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The Syntax of Arabic

Recent research on the syntax of Arabic has produced valuable literature on the major syntactic phenomena found in the language. This guide to Arabic syntax provides an overview of the major syntactic constructions in Arabic that have featured in recent linguistic debates, and discusses the analyses provided for them in the literature. A broad variety of topics is covered, including argument structure, negation, tense, agreement phenomena, and resumption. The discussion of each topic sums up the key research results and provides new points of departure for further research. The book also contrasts Standard Arabic with other Arabic varieties spoken in the Arab world. An engaging guide to Arabic syntax, this book will be invaluable to graduate students interested in Arabic grammar, as well as syntactic theorists and typologists.

JOSEPH E. AOUN is President of Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts.

ELABBAS BENMAMOUN is Professor in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

LINA CHOUEIRI is Associate Professor in the English Department at the American University of Beirut.

CAMBRIDGE SYNTAX GUIDES

General editors:

P. Austin , B. Comrie , J. Bresnan , D. Lightfoot , I. Roberts and N. V. Smith

Responding to the increasing interest in comparative syntax, the goal of the Cambridge Syntax Guides is to make available to all linguists major findings, both descriptive and theoretical, which have emerged from the study of particular languages. The series is not committed to working in any particular framework, but rather seeks to make language-specific research available to theoreticians and practitioners of all persuasions.

Written by leading figures in the field, these guides will each include an overview of the grammatical structures of the language concerned. For the descriptivist, the books will provide an accessible introduction to the methods and results of the theoretical literature; for the theoretician, they will show how constructions that have achieved theoretical notoriety fit into the structure of the language as a whole; for everyone, they will promote cross-theoretical and cross-linguistic comparison with respect to a well-defined body of data.

Other books available in this series

O. Fischer et al.: The Syntax of Early English

K. Zagona : The Syntax of Spanish

K. Kiss : The Syntax of Hungarian

S. Mchombo : The Syntax of Chichewa

H. Thrainsson : The Syntax of Icelandic

P. Rowlett : The Syntax of French

R. D. Borsley et al.: The Syntax of Welsh

C.-T. J. Huang et al.: The Syntax of Chinese

The Syntax of Arabic

Joseph E. Aoun

Northeastern University, Boston

Elabbas Benmamoun

University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign

Lina Choueiri

American University of Beirut

CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, So Paulo, Delhi

Cambridge University Press

The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK

Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

www.cambridge.org

Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521659864

Cambridge University Press 2010

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published in print format 2010

ISBN 978-0-511-70502-1 mobipocket

ISBN 978-0-511-70556-4 eBook (Kindle edition)

ISBN 978-0-521-65017-5 hardback

ISBN 978-0-521-65986-4 paperback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

Abbreviations

	First Person
	Second Person
	Third Person
s	Singular
p	Plural
m	Masculine
f	Feminine
Acc	Accusative
Nom	Nominative
Gen	Genitive
Dat	Dative
Asp	Aspectual Marker
Subj	Subjunctive
Ind	Indicative
Comp	Complementizer
Neg	Negative Marker
Fut	Future Marker
Prog	Progressive
FM	Focus Marker

Issues in the syntax of Arabic

1.1 The Arabic language(s)

Arabic belongs to the Semitic branch of the Afro-Asiatic (Hamito-Semitic) family of languages, which includes languages like Aramaic, Ethiopian, South Arabian, Syriac, and Hebrew. A number of the languages in this group are spoken in the Middle East, the Arabian Peninsula, and Africa. It has been documented that Arabic spread with the Islamic conquests from the Arabian Peninsula and within a few decades, it spread over a wide territory across North Africa and the Middle East. Arabic is now spoken by more than 200 million speakers excluding bilingual speakers (Gordon ).

Although there is a debate about the history of Arabic (including that of the Standard variety and the spoken dialects) Arabic displays some of the typical characteristics of Semitic languages: root-pattern morphology, broken plurals in nouns, emphatic and glottalized consonants, and a verbal system with prefix and suffix conjugation.

1.1.1 The development of Arabic

Classical Arabic evolved from the standardization of the language of the Qur'an and poetry. This standardization became necessary at the time when Arabic became the language of an empire, with the Islamic expansion starting in the seventh century. In addition to Classical Arabic, there were regional spoken Arabic varieties. It is a matter of intense debate what the nature of the historical relation between Classical Arabic and the spoken dialects is (Owens ).

Modern Standard Arabic emerged in the nineteenth century at a time when Arabic was gaining the status of official language in the Arab world, and coinciding with the emergence of Arab nationalism (see Suleiman ( language from dialectal and foreign influence, and adapting it to the needs of modern times. Unsurprisingly, in spite of the unifying work of those academies, one can still observe regional variations in Modern Standard Arabic.

1.1.2 The Modern Arabic dialects and Modern Standard Arabic

The linguistic space of the Arabic-speaking world, which spans a large geographical area from the Persian Gulf in Asia to the Atlantic Ocean in North West Africa, is shared by several language varieties, which include Modern Standard Arabic, and a number of Arabic vernaculars that remain mainly as spoken dialects. Those dialects differ from one another, with mutual intelligibility decreasing as the geographical distance between them increases. The main geographical linguistic groupings are the Maghreb (mainly North Africa), Egypt, the Levant, and the Gulf.).

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