Preferred Argument Structure: A Comparative Analysis of Arabic Discourse
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.35516/hum.v51i5.4627Keywords:
Information flow, discourse analysis, activation costAbstract
Objectives: This paper offers a new analysis procedure of Arabic discourse by examining the correlation between information flow and grammatical forms, specifically the core arguments of the verb: the subject and the direct object.
Methods: The discourse analysis in this paper compares three types of spoken texts which differ across time and genre: Spontaneous spoken Arabic, spontaneous spoken Standard Arabic, and spoken Classical Arabic. The analysis is within the framework of Preferred Argument Structure (PAS) which refers to the observed tendency for speakers to avoid expressing more than one lexical argument or more than one piece of new information in a clause.
Results: The results show that information flow in Arabic discourse is generally consistent with the cognitive constraints of PAS, although the results varied according to the type of discourse. Contemporary spoken Arabic exhibited the most consistency with PAS whereas Classical Arabic exhibited the least consistency.
Conclusions: The distribution of information across the core arguments of the verb forms patterns that can be statistically tracked and predicted. The subject of the transitive verb is for light information that does not require great cognitive effort among speakers, such as pronouns or familiar information. In comparison, the object and subject of the intransitive verb are for information that require greater cognitive effort like full nouns or new information. The study recommends applying PAS in future studies since it is applicable to multiple aspects of linguistic studies such as language acquisition, discourse analysis, and comparison between spoken and written languages.
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Copyright (c) 2024 Dirasat: Human and Social Sciences
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Accepted 2023-09-26
Published 2024-08-27
