Topic Particles in the North Hail Dialect of Najdi Arabic

Topic Particles in the North Hail Dialect of Najdi Arabic Murdhy Radad D Alshamari A thesis submitted to the Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy In Theoretical Linguistics School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics At Newcastle University, UK September 2017 i ii ABSTRACT This thesis investigates a set of clause-initial discourse particles in North Hail Arabic (NHA), a dialect spoken in Saudi Arabia. The particles are shown to be heads in the C-domain with topic-marking function. It is shown that the topics typology put forward by Frascarelli and Hinterhölzl (2007) for German and Italian extends to NHA. The Shifting Topic (S-Topic) is situated above the Focus Phrase, followed by Contrastive Topic (C-Topic), which is in turn followed by Familiar Topic (F-Topic). S-Topic can be marked by either C-particles mar or ʕad. The particles tara and ʔaktɪn mark an entity expressing C-Topic, while the particle ʁedɪ, tsin, ʔeʃwa and tigil mark an entity expressing F-Topic. All particles are argued to carry a valued [TOP] feature. However, they are different with respect to whether they have φ-content. This difference motivates the distinction between agreeing particles (having φ-content) and non- agreeing particles (not having φ-content). The study shows that the agreeing particles are probes, being with unvalued φ-features, establishing an Agree relation (Chomsky 2000, 2001) with the element that carries a matching unvalued [TOP] feature and valued φ-features. This results in the valuation of the unvalued φ-features of the agreeing particle, and the valuation of the matching unvalued [TOP] feature of the goal. As a result, the topic interpretation is achieved via the chain created by the head of the topic and the topicalized item. The study shows that when the goal has φ-content, an inflectional suffix expressing the same φ-content as that of the goal is suffixed to the particle. The motivation behind counting the [TOP] feature on the goal to be unvalued comes from the cases where the goal is the object. NHA data show that the object moves to a position where it gets accessible to the probe, the agreeing particle, following Chomsky (2000, 2001), Bošković (2007, 2014) and Holmberg et al. (2017). This is consistent in the case with multiple topics, where the two topics, the subject and the object, tuck in the projecting headed by the particle (Richards 1997, 1999). As for the non-agreeing particles, the study argues that, instead of φ-content, these heads are endowed with an [EPP] feature, which attracts the element carrying the matching unvalued [TOP] feature to the Spec position of the relevant head. This accounts for why such particles cannot be clause-initial. These facts motivate the assumption that movement to the left periphery (i.e. topicalization) is forced when the head of the Topic Phrase is not endowed with any φ-content. iii Declaration and Statement of copyright Declaration No part of the material within this thesis has previously been submitted for a degree at Newcastle University or any other university. Statement of Copyright The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. No quotation should be published from it without his prior written consent and information derived from it should be acknowledged. iv Acknowledgements From the hearts of my heart, to my first supervisor, Prof. Anders Holmberg, go my sincere thanks for his prolonged patience, support, advice and positive attitudes. I am grateful to him for his valuable guidance, comments and feedback, which were instant whenever I needed them. This research would not have been accomplished had he not supported me along the road to completing the thesis. Thanks for all that I have learned from him, which has made me the syntactician that I am now. I will always appreciate the many times he gave me the chance to discuss the NHA particles, where I first had the initial thought about ‘particles’ as a research topic. I will always appreciate your giving me the chance to have conversations and discussions about NHA discourse particles, in the early winter of 2012, and how you guided me to start to deal with this phenomenon in the generative framework. My warm thanks are extended to my second supervisor, Dr. Geoffrey Poole, who always responded to my inquiries and whose comments were right to the point. Special thanks go to the external examiner of this thesis, Prof. Jamal Ouhalla. I am so proud and honoured that my thesis is examined by this expert in and authority of linguistics. My sincere gratitude goes to his valuable comments, critiques and suggestions, which were very insightful and influential in developing my thesis to be in its current style, content and contribution. I strongly pass my thanks and gratitude to the internal examiner of my thesis, Dr. William van der Wurff, for his invaluable suggestions and very important comments. Thanks are due to linguists at the school of English Literature, Language and Linguistics, Newcastle University: including SJ Hannahs, Maggie Tallerman, Joel Wallenberg and William van der Wurff, Heike Pichler, Cristina Dye. I would like to thank Ian Roberts, željko Bošković, Luigi Rizzi and Theresa Biberauer for the valuable and helpful discussions we had at the ‘Rethinking Verb Second Conference’ and the ‘Rethinking Comparative Syntax Conference’ at the University of Cambridge in 2016. My warm thanks are extended to my fellow colleagues, who have always been nice and cooperative, and with whom I shared precious time; thanks for the coffee-gatherings and the chats on linguistics: Marwan Aljarrah, Nayif Alshammari, Maha Jasim, Abdulrahman Altakhaineh, Hadi Alsamdani, Samer Hanafiyeh, Bashayer Alotaibi, Ekhlas Mohsen, Rebecca Musa and Rebwar Shafie. v vi Dedication To my parents, who have raised me and made me able to handle matters. To my son, Firas, and to my daughter, Dilara, who spent their early childhood away from their homeland. I appreciate your patience and all the situations you had been in, my little kids! To my sweetheart soulmate, my lovely wife, Manal Obaid, who has always been helpful whenever need be throughout this long journey. I will always appreciate your encouraging words, inspiration and, most importantly, your sacrifice. I will never forget that, even though you had instances of bereavement, sadness and depression, you had never thought of leaving me under pressure, but, rather, you were always my source of inspiration, relief and dedication. Thanks a lot, my love! To all the years during which I have spent learning theoretical linguistics. vii Abbreviations 1 first person 2 second person 3 third person A-Topic aboutness topic ACC accusative case CLLD clitic left dislocated item C-Topic contrastive topic COMP complementizer Def definite article EPP Extended Projection Principle F feminine gender FM focus marker FI Full Interpretation Principle Foc focus feature F-Topic familiar topic FUT futurity marker GEN genitive case IMP imperative INDF indefinite LD left-dislocated phrase LF logical form M masculine gender viii NA Najdi Arabic NHA North Hail Arabic Neg negative marker NOM nominative case Obj object argument P plural PASS passive voice PF phonetic form PROG progressive aspect PRTCP participle PRS present tense PIC Phase Impenetrability Condition PST past tense PRT particle Q question particle S singular Sj subject argument S-Topic shifting topic TOP topic feature UG Universal Grammar V lexical verb V little verb VOC Vocative ix Ø null spell out * ungrammatical ? marginal reading φ-features phi-agreement features x Table of Contents 1 CHAPTER ONE: Introduction .......................................................................................... 1 1.1 Introduction ................................................................................................................ 1 1.2 Discourse particles in Standard Arabic ...................................................................... 5 1.3 Discourse particles in Najdi Arabic ........................................................................... 7 1.4 Word orders and the left periphery: an overview of Arabic ...................................... 9 1.4.1 Word orders in Standard Arabic and other Arabic varieties ................................ 9 1.4.2 Word orders in Najdi Arabic varieties, including North Hail Arabic ................ 17 1.5 Discourse particles in North Hail Arabic ................................................................. 23 1.5.1 Overview ............................................................................................................ 23 1.5.2 North Hail Arabic discourse particles: functions and position .......................... 24 1.5.3 North Hail Arabic discourse particles: morphosyntactic status: ........................ 29 1.6 The questions and aims of the study ........................................................................ 34 1.7 The significance of the study ................................................................................... 36 1.8 Outline of the thesis ................................................................................................. 37 1.9 Conclusion ............................................................................................................... 38 2 CHAPTER TWO: Shifting-Topic and the Topic Typology ............................................ 41 2.1 Introduction .............................................................................................................

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