CASE, AGREEMENT AND WH-MOVEMNET IN VERBLESS CONSTRUCTIONS IN STANDARD ARABIC : A MINIMALIST PERSPECTIVE

Abstract

#The objective of this paper is to provide an adequate account of the following two questions: (a) How are Case and agreement features checked in verbless constructions in Standard Arabic? and (b) What motivates Wh-movement in such verbless sentences? This paper explores the syntactic behavior of verbless sentences and spells out two Minimalist proposals to account for these two questions. Although a verbiess sentence in Standard Arabic does not contain any overtly lexical copular verb in the present tense, there is still a licensing of Case and agreement features. Following analyses in Chomsky (1995), Bemamoun (2000) and (Fakih 2003, 2005), we have attempted to account for this phenomenon by claiming that, given feature checking considerations and the EPP, such verbless sentences behave as such because their tense is specified only for the categorial feature [+D] which must be checked by the subject in the syntax. This nominal [+D] feature is responsible for licensing Case and agreement features in the present tense. When the tense of the verbless sentence is in the past or future, the verbal copula must lexically show up. In such cases the tense is specified for two categorial features [+V] and [+D] which must be checked by a legitimate head in the course of derivation. This paper also accounts for what really forces Wh-movement in verbless sentences in Standard Arabic. Following Chomsky's (1995) Minimalist analysis of Wh-movement in English, and Fakih's (2003, 2005) account of wh-raising in Standard Arabic, we propose that in a simple interrogative clause of Standard Arabic C (i.e., COMP) has an abstract strong [+Q] feature and that the question word operator, which moves to the COMP, has also a strong [+wh] feature that moves overtly for feature checking. We argue that the question word in Standard Arabic is motivated to move overtly to [Spec, CP] to check its own morphological features against that hosted in the interrogative C under the Spec-head agreement relation.