The structure of thematic roles and text organization in Quranic Arabic

Abstract EN

The study claims that thematic role structure plays a central part in text organization.

With this claim in perspective, the study analyses thematic roles in a Quranic text at three levels: their propositional component, their realization and their role shift.

The methodology adopted in the study is that texts are composed of propositions that include core events and a set of participants that carry different thematic roles.

A propositional analysis of the text shows five event-participant role relations: Agent-Goal, Benefactor-Beneficiary, Stimulus-Experiencer-Stimulus, Causer-Factitive, and Force-Patient.

Concerning the realization of thematic roles it has been found that thematic roles in Arabic range from being lexical to inflectional to pronominal and they exhibit backward thematic role-predicate agreement and forward predicate-thematic role agreement.

This complicated concord system results in thematic roles that can be exophoric, anaphoric and contextual.

Moreover, thematic roles can have several realizations that range from multi-realization to double realization to circumfix realization.

Thematic roles in the text are perceived in different ways that range from being human to divine and from being terrestrial to celestial.

The multifaceted realization of the thematic roles creates several participant spans in the text that cross verse boundaries to secure a well-organized text.

A further dimension that has been examined is the thematic role shift, shown as proposition shift formulae, that creates contrast between the parts of the text.

The study concludes that thematic roles play a pivotal part in text organization and analyzing their structure in a text is part and parcel of its understanding.