- Title
- Case in modern standard Arabic
- Creator
- Ghammaz, Hamzah Saleh Theyab
- ThesisAdvisor
- De Vos, Mark Andrew, 1975-
- Subject
- Arabic language Syntax
- Subject
- Arabic language Case
- Subject
- Minimalist theory (Linguistics)
- Subject
- Grammar, Comparative and general Verb phrase
- Subject
- Predicate
- Subject
- Tritransitive verb
- Subject
- Grammar, Comparative and general Clitics
- Date
- 2024-04-04
- Type
- Academic theses
- Type
- Doctoral theses
- Type
- text
- Identifier
- http://hdl.handle.net/10962/435593
- Identifier
- vital:73171
- Identifier
- DOI 10.21504/10962/435593
- Description
- This thesis provides a novel account of case checking in Modern Standard Arabic (henceforth MSA). It argues against the concept that nominative case in topic and comment structures is default. Default or inherent case is not related to case filter, nor is it assigned by any syntactic method. Some linguists claim that the default case in Arabic language is employed only when no case assigner is available. I argue, in light of the minimalist program (henceforth MP), that default (inherent) case is always a problem for syntactic theory and that the nominative case which the topic and comment sentences bear is valued by a functional head. The topic and comment constructions contain a predicational head (Pred)- a functional head, that is equivalent to vP which occurs in verbal constructions. The head of PredP is accountable for nominative case value on the topic and comment structures. This thesis also provides a novel paradigm regarding the clitics that appear at the end of verbs in MSA. This paradigm proves that these clitics are not agreement, tense, nor mood markers but rather Verbal Case markers and it provides a minimalist program account to explain case checking on verbs in MSA. Regarding sentence initial DP, and contra to the proposal that in SVO sentence initial DP is a subject, I have scrutinised the nature of this DP and provided enough evidence that it is a topic. Additionally, I have investigated the relationship between agreement asymmetry and the position of the subject in MSA from the minimalist feature inheritance account viewpoint. Mainly, I reviewed null pro hypothesis which proved to be redundant to account for the derivation of VSO or SVO word orders. I have also proved what were considered agreement markers are not agreement markers but resumptive pronouns. Finally, I proved that there is not agreement asymmetry in MSA. Agreement pattern in MSA results from the agree operation and it is achieved under Probe-Goal alignment; regardless of whether the Goal is raised up to Spec-TP or remains in situ (Spec-VP), the agreement is not supposed to change. This conclusion is in harmony with the principles of MP Agree Theory.
- Description
- Thesis (PhD) -- Humanities, Linguistics and Applied Language Studies, 2024
- Format
- computer, online resource, application/pdf, 1 online resource (214 pages), pdf
- Publisher
- Rhodes University, Faculty of Humanities, Linguistics and Applied Language Studies
- Language
- English
- Rights
- Ghammaz, Hamzah Saleh Theyab
- Rights
- Use of this resource is governed by the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons "Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike" License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/2.0/)
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| Thumbnail | File | Description | Size | Format | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| View Details | SOURCE1 | GHAMMAZ-PHD-TR24-65.pdf | 1 MB | Adobe Acrobat PDF | View Details |