Article published in:
Language and Linguistics
Vol. 19:1 (2018) ► pp. 32–60

Arabic synthetic compounds

| King Saud University
This paper discusses some data of Arabic synthetic compounds in which regular plural inflection is included inside compounds. These data pose problems to Kiparsky’s (1982) level-ordering lexical morphology model and Li’s (1990) generalization on verb incorporation. I argue that such compounds are lexically formed based on some pieces of evidence. To support the analysis, I compare the compounds and the construct state constructions in Arabic and Hebrew. Then I show that the lexical analysis explains the morphological, syntactic properties, and the semantics of Arabic synthetic compounds. More specifically, I explain how the lexical analysis applies to theta-role assignment inside the compound and then discuss the number specification of the non-head in the compound of Arabic and English.
Keywords: Arabic synthetic compounds, lexical morphology, English compounds, theta-role, regular inflections in compounds
Published online: 05 January 2018
https://doi.org/10.1075/lali.00002.ald
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