Is morphological case a feature of individual nominal elements?
Evidence from Standard Arabic
This study examines morphological Case marking in Standard Arabic. Hypotheses of Case distribution inside the determiner phrase are contrasted with the hypothesis that Case is a property of lexical elements only. I will show that Case is realized on nominal elements as a result of a head-to-head relation between the Case-assigner and assignee rather than a relation between a head and the whole phrase. This argument is supported by empirical evidence from Arabic as well as from other languages. I will also show that Arabic differs from other languages in that a nominal element can receive Case from a non-local head, and that Case marking does not always result from phi-agreement relations, as seems to be standardly assumed in the syntactic literature.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Background
- 3.Case assignment: One-part model
- 4.The relation between phi-agreement and case
- 5.Conclusion
-
Acknowledgements
-
Notes
-
Abbreviations
-
References