, 118, 127, 128, 140, 141 denotational grammar (delology), 104, 110 denotational para-​syntax (para-​delotactics), 109 denotational range (range of meanings/ potential referents), 140 denotational syntax (delotactics), 108, 117 denotative meaning, 109, 131, 140, 141 denotatum (delete), 105, 113, 136, 137, 139 denotatum-​type (allodele), 104, 113, 128, 136, 137, 139 dependency, in axiomatic functionalism, 20; see also functional dependency; occurrence dependency dependent (element, etc.), 8, 20 Devlin, Keith, 123 Dickins, James, 1, 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 28, 29, 30, 33, 35, 41, 43, 44, 47, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 60, 62, 63, 65, 67, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 84, 87, 90, 91, 100, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 107, 108, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 120, 122, 123, 124, 125, 127, 128, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 136, 140, 141 differential see purely differential (entity) Dik, Simon, 30 direct tactic relation, 112 discontinuity, between text segments, 83 discontinuous para-​syntactic Nuc/​ Rhema, 52, 53 discourse, 82, 83, 89, 90, 91, 92, 98 discourse relevance, 92 discourse topic see topic (textual, discoursal) discreteness, 20, 127, 132

distinctive feature (as general notion in linguistics), 94, 102, 105 distinctive feature (phonid, in extended axiomatic functionalism), 34, 102, 105, 111, 116, 128 distinctive function, 101, 104, 107, 129, 139 Docherty, Gerard J., 136 Dodsworth, Robin, 87, 90 double-​headed arrow (arrow of mutual implication), 139 Dutch, 88, 141 Eastern Mediterranean Arabic dialects, 90 Egyptian Arabic, 11, 14, 37, 44, 50, 81, 83, 84, 85, 86, 90, 91 either, in English, 103, 104 ejection, 102 El Zarka, Dina, 1, 11, 12, 14, 15, 28, 37, 55, 69, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 90, 91, 92, 96, 128 ellipsis, elliptical, 19 embedding, embedded, 30, 31, 32, 33, 37, 47, 48, 50, 51, 53, 54, 55, 57, 61, 69 emergent property, 94 Emirati Arabic dialect(s), 90 emotional involvement, 24 emphasis, emphatic (as phonological notion, in Arabic), 8, 102, 111 emphasis, emphatic (as semantic notion), 51, 63, 64, 71, 81, 82, 90, 109 emphasis spreading in Arabic, 111 endnotes, organisation of, 1 English, 3, 7, 14, 18, 19, 20, 24, 26, 27, 34, 35, 49, 56, 58, 59, 67, 70, 80, 81, 84, 88, 91, 102, 103, 104, 107, 108, 113, 116, 121, 124, 130, 131, 132, 133, 136 equative (analysis of bipartite clauses/​ sentences in Arabic), 2, 5, 7, 8, 10, 11, 22, 30, 36, 50, 51, 52, 61, 110 ethanal, in English, 118 etic-​level, 111 event-​oriented/​events-​based/​narrative sentences, 4, 89, 90, 91 events-​based see event-​oriented/​events-​ based/​narrative sentences Everett, Daniel, 29 expansion, 114 explicit subject (in Arabic), 46, 59 expository text, 84, 90 expression, in extended axiomatic functionalism, 5, 7, 11, 18, 19, 22, 26, 29, 31, 33, 39, 56, 78, 100, 111, 113, 128, 129, 130, 133, 135

 155

Index 155 expression-​side, 2, 26, 29, 56 extended axiomatic functionalism, 1, 100, 101, 104, 106, 107, 108, 109, 113, 116, 118, 119, 130, 131, 135, 139, 140 extension, 140

functional dependency, 114, 123 functional grammar, 30 functional sentence perspective, 109 functionalism (vs. formalism), 32 funny, in English, 103, 104

fa-​, in Standard Arabic, 3, 49, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 81 Fakhry, Ahmed, 89 fāʕil (subject), in traditional Arabic grammar, 46, 68 feature, 1, 2, 5, 7, 20, 23, 24, 25, 26, 31, 32, 34, 38, 39, 40, 41, 45, 86, 87, 94, 96, 107, 125, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 132, 138, 139, 142 Féry, Caroline, 34, 132 figura (phonological form), 111, 127, 128 final element (in clause), 2, 7, 40, 41, 45, 56 first element in clause (Arabic), 2, 7, 9, 13, 25, 40, 41, 44, 45, 58, 82, 91 fiʕl (verb), in traditional Arabic grammar, 46 focus, as linguistic notion, 18, 20, 81, 85, 86, 89, 93, 96 footnotes, organisation of, 1 foreground, foregrounded, foregrounding, 82, 90, 91 form (morphonete), 100, 105 form phonetics, 142 form semantics, 136, 139, 142 formal (feature, etc.), 2, 29, 31, 32, 109, 130, 131 formal theory, 95 formaldehyde, in English, 118 formality (formal language), 1, 59, 79 form-​related (morphontic), 105 frame, framing, 82 framework, in Benmahdjoub, 82 free variant, free variation, 23, 120 French, 20, 128, 136 frequency (realisational), 3, 49, 65, 87, 140 frequency of occurrence see frequency (realisational) Fries, Peter H., 27, 28 front weight, 84 fronting, 39, 48, 82, 84 Fujimura, Osama, 131 function (as general notion in linguistics), 3, 20, 49, 71, 79, 80, 81, 83, 91, 92, 94, 99 function, functional (in extended axiomatic functionalism), 2, 7, 13, 17, 19, 34, 40, 41, 45, 104, 107, 109, 114, 123, 129, 139

ġaḍbān, in Standard Arabic, 42, 43 ġaḍiba, in Standard Arabic, 42 garage, in English, 103 Gardner, Sheena F., 20, 127 ġarīb, in Sudanese and Standard Arabic, 19, 20, 41, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 122 Geeraerts, Dirk, 141 general phonetics, 101, 104, 131, 135, 136, 139, 142 general semantics, 101, 104, 135, 136, 139, 142 generalisation, about real-​world features, 111, 112, 119, 135, 136, 139, 142; see also real-​world (notion) generativism, 29, 32, 35 genre, 79 Germanic languages, 3, 49, 88, 96 Gilbers, Dicky, 34 given (information), 1, 2, 3, 5, 13, 19, 20, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 49, 51, 53, 54, 58, 59, 83, 84, 85, 86, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94 Givón, Talmy, 83 glottal stop, 12 gradient allophonic realisation, 132 gradient intonation features, 20, 126, 127 grammar, grammatical, 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, 11, 13, 17, 30, 34, 35, 40, 41, 43, 45, 46, 47, 48, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 58, 59, 60, 61, 68, 69, 71, 97, 102, 103, 104, 109, 110, 111, 116, 124, 132, 133, 138, 140 graphological form, 133 Guillaume, Jean-​Patrick, 47, 48, 52, 59 güldürecekler, in Turkish, 113, 119 Gulf Arabic dialects, 87 Gundel, Jeanette K., 84 Halle, Morris, 94 Halliday, Michael A.K., 1, 26, 27, 28, 32, 35, 58, 94, 96, 126 Hallidayan approach, 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 32, 35, 39, 49, 58, 59, 64, 89, 91, 92, 93, 94, 96, 126, 128; see also systemic functional linguistics Haspelmath, Martin, 94, 95, 102, 142 Hasselgård, Hilde, 62, 81, 82, 83, 84, 88 Hawkins, John A., 84 head, 119, 134

156 Index head-​first language, 119 head-​initial language, 119 Hedberg, Nancy, 84 Hellmuth, Sam, 1, 11, 15, 20, 55, 128 Hervey, Sándor G.J., 1, 59, 79, 80, 127, 128 Heselwood, Barry, 1, 29, 80, 102, 136 heteromorph, 130 hidden (mustatir) subject (in Arabic), 46, 53, 59, 67 hierarchy of markedness of theme, 3, 49, 65, 66 Higgins, Ian, 59 historical changes in Standard Arabic, 3, 49, 80, 86 Hjelmslev, Hjelmslevian, 5, 65, 79 Hockett, Charles F., 128 Holes, Clive, 87, 90 homomorphy, 35 homonymy, 133 Hopper, Paul J., 90 Houssaini, Choukri Iraqi, 47 Hoyt, Frederick, 46, 51 Huddleston, Rodney D., 27 Hurren, H. Anthony, 103 Hwang, Shin Ja, 83 hyperonym (hypernym; superordinate), 65, 105, 116 hyponym, hyponymic, hyponymy, 65, 114, 115, 116, 117 iconicity (Peircean), 18, 91 idiom, 108, 109, 128 il-​, in Arabic dialects, 44 illā-​anna, in Standard Arabic, 63 illi, in Arabic dialects, 44 image phonetics, 142 image semantics, 139, 142 incommensurability (of semiotic systems), 142 indefinite (in Arabic), 2, 7, 9, 10, 13, 14, 17, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 53, 54, 56, 64, 86, 92, 110, 122, 123, 129, 130 informality, 19 information (given, new, theme, rheme, etc.), 2, 5, 13, 20, 25, 51, 56, 59, 80, 83, 84, 85, 86, 90, 91, 92, 96, 117, 126, 131, 139 Ingham, Bruce, 87 initial adverbial, 3, 49, 62, 71, 72, 73, 75, 76, 78, 82, 83, 84, 85, 88

initial predicand, 71, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85 initiality, 84, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92 initiality, as non-​phrase-​structural para-​ syntactic (para-​lexotactic) feature in Sudanese Arabic, 138, 139 initiality of theme (in Hallidayan approach), 26, 28 inna, in Standard Arabic, 63, 64, 74, 75, 81, 86, 87 instantiation, 131, 135, 136 integration I ‘intonational construction’, 15 intermediate phrase, 11, 12, 13, 15, 126, 130 intermediate phrase break, 12, 13 International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA), 132, 133, 135, 136 interordination, in axiomatic functionalism, 112, 115, 119, 120, 123, 124, 125 intonation, 2, 5, 7, 11, 12, 19, 20, 23, 32, 33, 34, 37, 39, 50, 52, 53, 55, 57, 98, 99, 108, 109, 128, 132 intonation group, 11 intonation unit, 11, 12, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 22, 32, 33, 37, 50, 55, 57, 126, 130, 131, 132 intonational phrasing, 11, 14, 17, 32, 33, 52, 126, 127, 128, 130 intonational tune see tune, intonational intonational unit, 11 introducer see Nuc/​Rhema introducer; Peri/​Thema introducer; theme-​ introducer; rheme-​introducer inversion, 8, 20 I-​Phrase, 12 Itô, Junko, 34 Iványi, Tamás, 46 Jakobson, Roman, 94 Jaradat, Abedalaziz, 34, 99 Jeddah Arabic, 90 jumla, in traditional Arabic grammar, 46, 51, 68 jumla fiʕliyya, in traditional Arabic grammar, 46, 51, 68 jumla ismiyya, in traditional Arabic grammar, 46 jump the gun, in English, 108, 109 Jun, Sun-Ah, 20 Kabak, Barış, 34 kabīr, in Sudanese and Standard Arabic, 12, 13, 30, 36, 37, 39, 47, 48, 50, 51, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 66, 69, 122

Index 157 kalib, in Sudanese Arabic, 12, 13, 128 Kammensjö, Heléne, 87 kān, in Sudanese Arabic, 88 Keenan, Edward L., 95 Khalil, Esam N., 83 kick the bucket, in English, 128 Kinberg, Naphtali, 64, 87 kiwayyis, in Sudanese Arabic, 114, 115, 117, 118, 119, 120, 121, 122, 123, 125, 126, 137, 138 known (information), 13, 19, 20, 24, 25, 53, 54, 56, 58, 59, 83, 84, 85, 109 Kohlani, Fatima A., 81, 82, 83, 84 Korean, 20 Kouloughli, Djamel Eddin, 47, 48, 52, 59 Krifka, Manfred, 35 Kuwaiti Arabic, 90 l (/​l/​), in English, 131 la-, in Standard Arabic, 62, 63, 64 label, 78, 124, 133 Ladd, Dwight Robert, 32, 33, 34, 94 ladder, in American English, 132 language acquisition device, 29 language-​independent model, 131, 135, 136, 142 langue, 102, 104, 108, 140, 142 Lass, Roger, 102 last lexical item, 52, 53 latter, in American English, 132 Leary, Adam P., 94 left-​dislocation, 37, 50, 54 left-​hand element (in signum-​ontological formula), 129, 131, 135, 137 level (in extended axiomatic functionalism), 1, 2, 4, 7, 22, 25, 39, 53, 94, 97, 98, 100, 102, 104, 107, 111, 112, 117, 126, 127, 129, 138, 139, 142 lexematics, lexematic, 107 lexeme, 105, 107 lexico-​grammar, in Hallidayan approach, 6 lexid, 105, 113, 116, 118 lexidics, lexidic, 105, 107 lexo, 105, 107, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 120, 128, 130, 133, 138, 140 lexological entity (lexo), 105, 107, 110, 111, 113, 115, 116, 128, 140 lexologics, 100, 103, 112, 116, 126, 129, 130 lexology, 101, 103, 104, 105, 107, 112, 116, 127, 129, 130 lexonete, 129, 140

lexonetics, 100, 111, 112 lexotactics, lexotactic, 107, 108, 109, 110, 112, 114, 115, 117, 118, 119, 120, 123, 124, 125, 137, 138 lexotagm, 105, 107 liaison, 35 Liberman, Mark, 15 likeness, in Pashova, 81 linguistic theory see theory (linguistic) linkage with previous material (as function of marked Peri/​Thema), 71, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 83, 98; see also logical connection linkage; manner linkage; place linkage; time linkage listing, in Pashova, 59, 81 logical connection linkage, 76, 77 logical relation (in axiomatic functionalism), 111, 115 logographic writing system, 116 long Peri/​Thema, 71, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 84 Longacre, Robert E., 83 Lyons, John, 65, 79, 117 māḍiya, in Standard Arabic, 57, 61, 62, 66, 68, 70, 71 mafʕūl bi-​h (object), in traditional Arabic grammar, 46 Maghrabi, Reem, 102 main clause, 62, 82 main Nuc/​Rhema, 53, 55, 56, 57, 68, 69, 70 main Peri/​Thema, 53, 55, 56, 57, 68, 69, 70 main predicand, 69 main predicate, 69 main stress see primary accent main theme, 68, 70 Major Phonological Phrase, 11 manner contrast see contrast in manner manner linkage, 76, 77 marked, markedness, 3, 15, 49, 51, 59, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 79, 86, 87, 88, 109; see also standardly marked theme; strongly marked theme; weakly marked theme marker, of Peri/​Thema, Nuc/​Rhema, 3, 49, 59, 62 masākīn, in Sudanese Arabic, 8, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 22, 23, 24, 26, 30, 36, 39, 41, 44, 45, 66, 67, 120, 137, 138, 139 match theory, 34 mathematics, 100, 111

158 Index Mathesius, Vilém, 19, 25 Matić, Dejan, 96 Matras, Yaron, 92 Matthiessen, Christian, 26, 27, 58, 94 meaning, meaningful, 2, 5, 6, 11, 18, 19, 20, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 31, 34, 38, 53, 58, 65, 78, 79, 80, 91, 93, 94, 100, 105, 109, 110, 111, 112, 114, 115, 117, 118, 120, 123, 127, 130, 134, 135, 137, 140, 141, 142 meaning prominence, 2, 5, 18, 19, 20, 126, 131 meaning-​related (semantic), 105, 110 Mehall, David, 87 Mehri, 102 melody see tune, intonational member (of set, class), 41, 42, 43, 80, 94, 100, 105, 107, 120, 123, 125, 127, 128, 138, 139 member-​to-​set/​class operator, 139 Mesopotamian Arabic dialects, 90 Mester, Armin, 34 metrical tree, 15, 16, 17 Mielke, Jeff, 94 minimalist program, 38 mirroring (structural, etc.), 18, 33, 34, 113, 117, 119, 131, 132, 140 Modern South Arabian languages, 102 Modern Standard Arabic, 1, 3, 38, 45, 49, 63, 70, 71, 81, 84, 85, 86, 87, 89, 91, 142 modern Western-​based linguistic analysis, 46, 68, 81 modifier, 119, 134 Mongolian, 20 monodelidic deleme, 105 monolexidic lexeme, 105 monomorphemic lexeme, 105 monomorphy, 34 monontidic onteme, 105 monopartite clause (in Arabic), 41, 44, 124 monophonidic phoneme, 105 monosemic, monosemous, 118 morpheme, 5, 7, 35, 105, 108, 113, 116, 118 morphologics, 100, 112, 113, 118 morphology, 2, 5, 7, 20, 34, 140 morphonete, 100, 105, 113, 129 morphonetics, 100, 111, 112, 113, 118 morphontics, morphontic, 105, 109, 110, 112, 113, 114, 115, 118, 119, 120, 128, 129, 130, 131, 133, 135, 139 Moutaouakil, Ahmed, 31 mubtada’ bi-​h, 11, 47, 48, 60

Mulder, Jan W.F., 1, 13, 17, 19, 29, 79, 80, 95, 100, 102, 103, 107, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 120, 123, 125, 127, 128, 140 Munday, Jeremy, 1 musnad, in traditional Arabic rhetoric, 48, 52 musnad ilay-​h, in traditional Arabic rhetoric, 48, 52 Mustapha, Abdel Rahman, 12 Myrberg, Sara, 34 naḥw (traditional Arabic grammar) see traditional Arabic grammar Naim, Samia, 102 naming of entities in descriptions, 124, 135, 137 Naro, Anthony, 92 narrative, 4, 58, 59, 89, 90, 91 narrative sentences see event-​oriented/​ events-​based/​narrative sentences neutralisation, 132 new (information), 1, 2, 3, 5, 13, 19, 20, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 49, 51, 56, 58, 59, 84, 85, 86, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94 news media, newspaper, 70, 72, 73, 76, 78, 86, 91 niḥna, in Sudanese Arabic, 8, 11, 13, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 22, 23, 24, 26, 30, 36, 39, 67, 120, 137, 138, 139 Nolan, Francis, 17, 20, 126, 127 nominal (phrase), 8, 9, 10, 14, 41, 42, 43, 44, 46, 63, 64, 71, 73, 74, 75, 77, 82, 84, 122, 123 nominal clause/​sentence (in Arabic), 3, 40, 46, 47, 48, 49, 52, 54, 61, 66, 68, 70, 86, 87, 90, 141 non-​accent see unaccented non-​canonical (allont), 128 non-​categorical realisation, 132 non-​centrality see communicative non-​ centrality; conceptual non-​centrality; semantic non-​centrality non-​discreteness, 126, 127, 131, 132 non-​obvious (information), 25 non-​ordering (of orderable entities), 120, 123, 125 non-​phrase-​structural para-​syntactic (para-​ lexotactic, signum-​level) feature, 20, 39, 127, 138 non-​primary accent, 20, 21 non-​recursion, 30, 31, 68 non-​structural, 20, 24, 97, 128

Index 159 non-​transparent realisation, 35, 113, 114 Norwegian, 81, 84, 88 not-​ness, 102, 111, 125, 132 noun, 24, 31, 46, 47, 51, 52, 59, 85, 90, 92 noun phrase, 46, 47, 53, 56, 57, 59 Nuc (in ‘Nuc/​Rhema’), 135 Nuc/​Rhema, 2, 3, 4, 5, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 31, 33, 34, 37, 38, 39, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 59, 61–​4, 67, 68, 69, 70, 80, 81, 85, 86, 88, 89, 93, 96, 97, 98, 99, 127, 128, 135, 137, 138, 139, 142 Nuc/​Rhema Introducer, 64, 81 nuclear accent, 21, 128 Nuclear Stress Rule, 14 nucleus, in intonation, 21, 128 nucleus, nuclear (in extended axiomatic functionalism), 20, 21, 22, 23, 36, 38, 107, 119, 124, 125, 134, 135, 137, 138 O’Dell, Michael, 132 Obiedat, Nawaf, 53, 58 object (grammatical), 20, 46, 50, 55, 56, 84, 95, 108 objective reference, 110 obvious (information), 19, 20, 25 occurrence dependency, 114, 123 old (information), 51, 56 on, in Southern British English, 107, 124 one-​to-​one correspondence, 127 onset, 12 ontematics, ontematic, 105 onteme, 105, 107 ontid, 105 onto, 105 ontology (phonology, lexology or delology), 105 ontology, in general sense, 100 ontotactics, ontotactic, 107, 124, 134 ontotagm, 105, 107 open set, 103 operator, 139 opposition, in extended axiomatic functionalism, 13, 44, 79, 80, 102, 103, 111, 125, 128, 132, 142 orderable entity, 107, 111, 112, 115, 117, 120, 125 ordered pair, 107, 111, 124, 125, 137, 138 ordering relations, 107, 110, 111, 112, 119, 120, 124, 125 ordination, 114, 123, 124 organisation of material (as function of marked Peri/​Thema), 71, 74, 75, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84

outside, in English, 114, 118, 119 Owens, Jonathan, 87, 90 para-​delotactics, para-​delotactic, 107, 109 para-​delotagm, 105, 107 paradigmatic, 123 paragraph topic, 75 para-​lexotactics, para-​lexotactic, 107, 108, 109, 110, 126, 127, 128, 130, 137, 138, 139, 140, 142 para-​lexotagm, 105, 107 parallelepiped, in English, 34 parallelism (as function of marked Peri/​Thema), 71, 72, 78, 79, 80, 81, 84, 98 para-​ontotactics, para-​ontotactic, 107, 134 para-​ontotagm, 105, 107 para-​phonotactic, para-​phonotactics, 2, 29, 34, 35, 39, 107, 127 para-​phonotagm, 105, 107 para-​syntactic feature, entity, structure, etc., 2, 3, 4, 5, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 29, 31, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 61, 63, 64, 67, 68, 69, 78, 80, 86, 87, 88, 93, 94, 96, 97, 98, 120, 127, 128, 135, 137, 138, 139, 140, 142 para-​syntactic nucleus, 21 para-​syntactic peripheral element, 21 para-​syntax, 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 11, 17, 20, 21, 23, 24, 25, 31, 35, 38, 40, 45, 50, 86, 88, 89, 93, 97, 98, 109, 110, 130, 137 participle (Arabic), 43, 124 Pashova, Tsveta, 1, 59, 77, 81, 82, 83, 84, 86, 89, 90, 91 passive participle (Arabic) see participle (Arabic) pathetic word order, 24 Peirce, Charles Sanders, 18 Peled, Yishai, 47, 48 Peninsular Arabic see Arabian Peninsula Arabic dialects perceptual prominence, 18, 19, 128 perfect synonym, 141 Peri (in ‘Peri/​Thema’), 135 Peri/​Thema, 2, 3, 4, 5, 19, 21, 22, 23, 24, 31, 33, 34, 36, 37, 38, 39, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 59, 61, 62, 63, 64, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 84, 85, 86, 88, 89, 93, 96, 97, 98, 99, 127, 128, 135, 137, 139, 142 Peri/​Thema introducer, 64, 81

160 Index peripheral (element, entity, position), 7, 20, 21, 22, 23, 36, 38, 62, 107, 119, 124, 125, 134, 135, 137, 138 pharyngeal, 136 pharyngealisation, 102, 133 phonematics, 34, 107 phoneme, 12, 13, 34, 80, 102, 103, 104, 105, 107, 111, 116, 127, 129, 132, 133, 136 phonete, 104, 105, 113, 119, 129, 131, 135, 136, 139 phonetic form, 131, 135, 136 phonetic image, 131, 135 phonetics, phonetic (as general notions in linguistics), 6, 12, 33, 92, 102, 126, 131, 132, 133, 135, 136, 142 phonetics, phonetic (as notions in extended axiomatic functionalism), 5, 11, 20, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 31, 33, 34, 38, 53, 80, 94, 100, 102, 111, 112, 113, 118, 119, 120, 126, 127, 129, 130, 131, 133, 136, 139, 140 phonid, 105, 111, 116 phonidics, phonidic, 105, 107 phono, 105, 107, 110, 111, 113, 115, 116, 128, 130, 133, 134 phonological see phonology phonological entity (phono), 107, 110, 111, 115, 116, 127, 128, 130, 132, 133, 134 phonological form, 12, 13, 34, 35, 111, 113, 115, 116, 118, 119, 127, 128, 129, 130, 132, 133, 139 phonological phrase, 11, 12 phonological word, 15 phonologics, 112, 113, 118, 120, 129, 130, 131 phonology, 2, 5, 6, 12, 13, 15, 29, 34, 35, 39, 80, 94, 101, 102, 103, 104, 105, 107, 110, 111, 112, 113, 115, 116, 119, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 140 phonotactics, phonotactic, 29, 34, 107, 112, 124, 125 phonotagm, 105, 107 phrase-​structural, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 7, 17, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 29, 31, 34, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 45, 49, 50, 53, 54, 55, 57, 61, 63, 68, 69, 80, 86, 87, 88, 89, 93, 94, 96, 97, 98, 127, 135, 137, 138, 142 Pinker, Steven, 29 pitch, 18, 20, 126, 127 pitch change, 18, 20, 126, 127 pitch range, 126 place contrast see contrast in place

place linkage, 76 plane, in English, 133, 134 point of departure of the message, 26, 27 police, in English, 80 Polinsky, Maria, 119 polymorphic/​polymorphous, 103 polymorphy, 34 polysemy, polysemic, polysemous, 79, 103 Popper, Karl, 95 Port, Robert F., 94, 132 portmanteau morph, 128 Portuguese, Brazilian, 4, 89, 92 position, in axiomatic functionalism, 13, 54, 59, 87, 98, 100, 107, 120, 121, 122, 123, 124, 125, 132, 135, 138, 140, 142 position class, 100, 121, 122, 123, 124 possible world, 117 post-​nuclear position, 107, 124 postposed theme (in Hallidayan approach), 26 potential to make difference to signum identity, as demonstration of phonological difference, 130, 132 P-​Phrase, 11, 12 pragmatics, 51, 55, 83 Prague School, 28, 30, 89, 91, 92, 93, 94 predicand, 2, 3, 4, 5, 11, 30, 31, 43, 47–​8, 49, 51, 52, 54, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86, 89, 91, 97 predicate, 2, 3, 5, 11, 30, 40–​2, 51, 54, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 84, 89, 97 pre-​glottalisation, 13 preposing, 39, 48, 57, 66, 70, 73, 76, 78, 79, 82, 87, 97 preposition, 31, 48, 64, 69 prepositional phrase, 47, 64 pre-​verbal (element), 57, 81, 82, 83, 84, 85, 86 primary accent, 2, 5, 7, 11, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 36, 37, 38, 40, 41, 44, 45, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 56, 57, 58, 61, 67, 70, 91, 129, 130, 137, 138, 139 primary intonation unit, 14, 16, 17, 57 primary-​secondary (P-​S) intonation unit analysis, 16, 17 Prince, Alan, 15 Prince, Ellen, 84 Principle of Early Identification, 84 procedural (text), 91 Procrustean bed, 96

Index 161 prominence see meaning prominence; perceptual prominence; prosodic prominence pronoun, pronominal, 9, 14, 31, 46, 48, 53, 58, 59, 69, 83, 110 proper inclusion, 114, 116 propertiless entity, 111 proposition, 82, 92, 117 prosodic phrase, 11, 15 prosodic prominence, 20, 21 prosody, prosodic, 2, 11, 15, 20, 29, 32, 33, 34 proverb, 18 psychological reality (of linguistic theory), 29 purely differential (entity, etc.), 104, 107, 111 purely oppositional, 128, 132; see also purely differential purport, 13, 17, 19, 80, 117 Putnam, Hilary, 117 quasi-​realisational, 135 Quené, Hugo, 34 r (/​r/​), in English, 136 rājil, in Sudanese Arabic, 19, 20, 30, 36, 37, 39, 41, 44, 45, 50, 115, 120, 121, 122, 125, 126 rajul, in Standard Arabic, 31, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71 range of meanings, 20, 137; see also denotational range; range of potential referents range of potential referents, 118, 140; see also denotational range; range of meanings real meaning, 5, 93, 94, 111 realisation, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 13, 14, 20, 21, 23, 25, 26, 28, 33, 34, 38, 39, 40, 41, 45, 49, 65, 70, 78, 80, 82, 86, 87, 88, 89, 94, 96, 98, 100, 102, 104, 109, 110, 111, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 136, 137, 139, 140, 142 realisational frequency see frequency (realisational) realise, as linguistic notion, 3, 5, 6, 11, 12, 13, 18, 21, 22, 26, 31, 33, 34, 35, 38, 49, 65, 67, 68, 69, 80, 83, 94 real-​world (notion), 2, 5, 25, 90, 93, 94, 98, 104, 112, 128, 142

reapplication, 15, 31, 35 recoverable (information), 85 recursion, 2, 3, 5, 15, 17, 19, 20, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 39, 40, 47, 48, 54, 67, 68, 69, 70, 98, 99, 115, 120, 125, 131 reference (semonete), 105; see also objective reference; subjective reference referent (unascribed semantic-​image correlate), 104, 139 register, 79 reification, 103 relation, in relation to (R), 101 relation of implication, 101, 112, 114, 134 relation of mutual implication, 101, 120 relation of transformation, 101, 113, 139 relative clause, 43, 95, 110 representative sampling, 65, 140, 141 resyllabification, 12, 35 Revithiadou, Anthi, 34 Rhema (in ‘Nuc/​Rhema’), 21, 135; see also Nuc/​Rhema rheme, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 15, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 34, 35, 36, 38, 39, 49, 51, 54, 56, 57, 58, 59, 65, 84, 86, 87, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 96, 98, 135, 136, 137 rheme-​introducer, 3, 49 Richards, Norvin, 95 right-​hand element (in signum-​ontological formula), 104, 105, 111, 129 Rockwood, Trent, 87, 90 Romani, 4, 89, 92 Rooth, Mats, 35 Rose, Steven, 29 sad, sadly, in English, 7 ṣadīq, in Standard Arabic, 48, 60, 61 ṣāḥib (ṣāḥb-​), in Sudanese Arabic, 110, 121, 122, 123 samiḥ, in Sudanese Arabic, 118 sampling see representative sampling San’ani Arabic, 13 sana, in Standard Arabic, 57, 61, 62, 66, 68, 70, 71 Sartori, Manuel, 62 Saudi Arabian Arabic, 90 Saussure, Saussurean, 5, 65, 79, 80, 102, 104 scene, 83 scene-​setting (as function of marked Peri/​ Thema), 71, 74, 75, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 83, 84, 98

162 Index Schreuder, Maartje, 34 Schubö, Fabian, 34 schwa, 80 scone, in English, 130, 132 scrambling (word order), 52 second Nuc/​Rhema, 55, 57, 69, 70 second Peri/​Thema, 53, 55, 57, 68, 69, 70 secondary accent, 2, 5, 7, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 22, 40, 41, 45, 50, 57, 70 secondary intonation unit, 14, 16, 17, 50, 57 secondary Nuc/​Rhema, predicand, predicate, theme, etc., 47, 48, 55, 60, 61, 69, 70 segmental phonology, 13, 34 self-​contained, 113 Selkirk, Elisabeth, 32, 34 semantic centrality (communicative centrality; conceptual centrality), 38, 114, 115 semantic form, 135, 136, 137 semantic image, 136, 137 semantic non-​centrality (communicative non-centrality; conceptual non-centrality), 38 semantic peripherality (semantic non-​centrality), 115 semantics, semantic (as general notions), 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 25, 26, 27, 28, 33, 38, 58, 67, 81, 92, 93, 94, 96, 103, 116, 117, 139, 140, 141, 142 semantics, semantic (as notions in extended axiomatic functionalism), 3, 4, 5, 6, 13, 21, 22, 25, 26, 27, 28, 31, 38, 49, 51, 53, 65, 80, 82, 86, 87, 88, 89, 91, 93, 94, 96, 98, 101, 104, 105, 108, 109, 110, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 118, 127, 130, 131, 133, 135, 136, 137, 139, 141, 142 semiosis, 79 semiotic status see sign status semiotic system, 29, 65, 79, 142 semiotics, semiotic, 2, 5, 7, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 29, 38, 39, 65, 71, 79, 80, 100, 105, 108, 109, 125, 126, 132, 134, 140, 142 semologics, 100, 112, 113, 118 semonete, 100, 105, 113, 142 semonetics, 100, 111, 112, 113, 115, 118 sense, as notion in linguistics, 79, 108, 109, 116, 117, 118, 128, 140, 141 sentence stress see primary accent sequencing (temporal), 58, 90 set, 41, 42, 43, 44, 94, 99, 100, 101, 102, 103, 105, 107, 110, 111, 114, 116, 120, 123, 124, 125, 127, 128, 131, 135, 136, 137, 138, 139, 141

set theory, 100, 102, 114, 116, 123 shift, between text segments, 83, 91 sign, 2, 5–​7, 11, 18, 19, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 31, 33, 34, 35, 38, 39, 53, 56, 65, 78, 80, 98, 100, 102, 140 sign-​level, 7 sign status, 18, 23, 25, 26, 27, 39, 78 signum, 100, 109, 110, 112, 113, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 120, 123, 126, 127, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 134, 135, 138, 139, 140, 142 signum ontology, 100, 101, 102, 104, 105, 106, 107, 110, 111, 112, 113, 116, 127, 129, 130, 131, 139, 140, 142 simple sign, feature, entity, structure, etc., 3, 7, 17, 49, 60, 66, 67, 68, 112 simplicity, in naming entities, 132, 133 simplicity of realisation, 34 simplicity of theory/description (analysis), 2, 17, 29, 30, 31, 34, 39, 94, 97 simultaneous bundle, 111 single-​headed arrow see arrow of implication slant brackets, 105 slot, 54, 55, 59, 87, 98, 135, 142 sound, 5, 11, 18, 26, 31, 33, 34, 38, 53, 100, 104, 111, 112, 114, 119, 120, 127 Southern British English, 107, 124 speech event, 80 speech tempo, 126, 127 spell-​out, 38 Sproat, Richard, 131 Standard Arabic, 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 30, 31, 35, 38, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 49, 50, 54, 63, 65, 70, 71, 81, 84, 85, 86, 88, 89, 91, 92, 97, 98, 99, 110, 114, 125, 127, 130, 131, 132, 137, 142 standard axiomatic functionalism, 1, 109 standardly marked theme, 65, 66, 68 starting point (of the utterance), 25, 27 stress (as function of marked Peri/​Thema), 71, 73, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82, 84, 98 strong accent, 15 strongly marked theme, 66, 68, 69, 70 subject (in Arabic) see explicit subject (in Arabic); fāʕil (subject), in traditional Arabic grammar; hidden (mustatir) subject (in Arabic) subject (grammatical), 3, 37, 40, 46, 50, 52, 53, 55, 56, 58, 59, 66–​8, 82, 83, 84, 86, 88, 90, 91, 92, 95, 108, 117 subjective reference, 110

Index 163 subordination, as general notion in linguistics, 112 subordination, in axiomatic functionalism, 112, 114, 118, 119, 120, 124, 125, 134 sub-​sense, 79 subset, 123 Sudanese Arabic, 1, 2, 5, 7, 8, 9, 12, 14, 18, 29, 30, 31, 32, 34, 35, 36, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 50, 51, 52, 54, 67, 87, 110, 114, 115, 116, 117, 118, 119, 120, 124, 125, 128, 129, 130, 131, 132, 133, 137, 138 sūdāniyīn, in Sudanese Arabic, 14, 15, 17, 18, 19, 23, 41, 44, 45 suffix, 9, 31, 35, 58, 110 super-​feature, 132 superordinate (hypernym; hyperonym), 65, 105, 116 super-​phoneme, 132 supra-​segmental phonology, 34 S-​V(-​O) word order, 3, 4, 37, 40, 84, 89, 90, 91, 92 syllabification, 12 syllable, 12, 13, 35, 113, 114, 126 synonym, synonymous, synonymy, 82, 100, 117, 118, 140, 141 syntactic feature, entity, structure, etc., 2, 5, 7, 8, 11, 13, 19, 22, 23, 24, 27, 29, 30, 32, 33, 34, 36, 38, 39, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 61, 83, 95, 97, 108, 114, 115, 119, 120, 123, 137, 138, 140 syntagmatic entity, 110 syntax, 1, 2, 4, 5, 7, 11, 17, 19, 20, 24, 31, 33, 38, 39, 40, 45, 54, 95, 97, 98, 108, 109, 110, 112, 117, 119, 137 syntheme, 120 synthetic proposition, 117 system, as understood in axiomatic functionalism, 65, 79, 80, 104, 109, 117, 127, 140, 142 system ontology, 100, 103, 104, 106, 107, 110, 111, 112, 113, 115, 127, 129, 130, 131, 132, 139, 140, 142 systemic functional linguistics, 6, 26, 57, 93, 135; see also Hallidayan approach t (/​t/​), in American English, 132 Tagalog, 95 ta’xīr (backing, postposing), in traditional Arabic grammar), 48 tactics see ontotactics tājir, in Sudanese Arabic, 13

tāj-​u l-​islām, in Arabic, 35 taqdīm (fronting, preposing), in traditional Arabic grammar), 48 Taylor, John R., 141 tempo see speech tempo temporal (adverbial, clause, framework, setting, etc.), 82, 87, 88 tendency to mean, 140, 141 tertiary Peri/​Thema, predicand, predicate, theme, etc., 31, 48, 61, 69, 71 text organisation, in Pashova, 83 text type, 79 Thema (in ‘Peri/​Thema’), 21, 38, 135; see also Peri/​Thema thematic structure, 1, 34, 35, 57, 58 theme, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 15, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30, 31, 34, 35, 36, 38, 39, 48, 49, 51, 54, 56, 57, 58, 59, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 83, 84, 86, 87, 89, 90, 91, 92, 93, 94, 96, 98, 109, 135, 136, 137 theme-​introducer, 3, 49 theory (linguistic), 1, 4, 29, 58, 93, 94, 95, 96, 98, 139, 140 theory-​driven universals, 95 thetic sentence, 91 third Nuc/​Rhema, 70 third Peri/​Thema (tertiary Peri/Thema),  70 Thompson, Sandra A., 83 time contrast see contrast in time time linkage, 76 Tomioko, Satoshi, 35 Tomlin, Russell, 90 tonality, in Hallidayan approach, 126, 128 tone, 32, 126, 128 tone group, 11 tone unit, 11 tonicity, in Hallidayan approach, 126, 128 topic (textual, discoursal), 75, 83, 89, 90, 91 topic, as linguistic notion, 15, 28, 30, 64, 71, 81, 82, 83, 85, 86, 89, 93, 96 topic-​oriented/​concept-​based sentences, 4, 89, 90 traditional Arabic grammar, 2, 3, 11, 30, 40–​2, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 58, 59, 60, 61, 63, 64, 68, 69, 97 traditional linguistic analysis, Western, 7, 8, 10, 89, 96, 105, 108, 111, 112, 117, 124, 131 traffic signs, 29 transediting, 70 translation, 3, 9, 14, 19, 31, 46, 47, 49, 55, 58, 59, 70, 71, 102

164 Index transliteration, 8, 9, 31 transparent realisation, 34, 35, 39, 111, 113, 114, 115, 117, 118, 119, 120, 140 Trubetzkoy, Nikolai, 94 Truckenbrodt, Hubert, 34 truth-​conditional semantics, 116, 140, 141 ṯumma, in Arabic, 59 tune, intonational, 7, 11, 20, 23, 24, 37, 108, 126, 127, 128 Turkish, 113, 114, 116, 118 unaccented, unaccent, non-​accent, 2, 5, 7, 11, 14, 15, 16, 18, 19, 38, 40, 41, 45 unascribed phonetic-​image correlate, 104, 131 unascribed semantic-​image correlate, 104, 139 underarticulation, 80 underlying (form, etc.) see unique underlier unique underlier, 102, 103, 128 unit (in ontidics, ontematics, ontotactics, and para-​ontotactics), 105, 107 universal (linguistic), in non-​universalist approach, 95, 96, 98, 135, 136 universalism (universalist approaches), 1, 4, 58, 93, 94, 95, 96, 98 unknown (information), 13, 20, 24, 25, 53, 54, 56, 59, 84, 85 unmarked, unmarkedness, 53, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 86 unordered, 105, 107, 111, 120, 123, 124, 125, 128, 137, 138 unordered set see set; unordered Uriagereka, Juan, 38 utterance, in extended axiomatic functionalism, 5, 6, 18, 22, 26, 33, 65, 100, 119, 140 utterance, as general notion in linguistics, 11, 13, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 24, 25, 50, 126, 136 Vallduví, Enric, 35 value (realisational ‘value’), 86, 87, 88 variant (allomorphic, etc.), 8, 23; see also free variant, free variation verb, 3, 20, 43, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 55, 56, 58, 59, 62, 67, 68, 70, 82, 83, 84, 87, 88, 90, 91, 92, 96, 108, 113 verbal (phrase), 3, 8, 9, 10, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 47, 89, 122, 123, 124 verbal clause/​sentence (in Arabic), 3, 21, 29, 37, 40, 41, 46, 47, 48, 49, 51, 52, 53,

54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 61, 66–​8, 70, 86, 87, 88, 89, 97, 141 verbless sentence (in Arabic), 67 verb-​second Germanic languages, 3, 49, 88, 96 vernielen, in Dutch, 141 vernietigen, in Dutch, 141 Versteegh, Kees, 48, 52 Vialar, Thierry, 100 vocabulary, 87, 103 voiced, voicing, 136 V-​O-​S word order, 55, 56 Votre, Sebastio, 92 vowel deletion, 12, 128 V-​S(-​O/​C) word order, 4, 50, 55, 89, 90, 91, 92 wa-​, in Standard Arabic, 59, 63, 64 Wagner, Michael, 34 walad, in Sudanese and Standard Arabic, 8, 9, 10, 42, 43, 54, 55, 56, 57, 66, 69, 121, 122, 123, 129 wālid, in Standard Arabic, 54, 55, 56, 57, 66, 69, 71 Watson, Janet C.E., 1, 13, 47, 53, 63, 67, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 81, 84, 91, 102 weak accent, 15 weakly marked theme, 65, 66, 67, 68 Wedgwood, Daniel, 96 Weil, Henri, 24 West Greenlandic, 20 Wilkinson, Rob, 88 word (as kind of sign, grammatical entity, signum, lexo), 5, 12, 17, 20, 22, 35, 79, 103, 104, 105, 113, 116, 117, 118, 119, 133, 134, 140, 141 word class, 85 word order, 2, 4, 5, 7, 10, 11, 13, 22, 23, 24, 28, 39, 40, 41, 45, 48, 50, 53, 55, 61, 64, 79, 84, 88, 89, 90, 91, 92, 109, 119, 120, 141; see also S-​V(-​O) word order; V-​O-​S word order; V-​S(-​O/​C) word order word sequencing see word order word stress, 12, 34 writing, 112, 114, 116 written allomorph, 133 x (/​x/​), in German, 132 xabar, 11, 47, 60 xawājāt, in Sudanese Arabic, 14, 15, 16, 17, 19 Young, William, 87

Index 165 Zacharski, Ron, 35, 84 zaʕlān, in Sudanese Arabic, 8, 9, 10, 42, 43, 129 zero Peri/​Thema, 48, 53, 54, 55, 59, 60, 61, 71, 98

zero ‘phoneme’, 12 zero realisation, 12, 80 Zimmermann, Malte, 18 ziʕil, in Sudanese Arabic, 43 zōl, in Sudanese Arabic, 110

166