ABSTRACT

This chapter highlights a basic semiotic framework for grammar and para-syntax, introducing the notions predicand and predicate as traditional syntactic features of Arabic, and arguing, on the basis of Dickins, for an ‘equative’ analysis of bipartite clauses in Sudanese Arabic, and by extension other varieties. It argues that a conjunction of accent and ‘meaning prominence’ constitutes valid evidence for a para-syntactic semiotic entity. The chapter considers para-syntax in relation to word order, arguing that word-order is not in itself a (phrase-)structural matter. Although nihna masakin and masakin nihna are the same in phrase-structural para-syntactic terms, there is an obvious sense in which they are different in terms of their physical phonetic realisations, i.e. in terms of their word order, and potentially also, of course, in respect of their intonational tune. In fact, word order does seem to relay meaning independently of both syntactic structure and (other) para-syntactic features, both phrase-structural Peri/Thema–Nuc/Rhema and other intonational features.