A study of the syntax of literary Arabic
Date
1980
Authors
Campbell, Stuart J
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Publisher
Canberra, ACT : The Australian National University
Abstract
In recent years the spoken dialects of Arabic have had the lion's
share of linguistic analysis while Literary Arabic has recefved
relatively little notice. This study is an attempt to redress the
balance by presenting a transformational account of some of the
basic syntactic structures of Literary Arabic.
Chapter l contains a brief descripti·on of the historical development
of Arabic and pinpoints the form of the language studied here.
Also discussed is a particular problem affecting the choice of
data used in a study of Literary Arabic.
In Chapter 2 we present a treatment of noun phrases. Our analysis
deals with simple and complex noun phrases and we postulate an
analysis for the construct state which involves the embedding of a
noun phrase within a noun phrase. The problems of definiteness
marking in relation to the various expansions of the noun phrase
are discussed, as well as the ordering of adjective phrases. A
transformational rule is postulated for genitive case marking in
construct states and prepositional phrases. Noun classes are
discussed and we put forward the idea of an inanimate class for some
plurals. Finally we deal with features on nouns and noun phrases
and suggest a convention for the correct distribution of those
features.
Chapter 3 establishes the basic order of noncopulative clauses and
goes on to describe the topical isation of noun phrases, a process
where a definite noun phrase is fronted, leaving a coreferential
pronoun at the removal site. The topicalisation of noun phrases 1s
extended to subjects to account for subject-initial clauses; this fnvolves a reinterpretation of the verb inflection system as a
bound pronoun system. Rules are presented to account for the
cliticization of object pronouns and for accusative case
marking. The chapter closes with a discussion of multiple
topical isation.
Noncopulative clauses are treated in Chapter 4. The three varieties
- clauses with 'become' verbs, verbal copula ·clauses and verbless
copula clauses - are discussed in terms of constraints on movement.
We refer to Kuno's notion of nonreferentiality in dealing with the
motivation for these constraints. Verbless copula clauses are seen
to be generated by the same processes that generate verbal clauses,
with the addition of a copula deletion rule. Our discussion of the
'pronoun of separation' leads to the closing section of the chapter,
where a solution is presented for a problem of multiple topicalisation
raised in Chapter 3.
Chapter 5 deals with adjective phrases, opening with a discussion
of the morphology of nouns and adjectives. A semantic criterion is
postulated to distinguish between the two categories. The last part
of the chapter analyses the false construct state, an interesting
variety of adjective phrase that masquerades as a noun phrase.
Chapter 6 discusses relativization. The behaviour of restrictive
relative clauses and the relative 'pronoun' are described and we
conclude that relative clauses in Literary Arabic closely parallel
adjective phrases. We end by postulating a phrase structure rule
that reflects that parallelism.
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