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Parameters and Micro-Parameters in Arabic Sentence Structure

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Parameters and Micro-Parameters in Arabic Sentence Structure PARAMETERS AND MICRO-PARAMETERS IN ARABIC SENTENCE STRUCTURE By Kemel Jouini A thesis submitted to the Victoria University of Wellington in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Linguistics Victoria University of Wellington 2014 ACKNOWLEGDMENTS I would like to thank Professor Elabbas Benmamoun, in particular, for accepting to be my adviser for the nine-month period I spent at the Department of Linguistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in the academic year 2004-2005 as a non- degree Fulbright grantee. During my stay at UIUC, Elabbas’s lectures convinced me of the view that a proper understanding of the feature structure of functional categories could enlighten linguistic theory on how the structure of sentences could vary cross-linguistically. Special thanks go to Dr. Elizabeth Pearce for willing to be my supervisor, for her patience to read through the so many drafts of chapters I was sending her, and for her advice on the numerous revisions I thereby had to make. I also thank Professor Richard S. Kayne for the invaluable opportunity he offered me during his visit at VUW to discuss with him some aspects of micro- parametric syntax relevant to my analysis of verbal inflection. Last, but not least, I thank my secondary supervisor Dr. Sasha Calhoun for her willingness to share ideas and offer suggestions, as well as Professor Laurie Bauer for his helpful comments on part of my thesis. I also want to thank Professor Tim Stowell, Professor Halldór Sigurðsson, Professor Henry Davis, Professor Jan Koster and Dr. Fred Hoyt for sending me documents I could not find elsewhere. i ABSTRACT My thesis deals with dependency relations in the structure of sentences in Arabic and how properties of verbal morphology and associated lexical items dictate how sentences are derived. I adopt the probe-goal-Agree Minimalist view that variation between languages (even those that are closely related, such as Standard Arabic and Tunisian Arabic) is due to the 'feature structure' of functional elements that enter into the derivation. In particular, the essential architecture of sentences expressing the dependency relations verbs and associated elements have with the 'functional' portion of sentences (i.e., tense/modality properties) is universal in that these dependency relations will be expressed on the basis of the same feature structure cross-linguistically. However, this architecture still allows for the kind of parametric variation that exists even between closely related languages. In this context, I am interested in the status of subject-verb agreement configurations, in both VSO and SVO word orderings, and wh- and other A’- dependencies in Standard Arabic (with comparisons to some modern spoken varieties of Arabic, where appropriate). The analysis is shown to extend to other V-raising languages of the Semitic/Celtic type with ‘basic’ VSO word ordering. A possible extension of the analysis to the V2 phenomenology is also discussed and the major role played by the raising of V-v to T and the raising of T to AgrS or T to Fin is highlighted. An important aspect of my analysis is a proper understanding of the dependency relations involved in the derivation of the relevant sentences where the role of the CP domain projections, verb-movement, feature identification and/or feature valuation along with clause type is essential for interpretation at the interface at the output of syntax. In this feature-based analysis of parametric and micro- parametric variation, I show that variation between typologically similar and typologically different languages is minimal in that it is limited to the interaction of feature combinations in the derivation of sentences. These feature combinations concern the feature structure of the T-node in relation to the position where T is spelled out at the interface. In particular, T raises to AgrS or to Fin in some languages and/or structures. Such raising processes are important in subject-verb agreement configurations cross-linguistically involving ii combinations of T-features and D-features, which would differ in interpretability (i.e., interpretable vs. uninterpretable) as the basis for feature valuation. Similar feature combinations also drive the raising processes in wh-dependencies with some F-feature (mainly related to ‘focus’) interacting with the T-features of Fin. I propose that two modes of licensing of these feature combinations are at work. The first mode of licensing is the basic head-head agreement relation. This agreement relation is the basis for verb-movement to the functional field above vP/VP in V-raising languages. The second mode of licensing is the Spec-head agreement relation, brought about by the Merge (internal or external) of D(P) elements in A- dependencies and the Merge of wh-elements in A’-dependencies. In dependency relations other than subject-verb agreement and wh- dependencies, I propose that the licensing of these feature combinations is strictly a question of ‘identification’ via head-head agreement whereby a feature on a functional head does not need to be valued, but it still needs to be ‘identified’ for the well-formedness of the C-(AgrS)-T dependency. This is the case of the interpretable D-feature of the Top node in Topic-comment structures and the interpretable F- feature of the two functional head nodes, Mod(al) and Neg, in relation to the T- features of Fin in a V-raising language like Standard Arabic. iii ARABIC DATA Sources of the Arabic Data I thank Dr. Hassan Makhad (Caddi Ayyad University, Morocco) for his help with judgments on the data from Standard Arabic (where no specific reference has been given). I also thank my fellow teachers Farhat Bessrour and Al-Hèdi Fezai in Tunisia for their willingness to corroborate my intuitions about the data from Tunisian Arabic. List of Transliteration Letters I follow the Qalam transliteration system of Romanization of Arabic for the transcription of the Arabic letters, which do not match correspondent letters in the and the pharyngeal fricative ﺃ English alphabet. As for the Arabic ‘hamza’ letter/sound I adopted the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) transcription symbols ʔ ,ﻉ sound and ʕ, respectively. The Qalem transliteration letters fit more easily in terminal nodes in syntactic tree diagrams than the corresponding IPA transcription symbols, for which syntactic tree editor tools available on sourceforge.net do not provide a means to introduce them in syntactic trees. ʔ Glottal stop dh voiced interdental fricative D voiceless pharyngealized/emphatic lateral fricative H voiceless pharyngeal fricative S voiceless pharyngealized/emphatic dental fricative Z voiced pharyngealized/emphatic interdental fricative T voiced pharyngealized/emphatic alveolar stop gh voiced uvular fricative ʕ voiced pharyngeal fricative kh voiceless uvular fricative q voiceless uvular stop Long vowels are indicated by the doubling of the vowel rather than by a colon following the vowel – i.e., VV instead of V: iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS Technical abbreviations 1 = first person of the verbal agreement system 2 = second person of the verbal agreement system 3 = third person of the verbal agreement system ACC = accusative AGR/Agr = agreement Asp = aspect CL = clitic D = dual DEF = defective DO = Direct Object EPP = Extended Projection Principle EV = epenthetic vowel EXPL = expletive F = feminine FUT = future GEN = genitive IMPERF = imperfective IND = indicative mood INDEF = indefinite JUSS = jussive mood LDA = Long Distance Agreement LF = Logical Form M = masculine MOD = modal NEG/Neg = negation NOM = nominative P = plural PASS = passive voice PERF = perfective PF = Phonetic Form Q = question morpheme v S = singular SUBJ = subjunctive mood VISH = Verb-internal subject hypothesis Other abbreviations: Acronyms LA: Lebanese Arabic MA: Moroccan Arabic SA: Standard Arabic TA: Tunisian Arabic vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS...............................................................................................i ABSTRACT...................................................................................................................ii ARABIC DATA............................................................................................................iv LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS........................................................................................v CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION............................................................................1 CHAPTER TWO: APPROACHES TO SENTENCE STRUCTURE AND PARAMETRIC VARIATION 2.0. Introduction.............................................................................................................4 2.1. The structure of IP and subject-verb agreement phenomena..................................7 2.1.1 The structural subject position of the clause in null-subject languages and the EPP..........................................................................................................7 2.1.2. The derivation of VSO vs. SVO word orders and subject-verb agreement patterns in Arabic: micro-parametric differences.........................................9 2.1.2.1. Koopman & Sportiche (1991) and Sportiche (1989/1998).................10 2.1.2.2. Arabic VSO word order: Benmamoun (1992a).................................. 14 2.1.2.3. Arabic SVO word order.......................................................................18 2.1.2.3.1. The Subject Theory (Mohammad 1989, Benmamoun 1992, 2000, Aoun et al. 2010).........................................................................18
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