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Uses and Abuses of the Resumptive Verb in Arabic News Exposition !

Ali Darwish
15 November  2006

Abstract

Different languages employ various expository techniques to correct a faulty syntactic structure or recover from convoluted, complex, nested or embedded sentences. These techniques include a set of resumptives, such as resumptive nouns, pronouns, verbs and deictic elements. Where translation is involved, the degree of divergence within the language pair on the syntactic level and in terms of word order (such as SVO/C in English and VSO/C in Arabic), introduces situations that necessitate the use of such resumptives. In Arabic translation, particularly in news expository writing in modern Arabic, strict adherence to original sentence structures forces the news editor to use and overuse the resupmtive verb, causing the exposition to be incoherent and stilted.

This article examines the uses and abuses of the resumptives in Arabic news exposition, giving special attention to the resumptive verb and its impact on the coherence and cohesion of news presentations.