The Morphosyntax of the Demonstrative System in Classical Arabic

A Distributed Morphology Account

Bibliographic Data

ID21185441
AuthorsMuteb Alqarni (0000-0001-6909-4947, corresponding author)
Year2020
Volume20
Issue1
Pages19-50
Publication date2020-01-01
Peer ReviewedYes
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueInternational Journal of Arabic-English Studies (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 1680-0982
PublisherThe Association of Professors of English and Translation at Arab Universities - APETAU (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.33806/ijaes2000.20.1.2
OpenAlexW3022593314
LanguageEN
References cited14

The current article explores the morphosyntax of the demonstrative system in Classical Arabic (CA) within the framework of Distributed Morphology (Halle and Marantz 1993, 1994; Halle 1997; and Embick and Noyer 2005). The paper decomposes the demonstratives into bimorphemic forms. The first morphemes represent the deictic information and capture the three types of demonstratives in CA: proximal, medial and distal. The second morphemes bear number, gender and case features which are presumably copied from the modified noun phrase. In this article, I show that the under specification of the demonstrative vocabulary items can account for all the patterns under study. However, in certain cases, context-sensitive features are required to reconcile the competition between equally competitive candidates. To account for unpredictable gaps in the paradigm, where the distal dual demonstratives are missing, I formulate an impoverishment rule as proposed by Zwicky(1985), Stump (1993) and Noyer (1998) who equip such rules with feature-changing capabilities

Deixis · Demonstrative · Linguistics · Morpheme · Natural language processing · Noun · Computer Science · History · Language, Linguistics, Cultural Analysis · Natural Language Processing Techniques · Philosophy · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation · Artificial Intelligence

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