Grammatical relations in standard Arabic : a cognitive perspective

Abstract EN

Cognitive grammar promotes the idea that grammar is not a set of formal rules that one should learn, but it also interacts with our cognitive faculties that access human cognition.

Examples of these rules are the grammatical relations, subject, trajector and landmark, figure and ground, direct object and indirect object.

In addition to their outer form, i.

e.

the grammatical structures in which they are arranged at any level of organisation, they have got an internal structure and internal interpretation that are mentally schematised.

To see how the Arabic language internally portrays and mentally schematises these basic grammatical relations, the current paper falls back on Langacker ( 1987; 1991; 2008; and 2009 ) and Talmy (2000).

Throughout the application of these theories, it has been noticed that Arabic exhibits the four topicality factors―semantic role, empathy hierarchy, definiteness, and figure/ground organisation― to show which participant can be chosen as subject, trajector, or figure, and also which participant is favoured to be structured as direct object, indirect object, landmark or ground.