Rank shift in English and Arabic texts

Abstract EN

The paper is an investigation of the grammatical process of rank shift in English and Arabic texts.

The theoretical framework of Systemic Functional Grammar outlined by the English linguist Halliday in his book with Matthissen (2004) based in turn on Halliday (1994) will be adopted in this paper.

The paper aims to apply rank shift to English and Arabic texts.

It is a pilot study focusing on this phenomenon as a step to the ongoing description of Arabic grammar in terms of Systemic Functional Grammar.

It is hypothesized that English and Arabic clauses and groups can be downgraded.

Moreover, the data analysis reveals that this grammatical phenomenon can be seen in both languages.

The paper concludes that successive rank shifting is observed in English and Arabic texts