Subject licensing in non-verbal clauses in Arabic

2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 249-282
Author(s):  
Rashid Al-Balushi
Keyword(s):  
Subject Position ◽  
Standard Arabic ◽  
Present Account ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Categorial Status

Abstract This paper investigates the licensing of subjects in Standard Arabic participial clauses. Unlike verbal clauses, whose subject may appear post-verbally, the subject of participial clauses must precede the participle, having properties of topics of verbal clauses. I claim that this is because the canonical subject position, [Spec, vP], is not available for subjects of participles, due to lack of Nom Case. It is shown that neither tense nor a copula is sufficient to license structural Nom Case on a subject in [Spec, vP]. I conclude that the licensing of Nom Case on post-verbal subjects is dependent on V-to-T raising; that is, Nom Case is licensed by the T-V complex. The present account has implications for the nature of pre-verbal subjects in Arabic as well as for the categorial status of copular elements like kāna.

scholarly journals Involuntary Syntactic Error of Interlingual Word Order When English Rigid Word Order Momentarily Deforms Arabic Clauses

2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (3) ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Saleh Jarallah AlQahtani
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
English Word ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Determiner Phrases ◽  
Subject Positions ◽  
Standard Arabic ◽  
Guided Writing ◽  
Improper Use ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Writing Task

This paper intends to explore the potential momentary influence of English rigid word order on the placement of Arabic preverbal subjects. The idea is that English as a Subject-Verb-Object language has one subject position; thus, it poses no the distribution of determiner phrases in this position. By contrast, Standard Arabic (henceforth, Arabic) uses two different word orders (Subject-Verb/Verb-Subject-(Object), SVO/VSO). As a result, indefinite determiner phrases are not freely distributed in the subject position; that is, they can appear in the postverbal subject position -VSO but not in the preverbal subject position -SVO. Because the two languages use different syntactic word orders and different subject positions, two experimental tasks (an Arabic guided writing task and an English-to-Arabic translation written task) were administered to find out whether the English word order momentarily causes Arabic learners of English to violate their language subject distributions. Analysis of the performance of Arabic native participants in the two tasks revealed two important outcomes: a) when participants were asked to reorder scrambled words into full clauses, they significantly preferred VSO order; in contrast, b) when participants were asked to translate full English clauses into Arabic, they strikingly preferred SVO order violating syntactic parametric (distributional) restrictions on the placement of indefinite determiner phrases. In other words, they used indefinite determiner phrases in the preverbal subject position. Based on the results, the study argues that the improper use of indefinite determiner phrases in the preverbal subject position is not due to the implicit knowledge of Arabic grammar; it is due to the momentary influence of English syntactic word order involuntarily exerted by participants.

scholarly journals The Illness Experience: Palliative Care Given the impossibility of Healing

2016 ◽  
Vol 50 (spe) ◽  
pp. 47-53 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margarida Maria Florêncio Dantas ◽  
Maria Cristina Lopes de Almeida Amazonas
Keyword(s):  
Palliative Care ◽  
Participant Observation ◽  
Descriptive Analysis ◽  
Terminally Ill ◽  
Medical Model ◽  
Structured Interview ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Experience Of Illness ◽  
Therapeutic Possibilities

This paper presents a reflection about being terminally ill and the various ways that the subject has at its disposal to deal with this event. The objective is to understand the experience of palliation for patients undergoing no therapeutic possibilities of cure. The methodology of this study has the instruments to semi-structured interview, the participant observation and the field diary, and the Descriptive Analysis of Foucault’s inspiration how the narratives of the subjects were perceived. The Results of paper there was the possibility of looking at the experience of illness through the eyes of a subject position assumed by the very sick. As conclusion we have than when choosing palliative care, the terminally ill opts for a way to feel more comfortable and resists the impositions of the medical model of prolonging life.

Event spaces and the shaping of economic subjectivity: Inside the Social Enterprise World Forum

2021 ◽  
Vol 36 (5) ◽  
pp. 347-355
Author(s):  
Tom Baker ◽  
Ryan Jones ◽  
Michael Mann ◽  
Nick Lewis
Keyword(s):  
New Zealand ◽  
Social Enterprise ◽  
Affective Responses ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Social Entrepreneur ◽  
Economic Sectors ◽  
The Social ◽  
New Knowledge ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Global Conference

Drawing on observations at the 2017 Social Enterprise World Forum (SEWF) – a global conference held in Christchurch, New Zealand – this paper examines the significance of localised event spaces in shaping economic subjects and, by extension, economic sectors. Conferences such as the SEWF are sites and moments that provide access to new knowledge, foster collective action and shape the subjectivities of economic actors. We describe how the SEWF cultivated sympathetic affective responses towards social enterprise and the subject position of the social entrepreneur, and demonstrate how the local specificities of Christchurch, as a place, were key to the cultivation of social-entrepreneurial subjectivity at the SEWF.

On the Subject of Negative Auxiliary Inversion

2018 ◽  
Vol 64 (1) ◽  
pp. 32-61 ◽  
Author(s):  
Frances Blanchette ◽  
Chris Collins
Keyword(s):  
Word Order ◽  
Negative Polarity ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Left Periphery ◽  
Negative Concord ◽  
Double Negation ◽  
Polarity Items ◽  
West Texas ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Scope Freezing

AbstractThis article presents a novel analysis ofNegative Auxiliary Inversion(NAI) constructions such asdidn't many people eat, in which a negated auxiliary appears in pre-subject position. NAI, found in varieties including Appalachian, African American, and West Texas English, has a word order identical to a yes/no question, but is pronounced and interpreted as a declarative. We propose that NAI subjects are negative DPs, and that the negation raises from the subject DP to adjoin to Fin (a functional head in the left periphery). Three properties of NAI motivate this analysis: (i) scope freezing effects, (ii) the various possible and impossible NAI subject types, and (iii) the incompatibility of NAI constructions with true Double-Negation interpretations. Implications for theories of Negative Concord, Negative Polarity Items, and the representation of negation are discussed.

Case and Agreement

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul Hagstrom
Keyword(s):  
Subject Position ◽  
General Overview ◽  
The Past ◽  
Default Case ◽  
Verb Forms ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Agreement Morphology

Children’s use of case and agreement morphology offers a window into the structure of their developing grammatical systems. Children acquiring English commonly produce accusative pronouns in subject position, and use verb forms lacking agreement morphology. The systematic patterns in these errors and correlations between them have been the subject of a great deal of research over the past few decades. This chapter lays out some of the results to date and the theoretical interpretations they have led to, as well as points of debate on methodology. The discussion centers around English, with other languages considered where predictions differ, and the topics include a general overview of the relation of case and agreement, optional/root infinitives, default case, and morphological access.

Alternative Literary Modernities: A Voice from Colonial Punjab

2018 ◽  
Vol 66 (1) ◽  
pp. 35-48
Author(s):  
Arti Minocha
Keyword(s):  
Middle Class ◽  
Literary Culture ◽  
The Self ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Close Reading ◽  
The Novel ◽  
Discursive Space ◽  
Political Subject ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Language Content

Abstract This paper looks at the formation of colonial print publics in Punjab, the gendered subjectivities that emerged in this new discursive space, and middle-class women’s deployment of print to articulate the self. This will be done through a close reading of one of the first novels in English, Cosmopolitan Hinduani, which was published in Lahore, Punjab, by a woman in 1902. The essay examines the narrator’s notion of a gendered cosmopolitanism and the subject position that it affords, her attempt at going beyond the fault lines of religion to articulate a liberal and modern political subject, while reworking the cosmopolitan/local binary. How does her insertion of herself as a gendered subject in the provincial, national, cosmopolitan imaginary reflect in the author’s choice of language and genre? My attempt will be to see the novel and its author as part of a literary culture in which she made certain choices about the form, language, content, and audience.

The Morphophonemics of Weak Triliteral Stems in Standard Arabic: A Generative Phonology Perspective

Al-Abhath ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 68 (1) ◽  
pp. 182-219
Author(s):  
Zaki N. Abdel-Malek
Keyword(s):  
Primary Data ◽  
Transformational Grammar ◽  
Standard Arabic ◽  
Small Set ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Considerable Detail

The “weak” triliteral stems of Standard Arabic have been studied in considerable detail by Arab as well as Western grammarians. In most cases, however, the treatment has been largely limited to listing and classifying the primary data, which satisfies observational adequacy but fails to meet the essential requirements of descriptive adequacy, simplicity and generality. In a few cases rules have been proposed, but these rules fall short of expectations: on the whole, they strike the user as complex, arbitrary and unmotivated. Drawing on the theory of Generative-Transformational Grammar, I have formulated a small set of rules which seek to satisfy all of the three essential requirements, and thus render the subject more palatable to scholars as well as learners of Standard Arabic.

The semantic role of the wh-element and subject position in Spanish and Catalan

2010 ◽  
Vol 63 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Aria Adli
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Results ◽  
Subject Position ◽  
Semantic Role ◽  
The Subject

AbstractThis work presents experimental results on the position of the subject in

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document