Semogenic variation in the construal of sayerhood in Arabic

Abstract

This article studies projection and examines alternative modes of construing processes of saying/ speech events and the variation across three registers where projection is particularly important. It is one of many articles that describe and discuss projection as a semantic fractal manifested in a variety of lexicogrammatical environments. The first paper in this series, which was published in 2018 by Arús-Hita et al. in Word was an investigation of quoting and reporting strategies of speech and thought across six genetically unrelated languages (Arabic, Dagaare, English, Hindi, Japanese and Spanish). This paper, however, has a much narrower scope. It first looks at all participants in the verbal clause in Arabic, then it focuses on the main one – the Sayer. Since verbal projection is quite pervasive in different areas of the lexicogrammar, it only makes sense to look into these fractal motifs to have an idea about the different guises under which the Sayer appears. News reports, academic discourse and fictional narratives have been analysed to properly account for the registerial variety in construing the role of the Sayer in verbal clauses across metafunctions.