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object. If, in English, the adverb was placed in initial position
the order of the sentence would have to be re-arranged,
particularly with the insertion of the auxiliary 'did' before the
finite verb 'hit' which would, in this case, assume its present
tense form though orthographically both present and past tense
forms are identical.
If we re-arrange the lexical sequence of the lexemes in
the above Arabic sentence to fit in the subject/predicate pattern,
the grammatical relationships holding between the various lexemes
will still retain their logicality. Moreover, the Arabic
subject/predicate pattern will be identical to the English
'subject + verb + object + • adverb' pattern. The only difference
will be one of parsing, with the sub-sentence 'hit Amr hard'56t-..11
functioning as a full-fledged sentence within the
subject/predicate construction. If we re-arrange the lexemes of
the English sentence in the theme-rheme context, the grammatical
relationships will cease to be logical. Theme states the subject
of discourse, which is normally referred to, ,or • logically
consequential upon, the previous utterance, Rheme is the fresh
element, the lexical predicate, which offers information about the
theme. Theme and rheme are sometimes referred to as 'topic and
comment'. The identification of theme and rheme, topic and
comment, or subject and predicate will depend on a wider context.
Thus the sentence: 'Zayd hit Amr hard' is a logical sequence which
might be the basis for a periphrase such as: 'Amr gave Zayd the
opportunity to hit him hard', in which 'Amr' is lexically the
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