The Beginnings of Word Order Change in the Arabic Dialects of Southern Iran in Contact with Persian: A Preliminary Study of Data from Four Villages in Bushehr and Hormozgan

Abstract

This preliminary study explores the hypothesis that Arabic dialects spoken on the Iranian side of the Persian Gulf exhibit the beginnings of contact-induced shift in word order from VO to OV. Although the basic VO order is still stable, there is some variation even in this very limited data set. Specifically two phenomena point to a change in progress: clause-final copulae and auxiliaries that are placed after the lexical verb, lending further evidence to the observation that a clause-final copula is an areal feature of western Asia. The study also investigates semantic and pragmatic factors that influence word order choice, pointing to a strong effect of information structure in terms of narrow focus and theme-rheme partition. Furthermore, the study also reveals an effect of semantic role, specifically as far as the preferred placement of goals and recipients in post-verbal position is concerned.