THE TRANSLATION OF AN OBJECT
IN ARABIC THEME AND RHEME CONSTRUCTIONS

Muhammad Yunus Anis – Arabic Department FIB Sebelas Maret University

Abstract

Communication involves the actual use of language in real (Connolly, 1991:1). As we have known that language is the main medium for communication. One of the important thing to develop the effective communication is by packaging the structure of information. There are two basic elements in the information, they are: theme and rheme. Theme had been considered as the known information and the rheme absolutely had been considered as new information. This paradigm based on the Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL).Halliday considers language as having three main functions: (1) the ideational function, (2) the interpersonal function, and (3) the textual function. This paper will focus in the textual function and “clause as a message”. Arabic language has a unique structure of clauses; we can find two basic notions in Arabic language object, (1) particle + object and (2) non-particle + object, in the other hand we also find the construction of an object, they are: (1) single-noun, (2) double-noun, (3) phrase, and (4) clause (an + fi’l).  The method in this research was divided into three parts, (1) collecting the data from the book of Modern Written Arabic and also some articles in the Arabic Newspaper On-line and off-line, the data is the translation of an object in Arabic language, (2) analysis data, using the descriptive analysis and distributional method, and (3) reporting the data (formal and informal). The result of this article had concluded that there is a shifting translation in the translation of an object construction based on the SFL theory. The shifting was occured in form and meaning. Both of them were found in the rhemes such as (1) direct object, (2) two direct objects, (3) absolute object, (4) locative object, (5) specifying complement, (6) purposive object, (7) circumstantial qualifier or situation, (8) accompanying object, and (9) free dependent forms.

Keywords: Modern Written Arabic, object, theme and rheme, Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL).