The comparative study of transitivity and processes in the Arabic and English languages

Arabic language is among Semitic languages and because of being the religion language has a huge number of speakers. English language is among Indo-Europeans and it is science and technology language; furthermore, for being spoken globally, it has a significant status. In new theories, Halliday’s grammar is compiled with functional objectives. Clause is the main unit in Halliday’s grammar and each utterance which is concentrated around a verbal group is a clause. He has studied ideational, intersectional and textual meta-functions in his grammar. Textual meta-function is represented in theme and rhyme, intersectional meta-functions in the relation between speaker and addressee, and ideational meta-function in transitivity and processes. In his systematic grammar and transitivity structure, the process is the origin of every event and is represented by ideational meta-function. In Ideational meta-function, language arranges person experience. Empirical processes are the core and the center of a clause. A clause has participant and other circumstantial elements which have an effect on the amount of transitivity. Holliday’s functional grammar has paid vital attention to the meaning. Based on the assumption that experience patterns are DE codified in processes and transitivity, he has posed sextet processes. The main process is subdivided to material, mental and relational. Secondary process is divided to verbal, behavioral and existential. Main Participants of these processes are named differently such as actor in material, sensor in mental carrier in relational, sayer in verbal, behaver in behavioral and existent in existential. This inquiry studies comparative processes in the Arabic and English languages and tries to express differences and similarities in processes, main participants and circumstantial elements. It makes an effort to answer these questions: what is the definition of processes and verbs, transitivity in two languages, differences and similarities in process type. Structuralism believes that all verbs are transitive or intransitive and in the transitive verb, the action extents from verb to subject and object, but in functional grammar as Halliday and Mattsin have expressed: the more participants and circumstantial elements, the more is transitivity. The study of traditional grammar and modern linguistic in two languages shows that dissension in transitivity is in terminology and naming and in Arabic and English languages, it is used in the same meaning, but in the Arabic language in addition to being in context, there are some special forms making the verb transitive or intransitive, e.g. adding some prefixes, doubling a letter, etc. can make a verb transitive or vice versa that is very important. In Arabic language, transitivity is for verb and those verbs are called transitive verbs, but in practice whole clause is involved in belonging to verb, as in the English language it is extended to the whole clause and the clause is transitive or intransitive. Unlike Arabic language, there are no processes in the English that have three objects leading to more transitivity and the first object and second are direct and indirect, respectively. There is no category like those of Halliday in the Arabic language. Only Mental processes in Arabic are separated from others based on having two or three objects and they have been named (qolob) which means some thing related to heart, but in taking a clause as a phenomenon both languages are the same. Crucial differences are in relational and verbal processes. In English, there is a relational process which is mentioned in the clause and is like other processes, but it does not exist in Arabic language. The theme and rhyme can clarify the meaning of the clause, as Halliday and Matssin have described clearly in their book: “Introduction to functional grammar”. In some cases, there is a relational process with different names. In Arabic, verbal processes are deleted and substituted by interjections. About existential process, both languages are different. In English language, the word (there) fills the subject place but originally it is not a subject.  In Arabic, we have existential verb with subject like other processes and even some relational verbs can be used as existential when they are complete. It means they do not need another participant to completed. Some terminologies in functional grammar have different expressions in Arabic, e.g. attribute in material processes is (Hall) in Arabic language, so circumstantial elements in both languages, despite different expressions, have their effects on clause and consequently, on transitivity.