An Analytical Study of Word-Order Patterns in Standard Arabic Simple Sentence

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An Analytical Study of Word-Order Patterns in Standard Arabic Simple Sentence

Tedj Ghomri - Head of the Department of Foreign Languages

Mounya Souadkia - a third year PhD student of the General and Russian Linguistics Department, Philological Faculty, the RUDN University

Abstract

Тедж Гомри, Муния Суадкиа

В статье главный фокус исследования обусловлен синтаксическим анализом структуры простого предложения и его моделей порядка слов в StandardArabic. Основные методы -- описание и сопоставление порядка слов в представленных моделях. Прежде всего анализ касается дифференциации терминов для обозначения типов предложения и моделей порядка слов в средневековых и современных грамматиках. Более того, так называемая теория Sпbawayhian или `amil' предоставляет дополнительные разъяснения относительно этих лингвистических объектов в современном Standard Arabic. В качестве объекта исследования различных словопорядковых моделей выбраны простые предложения, поскольку в них уже представлены все модели, которые обладают объяснительной силой в процессе употребления. Существенно отметить, что Standard Arabic -- это язык, которому свойственен несвязанный, подвижный порядок слов, поэтому он реализует словопорядковые структурные свойства языков обоих типов -- VOS и SVO, но последний реализуется гораздо регулярнее.

Ключевые слова: Standard Arabic (SA), типы предложения, простое предложение, именное предложение(МгбЙ ЗУгнЙjumlaismiyya), глагольное предложение(МгбЙ ЭЪбнЙjumlafi?liyya), модели порядка слов, несвязанный порядок слов, структуры VSO и SVO.

parsing language arabic

Introduction

As is well known, each language has its own regulations and methods that facilitate our understanding of the way words are formed and joined together to create phrases, sentences and clauses. In the study of languages, these regulations and methods are known as the grammar of the language they represent. Due to the fact that there are various languages around the world, each belonging to the same or different family of languages, hence, languages which structurally differ from one another normally have got different regulations. For native speakers, these rules and regulations are acquired at an early age, when they are in their childhood through a natural and innate process. Furthermore, a native speaker possesses the ability to figure out if a sentence is likely to appear or not, though she/he might not have the ability to explain the rules governing the occurrence of such sentences and whether these sentences are grammatically correct or not. For a foreign language learner, the acquisition of such grammatical descriptions and rules happens consciously, with the learner being aware of such a process.

The Arabic language is, of course, one of the many various languages of the world; it is spoken by a large number of people as a native or second or foreign one. It is considered the language of Islam and the main language of the Holy Quran. Belonging to the Semitic family of languages, it is characterized by its rich morphology and complex grammar, therefore many linguists, native and foreign (known as Arabists) grew more interested in analyzing the Arabic language to explain the appearance of its various structures and rules of its application and acquisition. Due to the fact that Arabic is spoken in different places by different people, many varieties of the language were developed, for instance, the dialect used in countries of Northern Africa known as Arab Maghreb, such as in Algeria where the dialect called Maghrebi Arabic dialect is a mixture of mainly Berber, Arabic and loanwords from French, Ottoman Turkish and Spanish.Therefore, Standard Arabic is usually the model language chosen for investigation.

During the ancient period of Arabo-Islamic studies, Arabic grammar was among the disciplines to be formed. Syntactically, grammarians came up with a new signifi-cant theory called the theory of`ЪЗгб' `amil'(lit.: `user').The main purpose of this theory is to specify the rules of cases through different operators known as `ЪжЗгб'/?awвmil' (lit.:`operators'). The theory of `amal'is considered as the backbone of traditional Arab grammatical philosophy, and as a method used in modern analysis of Arabic grammar.

In the lateMiddleAges, studies on the Arabic language in general, and on its grammar, in particular, were negatively influenced by the decline of Islamic civilization during that period of time. However, the prosperity of Semitic philology in the 19th century Europe, paved the way for scholars to develop a notable interest in studying the Arabic language, and analyzing its grammatical structures. Additionally, during this period, these scholars were dependent on traditional Arabic grammatical discoveries, but it was only in the 20th century that the pieces of writing of the traditional Arab grammarians were really valued. Following the development of modern linguistics through Saussure's structuralism, then later Chomsky's generative-transformational grammar, and also some other developed approaches in Europe and the United States, similar to other languages, the research of the Arabic language and its grammar was also highly influenced. Particularly, these modern theories led to the appearance of new ways for linguists acquainted with the Arabic language, whose main task was to study and analyze various grammatical phenomena from the point of view of modern linguistics. Thus, the study of Standard Arabic and its grammar has been developed since the 8th century AD through Slbawayhi's Kitab, it has been the focus of study for traditional Arab grammarians, Semitic philologists, Arabists and modern linguists [1. P. XI].

Hence, the current study focuses on explaining some Arabic grammatical features highlighted by medieval grammarians and modern linguists alike. The theory developed to differentiate between sentence types and word-order patterns is also emphasized. Furthermore, the Slbawayhian theory of `amil' is also explained and analyzed in terms of sentence structures and word-order patterns. Later on, the simple sentence in Standard Arabic with its main components and basic syntactic characteri-zations are defined analytically. Furthermore, different word-order patterns of simple sentences are presented and analyzed along with examples illustrating and providing evidence of the different patterns that exist.

1.Sentence Types and Word-Order Patterns in Standard Arabic

1.1 Sentence types VS. Word-order patterns

Both medieval grammarians and modern Arabists have always been considering the subject of sentence types in Standard Arabic. Surprisingly, the concept of verbal sentence or in Arabic (МгбЙЙЙЭЪбнЙЙЙjumla fi?liyya) and nom-inal sentence (ЗУЙЙгнЙМгбЙЙЙjumla ismiyya) was first introduced in the ancient Ar-abic grammatical literature, though during the earliest stages of medieval Ar-abic grammatical writings, the difference between these main sentence types is implied. Moreover, a nominal sentence is a sentence that starts with a noun (a noun phrase), whereas, a verbal one starts with a verb (a verb phrase) [2. P. 488]. Additionally, in his Kitвb, Sоbawayhi presents an accurate explana-tion of various syntactic formations in Arabic; nevertheless the primary dif-ference is highlighted by him. The following model sentences show the dis-tinction between the two main structures:(1) нРеИ ТнПyad?habu Zaydun (translated as: `Zayd goes')(2)ЪИПЗббеГОжЯ?Abdu-llвhi?axыka (which means `?Abdullвh is your brother')The first model sentence (1) begins with a verb (нРеИ = yad?habu `goes'). Howev-er, the second one is a nominal sentence because it begins with a noun which is Abdu-llвhi. Subsequently, grammarians started using these models (1 and 2) as jumla fi?liyya (МгбЙ ЭЪбнЙ=verbal sentence) and jumla ismiyya(МгбЙ ЗУгнЙ=nominal sentence), nowadays, these two terms are used in the grammar of Standard Arabic [1. P. 6].

According to Peled, a sentence type can be described using entirely pure syntactic terms, alongside the models utilized by the medieval grammarians. Peled also points out that for any specific language, one can assume one or more model sentences that can be made up of a set of small distinctive units characterizing all sentences that are likely to occur. Furthermore, Peled adds that word-order, case marking and grammatical agreement are the guidelines to those model sentences mentioned before, she explains that: “If, for a given language L, it can be shown that any given sentence, however complex, is reducible to one of a given number of such nuclear model sentences, these model sentences are defined as sentence types in L.” [Ibid, P. 4].

Present-day linguistic studies of Arabic syntax have been extensively basedon Chomsky's generative grammar theory, and with regard to word-order studies, numerous researchers have decided to use Joseph Greenberg's method that emphasizes universals and typology as a guideline in their language studies. Greenberg believed that each language has its basic word-order patterns; more specifically the ordering of the subject (S) and object (O) in the sentence corresponding to the verb (V). In addition to that, word-order patterns such as SVO, VSO, and SOV (which are the most common) are assumed to have a correlation with some particular grammatical characteristics [3. P. 61].

Later on, in their works, Winfred P. Lehmann (1973) and Theo Vennemann (1974) changed the main idea of word-order patterns covered in Greenberg's methodology. On the one hand, Lehmann suggested that a differentiation between VO and OV languages (i.e. object following or object preceding) was necessary instead of introducing word-order patterns with regard to the place of the subject and object depending on the verb. On the other hand, in his typology, Vennemann distinguished between two types of languages: XV and VX languages, then he proposed a definition for an XV language: “a language in which the normal position of the finite verb is the clause-final position in main declarative clauses.” A language that shows a different word-ordering was called a VX language [1. P. 2].

Modern cross-linguistic studies have questioned the model proposed by Greenberg in terms of its basic word-order patterns, as well as suggesting different typologies. In their examinations, researchers fundamentally took into consideration syntactic, pragmatic and cognitive properties to explain various word-order patterns. Subsequently, one remarkable idea is of Mithun, in which she differentiates between language that are syntactically based and those which are pragmatically based ones. Peled mentioned that:

`She [Mithun] argues that syntactically-based languages have a syntactically defined basic word order that may be altered, for pragmatic purposes, by right- and left- dislocation processes. In pragmatically based languages, in contrast, all ordering reflects pragmatic considerations. Unusual situations are marked by other means reordering is usually assumed to result in a theme-rheme... with new or newsworthy elements following the `old' or `given' information, in pragmatically based languages, the order is nearly the reverse.' [Ibid, P. 2].

Recently, Kristen E. Brustadhas proposed a typology of Arabic that surprisingly deviates from Greenberg's model, and looks closer to the medieval Arab grammarians' approach. Although in the analysis of word-order, the paradigm of Greenberg has continued to be the most significant model of study, not least amidst Arabists and linguists concerned with the study of the Arabic language. Nevertheless, it is worth to mention that a general linguist whose main focus is on investigating an Indo- European language such as English, French or German, where the verb is the basis of each sentence; therefore, the placement of every other component of a sentence is to be determined according to the verb. In the Arabic language, sentences that exist without a verb; can be found both in classical as well as modern texts of Arabic, and most of the times this kind of sentences share fundamental characteristics with sentences that have a verb [Ibid, P. 2].

Rather than the medieval Arab grammarians, modern researchers have drawn a separating line between the two model sentences ЦСИ ЪИПЗббеТнПЗdaraba?Abdu-llвhi Zaydan(lit.: hit Abdullah Zayd) andЪИПЗббеЦСИ ТнПЗ?Abdu-llвhi daraba Zaydan (lit.:Abdullah hit Zayd), characterizing two word-order patterns, first one is VSO while the other one is SVO. Obviously, it corresponds with the Greenberg's paradigm, where the order of other elements in a sentence is relative to the verb. Actually, it has been the trend in studying the sentence structure of Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) as well as modern Arabic dialects. Furthermore, these two word-order patterns VSO and SVO became the two basic sentence types in the Arabic language. However, in the recent study, the terms VSO and SVO are used to refer to word-order patterns, and not to sentence types. Thus, the notion of sentence type is difficult to understand, and is not restricted to these two word-order patterns [Ibid, P. 3]. Subse-quently, in his dictionary of grammatical terms, Robert L. Trask introduces the definition of sentence type:

`Sentence type: One of the four traditional classes of sentence, in a classification which attends only to surface form and not to discourse function, the four types being statements, commands, questions and exclamations, conventionally associated with the four [4. P. 251].

According to Trask's definition, the type of sentence is dependent on the nature of its predicate and the position of the predicative components (i.e. subject and predicate) with respect to the relation between them. In addition, all types can be utilized to form a statement or ask a question, an imperative form is characterized by a sentence headed by a verb.

1.2 The Sіbawayhian theory of ЪЗгб amir(`operator')

Similar to other basic ideologies, the concept of sentence types began to be explained and analyzed during the late period in the development of Arabic grammar.

Through time, grammarians had been focusing on distinguishing between a number of primary structures in the Arabic language, e.g., those shown in sentences like:ЦСИ ЪИПЗббеТнПЗdaraba `Abdu-llвhi Zaydan (lit.: hit Abdullah Zayd) and ТнП гдШбЮ Zaydun muntaliqun (lit.: Zayd is going off), without emphasizing the sentence type. According to Sibawayhi, whose book Kitвbis considered to be the first book explicit-ly explaining the grammatical constructions of the Arabic language, the concept of the sentence is found on the principle of what is called in Arabic as ЕУдЗП`isnвd(de-spite the fact that the term itself is not commonly used in the book, the term's literal meaning is `leaning,' which refers to the two predicative constituent of the sentence; that is the subject and the predicate, indicating that one somehow is held up by the other. Sibawayhi applies the two model sentencesЪИПЗббеГОжЯ`Abdu-llвhi `axыka(translated as Abdullah is your brother) and нРеИ ТнПyadhabu Zaydun (goes Zayd) as expressions of `isnвd. To explain more, Sibawayhi refers to the first predicative con-stituents as musnad, while to the second as musnad 'ilayhi. Yet, Sibawayhiappears to have been fascinated not only by sentence constituents, but also by sentence for-mation; i.e. the way a sentence structure is formed [1. P. 6].Various grammarians use the term ?amil'to refer to a one-way process where a component in a sentenceworks ahead of another by assigning its case. The ?вmil'(`operator') works ahead the ma?mыlгЪгж б(translated as: the affected), resulting in changes in its case ending (?i?rвb ЕЪСЗИ ). The?вmil'is generally a verb or a particle, for example, a preposition. The ma?mыlis a nominal or a verb of the yaf?aluнЭЪбform (which is the imperfect form). Moreover, a fundamental notion in the ?amil'theory is ta?diya КГПнЙwhich indicates the transitivity of the verb, referring to sentences with the VSO word-order pattern. In taking into consideration the notion of ta?diya, it is sup-posed that in sentences such as ЦСИ ЪИПЗббеТнПЗdaraba?Abdu-llвhi Zaydan (hit Abdul-Аlah Zayd), it is the verb ЦСИ `daraba' (hit in this case) which establishes the for-mation of the sentence. More specifically, the verb `daraba'influences the first nom-inal (the fв?ilЭЗЪбwho is ?Abdu-llвhi), giving it the raf?ЗбСЭЪcase. This influence of the verb goes further (in Arabic нКЪПмyata?addв) through the fв?il, into the second nomi-nal (the maf?ыlгЭЪжб who is Zaydan), giving it the nasbЗбдХИ case [Ibid, pp. 5--6].Although, Sоbawayhidid not precisely propose a well-defined separation of sen-tence type, he certainly cleared the path for later grammarians to develop a hypothesis providing that any sentence in the Arabic language can be represented by one of these two types: on the one hand, a verb-based sentence (in other words a verbal sentence), while on the other hand, a noun-based sentence (a nominal sentence). In a matter of fact, his division between two types of ?amal was subsequently translated into a pre-cise theory of two corresponding sentence type.

2.The Simple Sentence in Standard Arabic

The Arabic language of the Semitic family of languages is morphologically rich and has a flexible word ordering. According to Cantarino, a sentence `...is usually defined as a self-contained unit of speech consisting of a meaningful word or word ar- rangement.'As it was mentioned above, in Standard Arabic grammar, there is a distinction between two basic types of sentences in the simple sentence structure, one is the nominal sentence(jumla ismiyya) and the other is the verbal sentence (jumla fi?liyya). Hence, nominal sentences contain two main parts: a subject (in Arabic гИКПГ mubtada?) and a predicate (ОИСxabar) [5. P. 2].

2.1 The constituents of simple sentences and their syntactic characterization

In theArabic grammar, the division of words into verbs, nouns, and particles is one of the most important criteria. Grammarians specialized in analyzing the Arabic language explained each of these elements in correspondence with principles from phonological, morphological, syntactic, and semantic/pragmatic levels of linguistic analysis, significantly, morphological and syntactic levels. In his Alfiyya ГбЭнЙ (rhymed book dealing with Arabic grammar), Ibn Malik provided some important definitions of nouns, verbs, and particles.

2.1.1 Nouns

n Standard Arabic, a noun can be defined as: `a word that names a person, place, or thing, as in Yusuf нжУЭ, bankИдЯand pen Юбг. Anoun can either be definite (in Arabic or indefinite (i.e.,ЙуСцЯшудбуЗalnakera). On the one hand, a definite noun is a noun which names a particular person, place or thing, for instance, MuhammadсПушгуНхг(The Prophet peace be upon him), Madinah ЗбгПндЙ(the Holy City), and Black-StoneсбуЗсуМуНсхСсужУубГЗПхс(the Holy stone). On the other hand, an indefinite noun is a noun that refers to unpar-ticular person, place or thing, for example a girlШЭбЙ,a schoolгПСУЙ, a chairЯСУн . Ad-ditionally, a noun can be classified into two gender classifications, masculine (схСушЯуРхгбуЗ) and feminine (схЛушдуДхгбуЗ), in most cases the ending of a noun determines whether it is a

Tedj Ghomri, Mounya Souadkia. RUDN Journal of Language Studies, Semiotics and Semantics, 2020, 11 (1), 78--91FUNCTIONAL GRAMMAR AND SEMANTICS85masculine noun or a feminine one, the “Й” (known as`taa almarbota) in Й гПСУ(=school) indicates that the noun is feminine. Different from English, the noun in Ar-abic is divided into three categories regarding the number; they are SingularПуСъЭгъбЗ(e.g. a man `СМб'), DualмшудЛгъбЗ(e.g. two men `СМбЗд ') and PluralЪъгуМъбуЗ(e.g. men `СМЗб').Furthermore, Zaggagi explains a noun as being a subject (ЭЗЪбfa'il) or an object (гЭЪжбИеmaflul bihi). Ibn Hisamacknowledges the appearance of a noun with nuna-tion (ЗбКджнд tanween) and the definite article, as well as having the feature of being talked about (muhaddat`anhu). This feature is to some extent similar to what Zaggagi mentioned about a noun being a subject, even if it is semantically and pragmatically directed. It is impossible not to mention the work of Sarrag which was the first total list of noun characteristics.

In his list, the syntactic characteristics Sarrag adds are ap-pearance with a genitive particle, modification by an adjective (na't, in ArabicдЪК ), appearance as topic (in nominal sentence), non-appearance with the verbal modifi-ersУжЭ`sawfa'(indicating the future; equivalent to `it will'), ЮП`qad'(it may)(indication of perfective). Another list appeared later in the work of Anbari in which a few modifications were made; appearance with the vocative particle is intro-duced, also it is mentioned that nouns are those which appear as topics, subjects, ob-jects and possessor [6. P. 213].

2.1.2 Verbs

In the description of verbs, syntax does not play an important role as it is with nouns. Sarrag emphasizes the semantic contribution, and negative explanation, for instance, the things that do not specify a noun. As for Anbari, `verbs are words which cannot be talked about' (mukhbar `anhu, occur as subject) and with which you talk about something (as predicate, mukhbar bihi)'. In addition, the two classifications (mukhbar `anhu/bihiгОИСЪде/Ие) are important in differentiating between nouns and verbs: nouns appear as both due to the fact that they can act as subjects or as predi-cates in the nominal sentence, while verbs appear only as predicates. Anbari adopts the same classification but refers to it with the term `isnad ЕУдЗП. Thus, a verb can act as predicate, гУдПmusnadbut cannot be anargument to a predicate [Ibid, P. 214].

Additionally, Mubarrad does not give a definition of verbs following a syntactic criterion, and Zaggagi provides only a semantic explanation, verbs are words that take past, present and future tenses that express an action. Yet, Zaggagi considers that verbs should be explained through syntactic criterion, or partially through analyzing the relations between sentence components when he compares them with nouns. Nouns are considered, in a logical way, to be `the first' (meaning more basic) since there are sentences containing only of nouns, and if a verb appears as an agent, a noun must go with it. This implies that a verb a relation between an agent noun and itself [Ibid, P. 215].

2.1.3 Particles

The particles are considered to be the most heterogeneousamong word classes and are divided into numerous sub-classed: Anbari and 'Asrar provides six, Sarrag gives eight and Zaggagi provides a semantic description, `(words which) have a meaning by virtue of their referring to another word. ' Nonetheless, Zaggagi makes no attempt to provide a complete grammatical definition, neither syntactic nor morphological. But, once the morphological, syntactic and semantic descriptions of nouns and verbs have been identified, any words which do not meet such descriptions are believed to be particles. Moreover, Ibn Ginni gives a summary to what particles are, he explains them as follows: `(particles) are whatever have neither the characteristics (`alamat ЪбЗгЗК of nouns nor verbs' [Ibid, P. 215].

3. Word-order Patterns of Simple Sentences

3.1 Verbal Sentence and Nominal Sentence

Word-order in Arabic sentences has different patterns. As it was mentioned above, the Arabic sentence takes two main forms that are usually used to contrast each other. The first is called МгбЙ ЭЪбнЙjumla fi?liyya, `verbal sentence' where a VP (verbal phrase) precedes the NP (noun//nominal phrase). The second structure is called МгбЙ ЗУгнЙjumla ismiyya, [7. P. 33]. Examples: (1) Verbal sentence:МЗБ ЗбжбПd?aa-a al-waladu `the boy came'(2) Nominal sentence:ЗбжбП МЗбУal-waladu d?aliss-un `the boy is seated'In (1), the VPМЗБ d?aa-a (came) precedes the NPЗбжбПal-waladu (the boy), and in (2), the sentence begins with an NP, ЗбжбПal-waladu.ThenominalsentencecomprisestwoelementsknownasгИКПГmubtada', thatcanbetranslatedastheinitialNP, andОИСxabar, orthepredicate. In(2) theinitialNPisЗбжбПal-waladu, andМЗбУd?aliss-unisthepredicate. Thetwocomponentsarealwaysnominative, andagreeintermsofnumber, gender, aswellasdefiniteness[8. P. 77].Two main constituentsmake up a nominal sentence in Standard Arabic, mubtada'and xabar. The initial NP or mubtada' has three features; firstly it must be definite, secondly, it must carry the nominative case, and thirdly it has to be a single phrase. The predicate or xabar, however, can be a single word, phrase, or a complete sentence, e.g.:ЗбГгЭн ЗбгШИО al-ummu fi al-matbax-i `the mother is in the kitchen'Traditional grammarians define the predicate xabar of the nominal sentence as the second main constituent whose role is to report, add, and complete the meaning of the sentence or clause, it agrees with the subject or mubtada', it can be a single word or a complete phrase. The simple form of xabar can be anadjective or a noun, as in the following ex-amples:ЗбМж ггШСal-jaw-u mumtr-un(adj) `the weather is rainy'ЗНгП ХНЭн Ahmad-u sahafy-un(noun)`Ahmed (is) a journalist'In both examples the report is a single NP, the report isггШСmumtir-un (rainy) in the first example and ХНЭн sahafy-un (a journalist) in the second. One can notice that in both examples the mubtada'(initial NP), and its xabar (report), agree in gen-der and number. In both examples, however, the predicate is indefinite while the xa-bar is definite; it is said here that the predicate receives definiteness from the initial NP [9. P. 246].In a nominal sentence, the complex report can be in the form of a verb phrase or nominal phrase as illustrated in the examples below:ЗбгПнСЭн ЗМКгЗЪal-mudir-u fi id?tima-in `The director (is) in a meeting'In the example above the report is the prepositional phrase (jumla fi?liyya) Эн ЗМКгЗЪfi id?tima-in (in a meeting), which also follows the initial noun ЗбгПнСal-mudir-u (the director), it is an example of a nominal clause with a locative clause report in which fi id?tima-in reports the location of the `director' assuming that the meeting place is known [10. P. 16].Another type of complex xabar is a verb phrase as in the following example:ЗбИдК КНИ ЗбУЭСal-bintutu-hib-u al-safar-a `The girl loves travelling'бнбм КНИ ЗбУЭСLeyla tu-hib-u-al-safar-a `Leyla loves travelling'In this example the initial NP ЗбИдК al-bintu (the girl) is a mubtada' carrying the nominative case. The initial NP al-bintu can be replaced by the name Leyla, it also becomes the subject to the VP tu-hib-u al-safar-a; the initial NP is a definite specific noun, and the verb agrees with the xabarin gender, person, and number.In summary, the nominal sentence is composed of two constituents: the mubtada', or (initial NP) and the xabar(predicate). The initial NP, mubtada', can be simply defined as any definite, generic, or specified, NP heading a sentence, and the xabar of nominal sentences can either be a nominal or verbal constituent [11. P. 49].

3.2 VSO versus SVO

The Arabic language is a flexible one in terms of word order. Examples in traditional and modern Arabic comprise up to eight patterns as illustrated in the Table 1 below, providing evidence of the flexibility in word-order patterns:

Таблица 1

Examples of possible word-order patterns in Standard Arabic /

Примеры возможных шаблонов порядка слов в стандартном арабском языке

Only two patterns will be dealt with: VSO and SVO due to the fact that these are the most commonly used in modern prosaic Arabic, the other patterns are more frequently used in poetry and eloquent artistic style, not to be found in daily writings [11. P. 50].

According to Arab grammarians, VSO is the basic syntactic word order, and SVO is derivate of the VSO, as a result of subject movement. VSO order is altered to highlight shift in focus, emphasis and information distribution. Stylistically speaking, VSO order is more frequent than SVO as seen in the writings of many Modern Arab writings. The VSO pattern is used in many cases such as:

Passive sentences (they are commonly found in writings, they usually verbal sentences)ЭКН ЗбИЗИ foutihaal-babu `lit.: opened (was) the door' `The door was open'b.When independent subject pronouns are deleted ГдЗ )ЮСГК ЗбгЮЗб)(ana) qara'-tu al-maqal-a `(I) read the article' `I read the article'The SVO pattern is used in certain positions such as:

a.Sentences consisting of a subject and a NP predicate: ЗНгПНЗЦСЗAhmad-u hadir-an` lit.: Ahmed present' `Ahmed is present'

b.Sentences beginning with emphatic `inna' and similar emphatic words.Ед ЗНгПНЗЦСinna Ahmed-a hadir-un `Ahmed is present (not absent as you thought)'

c.Sentences beginning with auxiliary `kaana' and similar auxiliary (incomplete) verbs:ЯЗд ЗНгПНЗЦСЗkaana Ahmad-u hadir-an `lit.: was Ahmed present' `Ahmed was present (but is no longer)'The sentenceЗНгПЯЗд НЗЦСЗAhmad-u kaana hadir-an is also correct, but with the slight difference that contrary to the previous one kaana Ahmad-u hadir-an, the latter sentence emphasizes Ahmed's presence more than the time of presence. Ana-lyzing Arabic texts is challenging because this language has diverse morphology due to its inflectional nature and flexibility in terms of word order and the use of clitics attached to words [12. P. 5]. In this work two different word orders in Arabic (SVO, VOS) will be considered so as to show how they are derived. Below are some of the rather challenging characteristics of the Arabic language [13. P. 2].

A.Arabic has a relatively free word-order and it is therefore not unusual to find each of VSO and SVO within an Arabic text as in: a. ЮСГЗбгПнСЗбКЮСнСqara'-a al-mudir-u al-taqrir-a `lit.: read the director the report' `the director read the report'b. ЗбгПнСЮСГЗбКЮСнСal-mudir-u qara'-a al-taqrir-a `Thedirector read the report'Both examples (a) and (b) are grammatically correct and imply the same mean-ing (the director read the report) with difference in emphasis, for in the first sentence, the act of reading is emphasized, whereas in the second example, the focus is on the doer of the action of reading (the director himself and not someone else, or to mean that it is no less than director who read it, depending on intonation).

B.Another challenge is that Arabic is a clitic language, i.e. one in which mor-phemes are morphologically linked to other words; these can be coordinating con-junctions, a definite article, prepositions; a particle, or pronouns attached to the be-ginning or end of a word.

For example: c. РеИд dhahab-na `they (female pronoun) left'

Example (c) above comprises the verb РеИд dhahaba and a clitic д `na'that acts as the subject for the verb dhahaba, (the male counterpart would have been РеИжЗdhahb-ou).

C.The omission of diacritics in most written texts, which makes almost only na-tives of advanced learners able to guess the type of word being used; so that РеИ dha-haba` (he) left' or РеИ dhahab (gold) can only be distinguished from the context if such signs are omitted.D.Arabic is a pro-drop language. The subject can be omitted leaving it the read-er to decide if there is an omitted pronoun in the subject position or not. Let us con-sider the exchange below as an example:d.Гнд бнбмїayna Leyla?`Where is Leyla?'e.ен )РеИК Ебм ЗбгПСУЙ)(hya) dhaba-t ila al-madrassat-i `She left to school'Here, the subject pronoun (hya) `she' is often omitted.Another challenge with Arabic added to the omission of diacritic signs is the abundant use of homographs that differ not only inmeaning but in the part of speech as well (see example (f) above or the example below:f. ЗбИнК Мгнбal-bayt-u jameel-un `the house(or a poem verse) is beautiful'Here the meaning of the word ЗбИнК al-baytpreceded by the definite article al-and the diacritic sign -u implying the word is an initial (mubtada) or subject in this case is quite hard to know unless the context is clear.The sentence can mean that the speaker likes a housethey are looking at ora versein a poem because both are writ-ten and referred to as ЗбИнК al-bayt.

they are looking at or a verse in a poem because both are written and referred to as Anil al-bayt.

Conclusion

Belongingto the Semitic family of languages the Arabic language is characterized by rich morphology and flexible word order. Many medieval grammarians attempted to analyze the grammatical aspects of Standard Arabic, following a lot of various approaches and referring to different sources for the study. They also tried to identify the types of sentences that exist in the Arabic language, as a consequence, the concept of verbal sentence (or in Arabic jumla fi liyya) and nominal sentence (jumla ismiyya) was introduced during the early stages of investigating the Arabic language. Later on, grammarians and modern linguists started analyzing the simple sentence structures and characterizing its basic components in order to identify the word-order patterns of each structure. In the end, it was concluded that Standard Arabic is a language characterized by its free word-order, meaning it can be both VSO and SVO, though more commonly VSO, as compared with other languages, as to say for instance, the English language, which has a fixed SVO word-order.

References / Библиографический список

1. Peled, Y. (2009). Sentence Types and Word-Order Patterns in Written Arabic: Medieval and Modern Perspectives. Brill Academic Pub Edited by T. Muraoka and C.H.M. Versteegh, Studies in Semitic Languages and Linguistics, 52. Leiden.

2.Souadkia, M. (2017). Comparative Study of Word-order Patterns of Simple Sentences in English and Arabic, RUDN Journal of Language Studies, Semiotics and Semantics, 8(2), 485--493.

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13.Moubaiddin, A., Hammo, B., Obeid, N. & Tuffaha, A. (2013). Investigating the Syntactic Structure of Arabic Sentences. Amman: University of Jordan..

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18.Noun and Its Types. Madinah Arabic.

Сведения об авторах:

Тедж Гомри (Алжир), доктор лингвистики, заведующий кафедрой иностранных языков, Тахри Мохамад Университет, Бешар, Алжир, преподает лингвистическую семантику и семиотику, читает курс методологии. Область исследований: обучение иностранным языкам студентов из стран Северной Африки, прикладная лингвистика и оценки ELT; конфликтология средневековой Англии. Имеет ряд публикаций в Алжире и за рубежом;

Саудкия Мунья, аспирант 3-го года обучения по кафедре общего и русского языкознания филологического факультета Российского университета дружбы народов. Сфера исследований: контрастивное функциональное описание моделей порядка слов в простом предложении в английском и арабском языках;

Informayion about the authors:

Tedj Ghomri (Algeria), Dr. Head of the Department of Foreign Languages, Tahri Mohamed University, Bechar Algeria, teaching semantics and semiotics and research methodology at the same department. Sphere of research: foreign language teaching to learners of North African origins, applied linguistics and evaluation in ELT in addition to conflicts in Medieval England. He has several publications in local and international journals;

Souadkia Mounya, a third year PhD student of the General and Russian Linguistics Department, Philological Faculty, the RUDN University; Sphere of the scientific research: Contrastive Functional Description of Word-order Patterns in English and Arabic Sentences;

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