The Semantics of the Nominative and the Accusative Experiencer in Arabic

The present paper is concerned with highlighting the importance and significance of the semantic-syntactic interface for the expression and interpretation of linguistic structures. This interface is represented by the correlation of role archetypes like agent, patient and experiencer and grammatical relations like subject and direct object. This study is conducted within the framework of Langacker’s model of cognitive grammar theory which asserts the indispensability of this interface for any satisfactory analysis of linguistic constructions. This functional approach is intended to be reactionary to formal approaches which advocate the autonomy of syntax from semantics. Thus in formal theories, some syntactic issues like grammatical relations are identified and characterised with no reference to semantic considerations. By contrast, cognitive grammar regards grammatical relations and syntactic aspects like case markers as notionally grounded. Thus their identity and description follow the cognitive psychology principle of figure/ground organization. Thus the subject usually corresponds to an entity that is the focus of attention or the most important participant in a certain structure while the direct object specifies a less prominent participant. This is due to the fact that the direct object usually represents an entity that is affected by the entity specified by the subject. A second objective of this study is to emphasize the crucial and pivotal role of construal for the semantic and syntactic structure of linguistic expressions. Construal simply means the expression of a situation in alternate ways for specific purposes. The use of this principle results in the choice of some elements or entities of a situation as more salient than others. These salient entities are assigned specific role archetypes and grammatical relations that are conformed to the construal of a situation. Thus in We find that the experiencer role, specified by the NP Ahmed in both sentences, receives the nominative case marking in 1 and the accusative in 2. It is also noticed that the semantic features of the verbs in 1 and 2 are dissimilar. This is ascribed to the fact that the conceptual organization of the elements in each situation determines the syntactic aspects in linguistic constructions such as case endings and verb form. The Experiencer role has been selected as it represents a wide range of human conceptual, emotional and perceptual interactions.