Taxis and Logico-Semantic Relations in English-Arabic News Articles

Abstract

This study applies Halliday’s Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) framework to analyze taxis and logico-semantic relations in English and Arabic news articles. The study draws on a bilingual corpus of 180 BBC news articles (covering politics, economics, and sports) published between 2023 and 2024. Using Python-based automation and manual validation, as well as both quantitative and qualitative methods, the study identifies structural patterns and translation shifts. The findings reveal language- and genre-specific preferences: English news articles favor paratactically linked clauses, whereas Arabic news articles exhibit a stronger preference for hypotaxis. Expansion was the most frequent logico-semantic relation in both languages, with enhancement being the dominant subtype in both languages. In terms of projection, English employed locution more often than Arabic, reflecting genre and stylistic differences. The analysis showed that while shifts in translation taxis and logico-semantic relations occur, a substantial portion of relations are preserved, indicating high structural and semantic fidelity to the source text. These findings offer valuable insights for English-Arabic news translations and contribute to a deeper understanding of the syntactic complexity and coherence in cross-linguistic journalistic discourse.