DAHLGREN, Sven-Olof — Word Order in Arabic (Orien- Talia Gothoburgensia, 12)
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755 BIBLIOTHECA ORIENTALIS LVI N° 5/6, September-December 1999 756 ARABICA — ISLAM DAHLGREN, Sven-Olof — Word Order in Arabic (Orien- talia Gothoburgensia, 12). Acta Universitatis Gothobur- gensis, Göteborg, 1998. (23cm, 273). ISBN 91-7346- 328-0; ISSN 0078-656X. sFr 200,-. It is a pleasure to welcome yet another book dealing with word order in Arabic. This is a very substantial and at the same time very challenging subject. Word order in any lan- guage is one of the essential tools not only for learning and understanding a language, both spoken and written, but it pro- vides as well a basis for studying in depth all possible vari- ants of expression according to the situations involved. Thus word order reflects the flexibility of a language in meeting the requirements of communication. In addition, in a wider context, word order is a very important element in language typology and may have relevance for cultural and anthropo- logical studies. 757 BOEKBESPREKINGEN — ARABICA - ISLAM 758 On a “regional” level, to cite a quotation given by the Chapter five, as its name suggests, is dedicated to the author from B. Ingham1), “the question of whether Arabic is “pragmatic arrangement of discourse”. Here the author, bas- essentially an SVO (Subject Verb Object) or a VSO (Verb ing himself on P. J. Hopper3), introduces two very important Subject Object) language has interested Arabists since the notions which he uses extensively in his research, namely, beginning of the Chomskian era. Classical Arabic is often foreground and background. Foreground is the main story considered to be VSO while some modern dialects are classed line, which is characterized by events that come in sequence, as SVO” (p. 12). The author of the book under review takes one after the other, to give the skeleton of a narrative. The up the task of determining “basic word order in the eastern supportive material which is not in sequence with the main dialects of modern, spoken Arabic” (p. 12) and challenges story line, because it may be concurrent or located at any other some general notions about word order in Modern Colloquial point on the time axis, is referred to as background (p. 61). Arabic (MCA). Further on in the same chapter Dahlgren takes up three His next aim is to study “in what respect there is a funda- other notions, namely, tense, aspect and modality, which mental difference in word order” between written Arabic and interact in a very intricate way in most languages. This the dialects. His investigation focuses as well on demon- process of interaction “is closely interconnected with the strating “how word order is affected by different factors” and foreground/-background distinction” (p. 64). Thus in fore- how it may vary “according to a speaker’s pragmatic options, ground “past tense, punctual and perfective aspect and realis which on the sentence level most often concern the thematic mood dominate, whereas in background we are more likely structure” (p. 6). to find present, future and habitual tense, durative and imper- At the very beginning it is important to mention that fective aspect and irrealis mood” (p. 83). The author stresses Dahlgren considers “the inductive paradigm and framework the specific role that the so-called aspectualizers4) play in of such modern linguists as Greenberg, Givón and Hopper as MCA to express aspect distinctions. the most promising approach of such an undertaking” (p. 24). In chapter six, “Markedness in Discourse vs. Basic Word I would agree with his insistence on inductive method Order”, the author discusses issues like markedness, distrib- together with empirical investigations of languages as the ution of markedness in discourse, and types of marked con- “basis for theories of language” (p. 225). structions, all of which have to be taken into consideration Dahlgren, puts his study within the frame of functional lin- in any discourse analysis, but which must be excluded in guistics, placing emphasis first of all on the communicative role defining basic word order. of language. He bases his research theoretically on the ideas of Chapter seven, “Research on Word Order Typology and H. Weil and the Prague School of linguistics (mainly V. Math- Universals in Linguistics”, is designed to acquaint the reader esius) further elaborated by J. Firbas, F. Danesh, M. A. K. Hal- with the achievements of universal linguistics in the field of liday and S. C. Dik. To be more precise, Dahlgren applies their word order typology. functional sentence perspective. The author also takes into con- In the summaries of chapters six and seven Dahlgren sideration A. Moutaouakil’s application to Modern Standard remarks that “whether dialogue or narrative is the most basic Arabic of the functional grammar of Dik, who “developed a type of discourse is obviously not yet settled, which consti- model for presenting a comprehensive grammar with the Func- tutes a problem in the present investigation” (p. 93) and that tional Sentence Perspective incorporated” (p. 35). “no convincing set of principles which explains different In a brief and concentrated fashion this theoretical basis for basic word orders in languages is found among the ones we the author’s approach is presented in chapter three, “The have surveyed” (p. 114). But the author is discouraged nei- Functional Sentence Perspective”. Further on, in chapter four, ther by this theoretical vagueness nor by his own conclusion “‘Being Talked about’ vs. Known or Obvious Information in in the summary of chapter eight, “Views on Basic Word a ‘Functional Text Perspective’”, Dahlgren widens the theo- Order in Colloquial Arabic”, to the effect that all statements retical basis of his research and applies “what now could be on basic word order in Colloquial Arabic are “to a great called ‘Functional Text Perspective,’” which has developed, extent conflicting”. Rather he asserts that “since neither any as he puts it, “under such labels as ‘Text Linguistics’, ‘Prag- work with questionnaires, nor an empirical investigation, has matics’, ‘Discourse Analysis’, ‘Functional Grammar’” (p. 45). been done yet on such a crucial subject as basic word order, Citing T. Vennemann2), the author takes as his working we find it of urgent importance for Arabic linguistics that a hypothesis “that the most fundamental changes in basic word proper investigation will be performed in this field” (p. 119). order can only be understood in relation to the often conflict- Chapters nine to thirteen, together with the Supplement, ing demands of semantics and pragmatics on grammatical are the most important part of the book, the core of the structure” (p. 45). author’s investigation into word order in colloquial Arabic. In the same chapter Dahlgren gives definitions of the Chapter nine, “The Present Investigation of MCA and Early notions discourse, and its different types, and topicality, of Arabic”, is the longest of them. Dahlgren describes the types which he makes use in his further investigation. of texts that he has chosen to study as narratives (his main In order to achieve his stated aims by the application of source), dialogues and descriptive texts. In his view “these his chosen methods and the above mentioned theories, three types of discourses cover nearly all (maybe 95%) of our Dahlgren considers it necessary in four subsequent chapters to discuss other general linguistic issues which have direct bearing on the subject of his study. 3) P. J. Hopper, “Aspect and Foregrounding in Discourse”, in Syntax and Semantics 12, ed. by T. Gyvón, New York 1979, pp. 213–241. 4) As Dahlgren explains, “these are verbs, or particles which originated 1) B. Ingham, Najdi Arabic: Central Arabian, Amsterdam/Philadelphia from verbs, that have lost their original meaning, and only serve to empha- 1994 (LOALL 1), p. 38. size a certain aspectual distinction. In the Modern Colloquial Arabic of the 2) T. Vennemann, “Theoretical Word Order Studies: Results and Eastern Mediterranean areas punctual aspect, ingressive, durative, progres- Problems”, PL 7 (1974): 5–25. sive and repetitive are expressed through such aspectualizers” (p. 83). 759 BIBLIOTHECA ORIENTALIS LVI N° 5/6, September-December 1999 760 texts on Modern Colloquial Arabic (not counting poetry)” Chapter eleven, “Results — Dialogue & Description”, pre- (p. 130). The chapter contains a summary of important con- sents the results of the study of word order in the other two cepts, concise descriptions of the areas investigated, a list of types of discourse. The author is quite certain about his main the texts used, and some sample texts with English transla- conclusion: “Having taken the objects into consideration we tion. Very important is the chain of successive steps in his found no conspicuous difference between dialogue and methodology (including description of the initial analytic pro- description; in both SVO was generally overwhelmingly cedure, the notation of sentential and pragmatic categories dominant, which makes it reasonable to regard SVO as basic and problems such as coordination vs. subordination and for these types of discourses. Even with indefinite subjects foreground vs. background). The steps of the analysis and the we found the same dominance of SVO” (p. 205). results of a detailed study of the positions of independent sub- Chapter twelve, “Results — Early Arabic”, is also dedi- jects, referred to as noun phrases (NPs), and the word order cated to results of the investigation of word order. Again I in respect to the foreground/background distinction are will not go into details, but some important conclusions expressed visually by tables. should be mentioned. Dahlgren shows that “VS dominates in Chapter ten, “Results—Narrative Discourse”, comprises a both foreground and background in narrative discourse in very detailed picture of the conclusions to which the investi- Early Arabic” (p. 216). Further he concludes that “studying gation leads. The author is very careful and specific in pre- clauses where all three elements S, O and V appeared, we senting the results of his analysis of narrative discourse in his found that VO order is strictly followed in all the three types MCA material.