A Comparative Typological Study of Word Order in Persian and Arabic Languages

Typology is a branch of linguistics that examines structural similarities between languages. Typological studies have shown that different languages ​​of the world have commonalities called language universals or Greenberg's Universals, named after the author. The study of word order is one of the most important topics in the typology of languages because languages ​​have a variety of patterns in this area, and that is what creates the right atmosphere for typological classifications. In addition, most of the linguistic properties of a language are related to how its main components (verbs, subjects, and objects) are arranged. In the present study, the authors studied the sequences of the verb and the subject, the genitive and noun, the adjective and noun, the verb and the object in Arabic and Persian languages, which belong to two different classes of languages in terms of the arrangement of the main components. The main purpose of the present study was to identify the characteristics of the sequences of the components in the two languages as well as the factors affecting them and to examine the status of the two languages in relation to the language universals related to components. To this end, one-thousand sentences from different official texts of the two languages were collected as a linguistic model. Some of these sentences are presented in this paper. The findings of the study showed that the Arabic language corresponds to what linguists have stated with regards to VSO word order as it is compatible with the relevant language universals. In contrast, Persian is inconsistent with the opinions of linguists regarding SOV languages in some of its characteristics. In addition, the Persian language fluctuates in terms of adaptation to language universals. It is compatible with some universals, but not with others. The findings also showed that both languages have the same freedom in sequencing their components in sentences. This is a feature to highlight the importance of one component over another by moving that component to the beginning of the sentence before the other components.