Syntactic Variation of Arabic and English Language: An Overview of Word Order

Abstract

This study dwells on some selected linguistic devices of syntactic variation known as word order between Arabic and English language. This is because the two languages under the study have a lot of functions in Nigeria and the globe at large. Some of these include: language of instruction, commerce, official and personal, national and international and many more. Based on this relevancy, this paper sees the need to offer a syntactic baseline between Arabic and English with emphasis on word order. The researchers use some sentences of Arabic and English from already existing literature which showcase that there is word order variation in some structural configurations. The method used for data collection is secondary as a result of scouting information from text books, journals and internet. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the syntactic variation of word order between Arabic and English language to add value to the existing knowledge in field of linguistics. The outcomes of this study demonstrate that the linguistic elements such as Subject, Predicator (Verb) and Object are mostly differ. This is as a result of the Arabic has VSO while English has SVO. Therefore, the two languages prove to have different syntactic environment for both Subject and Predicator but share only Object position as a syntactic environment according to this finding. So, the word order between the two languages could argue to be different.

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