Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics: Papers from the Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics. Volume XII: Urbana-Champaign, Illinois, 1998

212 Pages·1999·16.23 MB·English

by  Elabbas Benmamoun (Ed.)

PERSPECTIVES ON ARABIC LINGUISTICS XII
AMSTERDAM STUDIES IN THE THEORY AND
HISTORY OF LINGUISTIC SCIENCE
General Editor
E. F. KONRAD KOERNER
(University of Ottawa)
Series IV - CURRENT ISSUES IN LINGUISTIC THEORY
Advisory Editorial Board
Raimo Anttila (Los Angeles); Lyle Campbell (Christchurch, N.Z.]
John E. Joseph (Edinburgh); Manfred Krifka (Austin, Tex.)
Hans-Heinrich Lieb (Berlin); E. Wyn Roberts (Vancouver, B.C.);
Hans-Jürgen Sasse (Köln)
Volume 190
Elabbas Benmamoun (ed.)
Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XII
Papers from the Twelfth Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics
PERSPECTIVES ON
ARABIC LINGUISTICS XII
PAPERS FROM THE TWELFTH
ANNUAL SYMPOSIUM
ON ARABIC LINGUISTICS
Edited by
ELABBAS BENMAMOUN
University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
JOHN BENJAMINS PUBLISHING COMPANY
AMSTERDAM/PHILADELPHIA
The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American
National Standard for Information Sciences — Permanence of Paper for Printed
Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
Elabbas Benmamoun (ed.)
Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XII
Amsterdam studies in the theory and history of linguistic science. Series IV, Current issues in
linguistic theory, ISSN 0304-0763 ; v. 190)
ISBN 90 272 3696 8 (Eur.) / 1 55619 967 8 (US) (alk. paper)
© 1999 - John Benjamins B.V.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by print, photoprint, microfilm, or any other
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John Benjamins Publishing Co. • P.O.Box 75577 • 1070 AN Amsterdam • The Netherlands
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Table of Contents
Foreword vii
Introduction 1
I. Syntax and Morphosyntax
Modes of Interrogation 7
Joseph Aoun & Lina Choueiri
Checking and Licensing Inside DP in Palestinian Arabic 27
M. A. Mohammad
On Locality and Discontinuity: Agreement as
Across the Board Movement 45
Peter Hallman
II. Computational Linguistics
Arabic Stem Morphotactics via Finite-State Intersection 85
Kenneth R. Beesley
Computational Tool for Developing
Morphophonological Models for Arabic 101
George Anton Kiraz
III. Phonology and Historical Linguistics
Hypocoristic Formation in Ammani-Jordanian Arabic 113
Bushra Adnan Zawaydeh & Stuart Davis
On et alia 141
David Testen
vi
IV. Sociolinguistics
(θ) and (ð) as Ternary and Binary Variables in
Damascene Arabic 163
Jamil Daher
Testing Lexical Difference in Regional Standard Arabics 183
Dilworth B. Parkinson and Zeinab Ibrahim
Index of Subjects 203
FOREWORD
On March 6-8, 1998, the Twelfth Annual Symposium on Arabic
Linguistics was held at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.
The symposium was sponsored by the Arabic Linguistics Society, the
University of Illinois Department of Linguistics, the College of Liberal
Arts and Sciences, the Center for African Studies, the International
Program of Studies, and the Program of South Asian and Middle
Eastern Studies.
The papers selected for publication in this volume were
anonymously peer reviewed before their final acceptance for
publication.
The transcription of all Arabic materials in the body of the papers
follows the International Phonetic Alphabet or standard equivalents.
The Arabic emphatics, however, are represented by a dot underneath
the symbol, and long vowels as sequences of two vowels. The
transliteration of Arabic names and titles follows accepted formats,
with some simplification in the use of diacritics.
The preparation and printing of the final manuscript was done using
facilities available at the Middle East Center of the University of Utah,
Salt Lake City. I am indebted to Tessa Hauglid who has served as
assistant editor as well as copy editor for this volume. I wish also to
thank Georgia Green, Hans Hock, Edward Miner, Jerry Morgan, and
Daniel Silverman for their help.
INTRODUCTION
Elabbas Benmamoun
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
The papers in this volume deal with various topics in Arabic
linguistics. Most of the papers focus on new issues and introduce new
empirical generalizations that have not been studied before within the
context of Arabic linguistics. The volume is divided into four sections.
Section I includes three papers that deal with syntactic and
morphosyntactic issues. The topic of the paper by Aoun and Choueiri is
extraction in Lebanese Arabic. In addition to the two familiar extraction
strategies, namely, the gap strategy and the resumption strategy, they
consider the less familiar in situ strategy. It is well known that the gap
strategy is subject to standard Island Conditions such as the Wh-Island
Constraint and the Complex NP Constraint, while the resumption
strategy is not subject to those conditions. Interestingly, the in situ
strategy is also not subject to Island Conditions, when it involves a
single Wh-element. In this respect, the in situ strategy patterns with the
resumption strategy. What is intriguing is Aoun and Choueiri's finding
that the relation between wh-elements in situ is sensitive to Islands. For
example, two Wh-elements in situ cannot be separated by an Island.
The authors analyze the relation between the wh-elements in situ in
terms of 'absorption'. Assuming that sensitivity to Islands is a
diagnostic of movement, the implication, then, is that 'absorption'
involves movement of one Wh-element to the other.
The paper by Mohammad deals with the structure of the noun
phrase containing the word taba in Palestinian Arabic. He provides
2 ELABBAS BENMAMOUN
several arguments to show that the word taba heads a Construct State
representation. Several syntactic and phonological properties that
obtain in the context of the well-known cases of the Construct State
structures obtain in the context of the noun phrase headed by taba .
Mohammad then discusses agreement and Case within the Construct
State and suggests an analysis that draws on recent ideas within the
Minimalist Program.
Hallman deals with the distribution of the nominal, adjectival, and
verbal morphological features in Standard Arabic. He focuses, in
particular, on the realization of features such as definiteness, number,
gender, and Case. He notes that the features in question display co­
variation. Assuming that co-variation obtains under locality, the
challenge is to account for cases of co-variation where locality is
apparently violated. Hallman maintains the locality requirement on co­
variation and argues that the apparent violations are due to syntactic
transformations (movement). He also discusses agreement between
nouns and adjectives and takes it as an Across the Board phenomenon
subject to the Across the Board movement. Other types of agreement,
particularly subject-verb agreement, are also considered. In general,
Hallman assumes a theory of syntax that allows morphological features
to head independent syntactic projections that are, in turn, subject to
syntactic operations such as movement. The morphology then spells
out the output of the syntactic derivation.
Section II includes two papers on computational Arabic
morphology. Both papers attempt to deal with the challenge posed by
the non-concatenative nature of Arabic morphology. As is well known,
some lexical relations in Arabic cannot be captured in a string
compositional fashion. Beesley and Kiraz make use of the analysis first
advanced by McCarthy whereby a form, such as a verb, is decomposed
into a root tier, a CV tier, and a vocalic tier. Both authors illustrate how
their programs can handle Arabic morphology. Kiraz deals mainly with
the triliteral perfective verb form, while Beesley discusses other verbal
patterns and the issue of the non-radical segments.
Section III includes a morpho-phonology paper and an historical
linguistics paper. The paper by Zawaydeh and Davis deals with the
hypocoristic formation in Ammani-Jordanian Arabic. Hypocoristic
formation basically involves the modification of a full name. The paper
considers the relation between the full name and its hypocoristic