On the Syntax and Semantics of Arabic 'an
Kufis and Basris analyse null and optional ’an, in Arabic Complementizer Structure (ACS), in terms of how an accusative case is assigned to the verb. The linguists of both schools, despite their differences, use i‘maal theory as a basic method of analysis. However, the syntactic treatment of case of ASC does not provide a natural explanation of their semantic aspects. Hence null and optional ’an become associated with two different syntactic and semantic properties that are inconsistently related. The analysis, therefore, that I argue for is that semantics determines the right syntactic complementizer structure. That is, the verb in ASC is specified with different mood features: [-realis] is associated with null C, while [+realis] verb is represented by optional C. In other words, mood inflection is assigned to the verb in ACS to mark these different semantic functions.
There are many analyses that attempt to account for Polarity Items (PI)
any. Among such analyses are Ladusaw’s (1980), Kadmon and Landman’s
(1993), and Linebarger’s (1987). In this…
Kufis and Basris analyse null and optional ’an, in Arabic Complementizer Structure (ACS), in terms of how an accusative case is assigned to the verb. The linguists of both schools, despite their…
I discuss the morphological analysis of tense and aspect proposed by early Arab grammarians and illustrate some of its problems. In order to account for these problems, the Arab grammarians had to…