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agreement, and the verb/adverb proximity have to be taken into
account; for such relationships are arbitrarily governed by
grammatical and syntactic norms which are functionally conducive to
the explication of the obligatory meaning. Such relationships can
be exemplified in the following sentence:
(Zayd hit Amr hard.) The grammatical pattern upon which both the
Arabic and English sentences are modelled is distinctly
unidentical, though the intent (pragmatic meaning) of the utterance
is unchanged. Transliterated into English, the Arabic sentence
would run as follows: Zaydun 4,mran bi-Shiddah'.
Syntactically, Arabic and English have different word-orders. The
arrangement of words . within the framework of the sentence allows
for specific meaning priorities, and sufficiently projects the
pragmatic intent the author is thought to have had while
constructing his utterance. Any re-arrangement of the sentence's
word-order, which will subsequently introduce different meaning
priorities, will, quite logically, entail specific semantic shifts.
The Arabic sentence falls within the pattern: verb + subject +
object + adverbial phrase (preposition + noun). Within this
pattern, priority is given to the action designated by the
placement of the verb in initial position. The aspect of the verb,
though unmarkedly marked, reveals the pastness of the occurrence.
The tense-aspect is determined by the morphological constitution of
the verb. The occurrence of the subject (doer or agent)
immediately after the verb - in English the sequence is reversed-
is symptomatic of the verb/subject agreement. If the verb/subject
sequence was reversed, as in English word order, the sentence would
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