Discourse structure, the generalized parallelism hypothesis, and FG 3174.2. The typological parameter
The third parameter is ‘typological’ in the sense that it implies that the ac-
tualization of ADS takes place according to three factors: language type,
discourse type and discourse style.
4.2.1. ADS and language types
The examination of data from several typologically different languages
(namely English, French, Standard Modern Arabic as well as Moroccan,
Egyptian and Syrian colloquial Arabics) allows us to make the following
general observations. All the languages investigated display the three levels
distinguished in ADS as well as the layers these levels subsume. They dif-
fer from each other, however, with respect to the values of these layers.
Here are some examples illustrating the point.
Firstly, Modern Standard Arabic as well as the various Colloquial
Arabics examined seems to be more interpersonally oriented than the other
languages. The data suggest that Arabic displays a relatively greater num-
ber of vocative particles and expressions (cf. Moutaouakil 1989).
Moreover, it is a well known fact that “Egyptians always speak by implica-
ture” (and I think that this feature can be generalized to all Arabic
languages); if this observation is correct, we can say that Egyptian is a lan-
guage with a rich illocutionary layer – at least in comparison to the other
languages examined. We can say in the same vein that Arabic is one of the
more highly modalizing languages in the sense that it displays a rather rich
set of subjective modality values both on the clause and the term levels (cf.
Moutaouakil 1993, 1999).
Secondly, at the representational level, we often find in the Arabist lit-
erature the claim that Arabic, in comparison with Indo-European
languages, is an aspectual rather than a temporal language. If this claim
turns out to be tenable, we may hypothesize that there are languages with
rich aspectual quality and quantity layers in contrast with languages with a
rich temporal locality layer.
And as a last example, Dik (1997a: 181–182) points out that languages
differ in the number of demonstratives (from a minimum of two to a
maximum of well over twenty) as well as in the types of distinctions these
elements express. This again can be taken as a criterion with which to clas-
sify languages with respect to the locality layer in the term.