barriers

Introducing Syntax

by

Prof. Dr. Walid Mohammed Amer

Professor of Linguistics

The Islamic University of Gaza

2019
 Introducing Syntax

by

Prof. Dr. Walid Amer,

Professor of Linguistics
The Islamic University of Gaza

2019

i
ii
 Dedication

To the memory of my parents.

iii
Introduction
this book defines syntax, then it answers the question why do we
study syntax? This is followed by introducing the way language
is projected, and the types of syntactic categories any language
consists of. This is directly followed by referring briefly to the
main theories of syntax. It is mainly designed for use to provide a
data-motivated, step-by-step introduction to the main tenets of
Government and Binding Theory of syntax (Universal grammar
theory) as developed by Noam Chomsky. An overview of the
theory is followed by sections on subcategorization, X-bar
theory, movement, semantic roles, case theory, and binding
theory. A number of the more recent additions proposed by other
linguists, such as the DP hypothesis, the split structure for
inflection, word order, contrasts between the English DP and
Arabic TP, and double object and dative constructions including
semantic constraints are covered in the final chapters in the book.
The data used is primarily English and Arabic, but also includes
Hebrew.

iv
 TABLE OF CONTENTS
Dedication.....................................................................................................iii
Introduction...................................................................................................iv
Table of Contents............................................................................................v
Chapter one: Introduction...............................................................................6
What is Syntax?..............................................................................................6
Language and mind........................................................................................7
1.1. Knowledge of language.....................................................................11
1.2. Language and faculties.......................................................................14
1.3. Grammar and universal grammar......................................................15
1.4. Characteristics of syntactic rules........................................................17
1.5. Universal Grammar Theory...............................................................18
Chapter two: Syntactic Categories..............................................................10
2.1. Lexical categories........................................................................11
2.2. Functional catégories…………………………………….……..32
2.2.1 Complementizer Phrase (CP)..................................................32
2.2.2 Inflection Phrase (IP)...............................................................32
2.3. Heads...........................................................................................33
2.4. X-bar theory.................................................................................34
2.4.1 Projection Principle:................................................................37
2.4.2 Inflection Phrase......................................................................39
2.4.3 Complementizer Phrase...........................................................40
2.4.4 Noun Phrase.............................................................................43
General exercices on X-bar syntax...............................................................44
Chapter three: Theta theory..........................................................................46
General exercises on theta theory.................................................................49
Chapter four: Case theory.............................................................................52
Case filter......................................................................................................57
Exercises and problems................................................................................57
Chapter five: Government............................................................................61
Head government..........................................................................................63
Antecedent government................................................................................63
Proper government.......................................................................................64
General exercises:.........................................................................................66
Chapter Six: Binding theory.........................................................................69
General Exercises.........................................................................................72
Chapter Seven: Movement theory................................................................75
The Comp-trace effect..................................................................................77
WH-Movement.............................................................................................78
Chapter eight: Bounding theory...................................................................81
General exercises..........................................................................................82
Chapter Nine: Control Theory......................................................................86
General exercises..........................................................................................89
Chapter ten: Word Order in MSA................................................................91
Chapter eleven: Contrasts in the lexical system of English and MSA.........98
possessive DPs / TPs....................................................................................98
Adjectival Phrases......................................................................................109
Chapter twelve: The syntactic derivation of Double object construction in
Arabic.........................................................................................................115
Theta-role assignment in datives................................................................123

v
Datives in Hebrew......................................................................................124
Dative and Double object constructions in English....................................126
Semantic constraints...................................................................................127
List 5): alternating verbs in English and Arabic.........................................127
references....................................................................................................131
The Author's Brief Biography....................................................................137

vi
 Chapter one
Introduction
What is Syntax?
The word ‘syntax’ has been derived from the Greek word syntax is which
means ‘arrangement’. It implies the way in which words are arranged to
reveal relationships of meanings within sentences and often between them.
In other words, syntax is the grammatical structure of words and

phrases to create coherent sentences. It studies combinations of words

including word-structure and sentence-structure.

What does syntax mean?

Syntax is the grammatical structure of sentences. The format in
which words and phrases are arranged to create sentences is
called syntax. look at an example of how a sentence can be
rearranged to create varied syntax. 
Examples of Syntax in a Sentence:
 The boy jumped happily.
 The boy happily jumped.
 Happily, the boy jumped.
What is the difference between syntax and grammar?
Syntax means the science, which studies the structure of the
sentence whereas. Grammar means the study of phrases in the
sentence like verb phrase, noun phrase, adjective phrase, adverb
phrase, preposition phrase, etc. The word grammar is a word that
confuses considerably. It has been approached and defined
differently by different scholars and schools of linguistics.
Etymologically, the term grammar goes back (through French &
Latin) to Greek word Grammatika or Grammatkia which may be
translated as the art of ‘writing’. But for a long time, this term

vii
has been used very closely to incorporate the whole study of
language.
Types of Grammar
Prominent types of grammar are: Traditional Grammar,
prescriptive grammar, descriptive grammar, sentence-
interpretative grammar, sentence-producing grammar, reference
grammar, contrastive grammar, theoretical grammar, structural
grammar, phrase-structure grammar, transformational grammar,
communicative grammar, generative grammar, etc.
We are here concerned of studying transformational generative
Grammar, It means a grammar in which a set of formal rules are
used to generate or define the membership of an infinite set of
grammatical sentences in a language. Instead of analyzing a
single sentence, this grammar devises a set of rules of
construction that may help in generating sentences or structures
in an infinitely large number. This grammar attempts to produce
all and only grammatical sentences of language. (all and only
means that our analysis must account for all the grammatical
correct phrases and sentences and only those grammatical correct
phrases and sentences in whatever language we are analyzing.)
We have a rule such as “a prepositional phrase in English
consists of a preposition followed by a noun phrase”. We can
produce a large number of (infinite) phrase using this rule. e.g. in
the zoo, on the table, near the window.
Why do we study syntax and what is good for?
There are many reasons for studying syntax, from general
humanistic or behavioral motivations to much more specific
goals such as those in the following:
a. To help us to illustrate the patterns of English more
effectively and clearly.

viii
 b. To enable us to analyze the structure of English sentences
in a systematic and explicit way. For example, let us
consider how we could use the syntactic notion of head,
which refers to the essential element within a phrase. The
following is a short and informal rule for English subject-
verb agreement.

1. In English, the main verb agrees with the head element of the
subject. This informal rule can pinpoint what is wrong with the
following two examples:
2. a. *The recent strike by pilots have cost the country a great
deal of money from tourism and so on.
c. *The average age at which people begin to need eyeglasses
vary considerably.

Once we have structural knowledge of such sentences, it is easy

to see that the essential element of the subject in (2a) is not pilots
but strike. This is why the main verb should be has but not have
to observe the basic agreement rule in (1).Meanwhile, in (2b), the
head is the noun age, and thus the main verb vary needs to agree
with this singular noun. It would not do to simply talk about ‘the
noun’ in the subject in the examples in (2), as there is more than
one. We need to be able to talk about the one which gives its
character to the phrase, and this is the head. If the head is
singular, so is the whole phrase, and similarly for plural. The
head of the subject and the verb (in the incorrect form) are
indicated in (3):
(3) a. *[The recent strike by pilots] have cost the country a great
deal of money from tourism and so on.
b. *[The average age at which people begin to need
eyeglasses] vary considerably.

ix
Either example can be made into a grammatical version by
pluralizing the head noun of the subject.
Now let us look at some slightly different cases. Can you explain
why the following examples are unacceptable?
(4) a. *Despite of his limited educational opportunities, Abraham
Lincoln became one of the greatest intellectuals in the world.
b. *A pastor was executed, notwithstanding on many applications
in favor of him.
To understand these examples, we first need to recognize that the
words despite and notwithstanding are prepositions, and further
that canonical English prepositions combine only with noun
phrases. In (4), these prepositions combine with prepositional
phrases again (headed by of and on respectively), violating this
rule.
A more subtle instance can be found in the following:
(5) a. Visiting relatives can be boring.
b. I saw that gas can explode.
These examples each have more than one interpretation. The first
one can mean either that the event of seeing our relatives is a
boring activity, or that the relatives visiting us are themselves
boring. The second example can either mean that a specific can
containing gas exploded, which I saw, or it can mean that I
observed that gas has a possibility of exploding. If one knows
English syntax, that is, if one understands the syntactic structure
of these English sentences, it is easy to identify these different
meanings. Here is another example which requires certain
syntactic knowledge:
(6) He said that that ‘that’ that that man used was wrong.
This is the kind of sentence one can play with when starting to
learn English grammar. Can you analyze it? What are the

x
differences among these five that’s Structural (or syntactic)
knowledge can be used to diagnose the differences. Part of our
study of syntax involves making clear exactly how each word is
categorized, and how it contributes to a whole sentence. When it
comes to understanding a rather complex sentence, knowledge of
English syntax can be a great help. Syntactic or structural
knowledge helps us to understand simple as well as complex
English sentences in a systematic way. There is no difference in
principle between the kinds of examples we have presented
above and (7):

(7) The government’s plan, which was elaborated in a document

released by the Treasury yesterday, is the formal outcome of the
Government commitment at the Madrid summit last year to put
forward its ideas about integration.

Apart from having more words than the examples we have

introduced above, nothing in this example is particularly
complex.

1.4 Exercises
1. For each of the following nouns, decide if it can be used as
a count or as a non-count (mass) noun. In doing so, construct
acceptable and unacceptable examples using the tests
(plurality, indefinite article, pronoun one, few/little, many/much
tests) we have discussed in this section.
(i) activity, art, cheese, discussion, baggage, luggage, suitcase,
religion, sculpture, paper, difficulty, cheese, water, experience,
progress, research, life.
2. Check or find out whether each of the following examples
is grammatical or ungrammatical. For each ungrammatical

xi
one, provide at least one (informal) reason for its
ungrammaticality, according to your intuitions or ideas.
(i) a. Kim and Sandy is looking for a new bicycle.
b. I have never put the book.
c. The boat floated down the river sank.
d. Chris must liking syntax.
e. There is eager to be fifty students in this class.
f. What is John eager to do?
g. What is John easy to do?
h. Is the boy who holding the plate can see the girl?
i. Which chemical did you mix the hydrogen peroxide and?
j. There seem to be a good feeling developing among the
students.
k. Strings have been pulled many times to get students into that
university.
3. Consider the following set of data, focusing on the usage of
‘self’ reflexive pronouns and personal pronouns:
(i) a. He is proud of himself.
b. *He proud of herself.
c. *He proud of myself.
d. *He proud of ourselves.
(ii) a. *He is proud of him. (‘he’ and ‘him’ referring to the same
person)
b. He is proud of me.
c. He is proud of her.
d. He proud of us.

Phrase Structure Rules

Speakers of any language have the ability to intuitively judge
whether or not  a sentence is grammatical, or well-formed.  For

xii
example, speakers of English know that (1) is acceptable and (2)
is not, even without necessarily understanding why.

(1a) Wise teachers listen to their students.

(1b)* Listen to their students wise teachers.

This ability to make these judgments is based on the constraints

specific to one’s language that govern how phrases may be
constructed.  We refer to these as phrase structure rules (PSR). In
other words, phrases that adhere to PSRs will be judged as
grammatical (1a), those that don’t will be judged as
ungrammatical (1b).

If we look at the difference between (1a) and (1b), we see that

the order of constituents in (1a) is subject – verb – object that is
obligatory in English, whereas in (1b) the order is verb-object –
subject.  These sentences generate the PSRs that explain our
grammaticality judgments.

(2a) S —> NP, VP 1

(2b) *S —>VP, NP

Let’s look at the structure of an NP.   Consider (3a) and (3b).

(3a) [Wise teachers] listen to their students.

(3b) *[Teachers wise] listen to their students.

First, and most basically, we know that an NP must have a head

‘N’.  Thus we can stipulate the following rule:

(4) NP —> N

We also know that Ns may optionally be modified by an

adjective, ‘AP’ in which case ‘A’ must  precede N.  When this
occurs the phrase is grammatical (3a); when A follows N the
phrase is ungrammatical (3b), shown in (5a) and (5b).  Now we

xiii
understand why (3b) is not acceptable.  English does not permit
an adjective to follow the N it modifies.  The PSRs below
demonstrate this knowledge.

(5a) NP —> (AP) N

(5b)* NP —>  N (AP)

Now we have two PSRs for NPs in English.

Consider (6a) and (6b).

(6a) [The students] respect attentive teachers.
(6b) * [Students the] respect attentive teachers.

Here we see that the placement of a determiner (D) in relation to

the N it modifies also affects grammaticality.  When D precedes
N, the phrase is acceptable (7a); when it follows, the phrase is
unacceptable (7b).

(7a) NP —> (D) N

(7b)* NP —> N (D)

Now we have three PSRs for NPs. (4), (5a), and (7a).

Consider VPs in English by examining the following sentences.

(8a) Lois [smiled].
(8b) *Lois [smiled flowers].
(8c) *Lois [bought].
(8d) Lois [bought flowers].
(8e) *Lois [flowers bought].
(8f) Lois gave flowers [to her mother].
(8g) Lois gave flowers [to her mother [on her birthday, [after
dinner, [on the balcony]]]].

First, VPs must contain a V head, thus (9).

(9) VP —> V

xiv
However certain verbs require an NP direct object (8d) while
others may not select one (8a).   We also know that NPs must
follow verbs of which they are direct objects (8e). The
optionality and position of an NP in VP is shown in (10).
(10) VP —> V (NP)

We see that certain verbs require an indirect object that will be

generated in a PP, (8f) and that any number of PPs may be added
to the VP (8g).
(11) VP —> V (NP) (PP*)

There are also verbs that select a sentence as a complement, with

the ability to add as many as desired.  Thus a structure such as
(12) will yield (13).

(12) Lois hopes [that her mother will like the flowers [that she
bought]].
(13) VP —> V (NP) (PP*) (S*)

In order to simplify (13), we can state VP  V (NP) ({PP, S}*), the
curly brackets showing that both PP and S are optional and may
be repeated.

These are just a few PSRs of English.  Below is a more complete

list.

 S —> NP VP
 NP —> (D) (A*) N ({PP,S}*)
 VP —> V (NP*) (AP) ({PP,S}*)
 PP —> P NP
 AP —> (Adv*) A ({PP,S}*)
Now we have a theory that explains our intuitions on which
structures are grammatically acceptable and which are not.

Remember the symbols for abbreviations:

xv
  (X) = optional X
 X* = any number of Xs
 {X, Y} = either X or Y
1
Abbreviations for syntactic categories

 S- sentence
 NP- noun phrase
 N-noun
 D-determiner
 VP-verb phrase
 V-verb
 AP-adjectival phrase
 A-adjective
 AdvP-adverbial phrase
 Adv- adverb
 PP-prepositional phrase
 P-preposition

WEAKNESSES OF PHRASE STRUCTURE

GRAMMAR

Among the shortcomings of PSG are the following:

1. It is not able to generate some types of sentences since it only

caters for the simple ones. The complex ones are therefore not
addressed. Here is one such example: ‘The chief said that the
thief who stole the cow believed that he had not been seen’.
2. It does not capture the relationship between sentence types as in
the case of active versus passive
3. It is not able to handle discontinuous elements such as the
auxiliary and the main verb in ‘Are you eating with us ?’ for

xvi
 example, ‘are’ and ‘eating’ have been separated by the subject
‘you’ yet the two of them are part of the VP.
4. Cannot handle stylistic variations such as ‘ Miraculously, the
pilot survived the plane crash / The pilot miraculously survived
the plane crash / The pilot survived the plane crash miraculously.
Instead of capturing the fact that the three versions are
paraphrases of one another, PSG gives a different rewrite for
each.
Much as it could handle structural ambiguity (occasioned by the
arrangement of words), it had no answer for lexical ambiguity
such as ‘Among the shortcomings of PSG are the following:

5. It is not able to generate some types of sentences since it only

caters for the kernel ones. The complex ones are therefore not
addressed. Here is one such example: ‘ The chief said that the
thief who stole the cow believed that he had not been seen’.
6. It does not capture the relationship between sentence types as in
the case of active versus passive
7. It is not able to handle discontinuous elements such as the
auxiliary and the main verb in In ‘Are you eating with us ?’ for
example, ‘are’ and ‘eating’ have been separated by the subject
‘you’ yet the two of them are part of the VP.
8. Cannot handle stylistic variations such as ‘ Miraculously, the
pilot survived the plane crash / The pilot miraculously survived
the plane crash / The pilot survived the plane crash miraculously.
Instead of capturing the fact that the three versions are
paraphrases of one another, PSG gives a different rewrite for
each.
9. Much as it could handle structural ambiguity (occasioned by the
arrangement of words), it had no answer for lexical ambiguity

xvii
such as I found it at the bank’. Are we referring to the edge of
the river or a financial institution?

Language and mind

There are many ways to describe language, not all compatible
with each other. In this book we make use of a particular system
of grammatical description based mainly on Government and
Binding Theory or universal Grammar theory, We use the theory
to offer a description of English, rather than using English to
demonstrate the theory. We will spend a short amount of time at
the beginning of the book to state our reasons for choosing this
theory, as opposed to any other, to base our descriptions.
Whatever else language might be (e.g. a method of
communicating, something to aid thought, a form of
entertainment or of aesthetic appreciation) it is first and foremost
a system that enables people who speak it to produce and
understand linguistic expressions. The nature of this system is
what linguistics aims to discover. But where do we look for this
system? It is a common sense point of view that language exists
in people’s heads. After all, we talk of knowing and learning
languages. This also happens to be the belief of the kind of
linguistics that this book aims to introduce: in a nutshell, the
linguistic system that enables us to ‘speak’ and ‘understand’ a
language is a body of knowledge which all speakers of a
particular language have come to acquire. If this is true, then our
means for investigating language are fairly limited – we cannot,
for instance, subject it to direct investigation, as delving around
in someone’s brain is not only an ethical minefield, but unlikely
to tell us very much given our current level of understanding of
how the mind is instantiated in the brain. We are left, therefore,

xviii
with only indirect ways of investigating language. Usually this
works in the following way: we study what the linguistic system
produces (grammatical sentences which have certain meanings)
and we try to guess what it is that must be going on in the
speaker’s head to enable them to do this. As you can imagine,
this is not always easy and there is a lot of room for differences
of opinion. Some of us might tell you that that is exactly what
makes linguistics interesting. There are however some things we
can assume from the outset about the linguistic system without
even looking too closely at the details of language. First, it seems
that speakers of a language are able to produce and understand a
limitless number of expressions. Language simply is not a
confined set of squeaks and grunts that have fixed meanings. It is
an everyday occurrence that we produce and understand
utterances that probably have never been produced before (when
was the last time you heard someone say the chanter was wearing
a flowing black dress with matching high heeled shoes and
chanting the Palestinian national anthem? – yet you understood
it!). But if language exists in our heads, how is this possible? The
human head is not big enough to contain this amount of
knowledge. Even if we look at things like brain cells and synapse
connections, etc., of which there is a very large number possible
inside the head, there still is not the room for an infinite amount
of linguistic knowledge. The answer must be that this is not how
to characterize linguistic knowledge: we do not store all the
possible linguistic expressions in our heads, but something else
which enables us to produce and understand these expressions.
As a brief example to show how this is possible, consider the set
of numbers. This set is infinite, and yet I could write down any
one of them and you would be able to tell that what I had written

xix
was a number. This is possible, not because you or I have all of
the set of numbers in our heads, but because we know a small
number of simple rules that tell us how to write numbers down.
We know that numbers are formed by putting together instances
of the ten digits 0,1,2,3, etc. These digits can be put together in
almost any order (as long as numbers bigger than or equal to 1 do
not begin with a 0) and in any quantities. Therefore, 4 is a
number and so is 1234355, etc. But 0234 is not a number and
neither is QED. What these examples show is that it is possible to
have knowledge of an infinite set of things without actually
storing them in our heads. It seems likely that this is how
language works. So, presumably, what we have in our heads is a
(finite) set of rules which tell us how to recognize the infinite
number of expressions that constitute the language that we speak.
We might refer to this set of rules as a grammar, though there are
some linguists who would like to separate the actual set of rules
existing inside a speaker’s head from the linguist’s guess of what
these rules are. To these linguists a grammar is a linguistic
hypothesis (to use a more impressive term than ‘guess’) and what
is inside the speaker’s head IS language, i.e. the object of study
for linguistics. We can distinguish two notions of language from
this perspective: the language which is internal to the mind, call
it I-language, which consists of a finite system and is what
linguists try to model with grammars; and the language which is
external to the speaker, E-language, which is the infinite set of
expressions defined by the I-language that linguists take data
from when formulating their grammars. We can envisage this as
the following:
(1) Grammar models provide data I-language E-language
defines. So, a linguist goes out amongst language speakers and

xx
listens to what they produce and perhaps tests what they can
understand and formulates a grammar based on these
observations. It is the way of the universe that no truths are given
before we start our investigations of it. But until we have some
way of separating what is relevant to our investigations from
what is irrelevant there is no way to proceed: Do we need to test
the acidity of soil before investigating language? It seems highly
unlikely that we should, but if we know nothing from the outset,
how can we decide? It is necessary therefore, before we even
begin our investigations, to make some assumptions about what
we are going to study. Usually, these assumptions are based on
common sense, like those I have been making so far. But it is
important to realize that they are untested assumptions which
may prove to be wrong once our investigations get under way.
These assumptions, plus anything we add to them as we start
finding out about the world, we call a theory. Linguistic theories
are no different from any other theory in this respect. All
linguists base themselves on one theory or another. One group of
linguists, known as generativists, claim that in order to do things
properly we need to make our theories explicit. This can be seen
as a reaction to a more traditional approach to linguistics which
typically claims to operate theoretically, but, in fact, makes many
implicit assumptions about language which are themselves never
open to investigation or challenge. Generative linguists point out
that progress is unlikely to be made like this, as if these
assumptions turn out to be wrong we will never find out, as they
are never questioned. In order to find out if our assumptions are
correct, they need to be constantly questioned and the only way
to do this is to make them explicit. Because of this, it is my
opinion that the generative perspective is the one that is most

xxi
likely to provide the best framework for a description of
language.

1.1 Knowledge of language

Knowledge of language according Oxford is defined as Facts,
information, and skills acquired through experience or education;
the theoretical or practical understanding of a subject.
For language there are many definitions that have been
proposed. Henry Sweet, an English phonetician and
language scholar, stated: “Language is the expression of
ideas by means of speech-sounds combined into words.
Words are combined into sentences, this combination
answering to that of ideas into thoughts.” The American
linguists Bernard Bloch and George L. Trager formulated the
following definition: “A language is a system of arbitrary vocal
symbols by means of which a social group cooperates.” Any
succinct definition of language makes a number of
presuppositions and begs a number of questions. The first,
for example, puts excessive weight on “thought,” and the
second uses “arbitrary” in a specialized, though legitimate,
way.

A number of considerations (marked in italics below) enter

into a proper understanding of language as a subject:

Every physiologically and mentally typical person acquires in

childhood the ability to make use, as both sender and
receiver, of a system of communication that comprises a
circumscribed set of symbols (e.g., sounds, gestures, or
written or typed characters). In spoken language, this symbol
set consists of noises resulting from movements of certain
organs within the throat and mouth. In signed languages,

xxii
these symbols may be hand or body movements, gestures,
or facial expressions. By means of these symbols, people are
able to impart information, to express feelings and emotions,
to influence the activities of others, and to comport
themselves with varying degrees of friendliness or hostility
toward persons who make use of substantially the same set
of symbols.
Different systems of communication constitute different
languages; the degree of difference needed to establish a
different language cannot be stated exactly. No two people
speak exactly alike; hence, one is able to recognize the
voices of friends over the telephone and to keep distinct a
number of unseen speakers in a radio broadcast. Yet, clearly,
no one would say that they speak different languages.
Generally, systems of communication are recognized as
different languages if they cannot be understood without
specific learning by both parties, though the precise limits of
mutual intelligibility are hard to draw and belong on a scale
rather than on either side of a definite dividing line.
Substantially different systems of communication that may
impede but do not prevent mutual comprehension are
called dialects of a language. In order to describe in detail the
actual different language patterns of individuals, the
term idiolect, meaning the habits of expression of a single
person, has been coined.
Typically, people acquire a single language initially—their
first language, or native tongue, the language used by those
with whom, or by whom, they are brought up from
infancy. Subsequent “second” languages are learned to
different degrees of competence under various conditions.

xxiii
Language, as described above, is species-specific to human
beings. Other members of the animal kingdom have the
ability to communicate, through vocal noises or by other
means, but the most important single feature characterizing
human language (that is, every individual language), against
every known mode of animal communication, is its infinite
productivity and creativity. Human beings are unrestricted in
what they can communicate; no area of experience is
accepted as necessarily incommunicable, though it may be
necessary to adapt one’s language in order to cope with new
discoveries or new modes of thought. Animal
communication systems are by contrast very tightly
circumscribed in what may be communicated. Indeed,
displaced reference, the ability to communicate about things
outside immediate temporal and spatial contiguity, which is
fundamental to speech, is found elsewhere only in the so-
called language of bees. Bees are able, by carrying out
various conventionalized movements (referred to as bee
dances) in or near the hive, to indicate to others the locations
and strengths of food sources. But food sources are the only
known theme of this communication system. Surprisingly,
however, this system, nearest to human language in function,
belongs to a species remote from humanity in the animal
kingdom. On the other hand, the animal performance
superficially most like human speech, the mimicry of parrots
and of some other birds that have been kept in the company
of humans, is wholly derivative and serves no independent
communicative function. Humankind’s nearest relatives
among the primates, though possessing a vocal physiology
similar to that of humans, have not developed anything like a
spoken language. Attempts to teach sign language to

xxiv
chimpanzees and other apes through imitation have achieved
limited success, though the interpretation of the significance
of ape signing ability remains controversial.
Regarding the generative grammar school, it states that language
refers to knowledge that native speakers have. This together with
other faculties in the mind enables them to communicate, express
their thoughts and perform various other functions. Ouhalla,
(1994). Accordingly, the task of the linguist is to characterize the
knowledge that native speakers have of their language. This
includes word formation, pronunciation, rules that govern social
behavior and rules of reference which enable people to interpret
utterances in relation to a given context. Consequently the
knowledge of language means knowledge of the rules which
govern pronunciation, and word and sentence formation.
This is the definition we are concerned with in this study.

1.2 Language and faculties

Following the transformational generative grammar school,
Knowledge of language is probably independent of intelligence.
It can remain intact when other faculties are impaired and vise
versa.
This simply means that the human mind is said to have a modular
structure where each faculty has an autonomous existence. The
ability of speaking, i.e, the language relies on the interaction
between all such autonomous modules. However, this knowledge
of language can be studied separately without being connected
with the other faculties of mind1.

11
According to Chomsky the faculties of mind are like; the logical faculty, moral and
ethical faculties. Each one of these has its own processing procedures.

xxv
1.4 Grammar and universal grammar
The term grammar refers to the rules, which govern
pronunciation (phonology), word formation (morphology), and
sentence formation (syntax).
To start discussion, let us first raise the question: How does
anyone of the native speakers of English come to have this
intricate and highly specialized system of the grammatical rules
of his language?
Axiomatically, such rules are not learnt consciously. That is it is
impossible that the native speaker was taught to say brought
instead of bringed and mice instead of mouses and at a later
stage he/she tries to speak proper English instead of teenage
gibberish.
This type of knowledge is subconscious in the sense that
although native speakers possess it and use it they do not have
direct access to it, therefore they cannot teach it.
It is impossible that they originally come to know English by
memorizing all sentences that exist in this language because the
number of these sentences is infinite. Additionally one of the
properties of language is that a substantial number of sentences
speakers produce are novel. (uttered for the first time). This
corresponds equally to all natural languages. Consequently such
human languages are said to be creative. This creative aspect of
language sets a prima-facie evidence that knowledge of language
is essentially knowledge of rules. This knowledge stands as a
computational system, which makes it possible to generate an
infinite number of sentences from such finite number of rules
together with the lexicon.
In conclusion, one can learn a human language as a native
speaker by observing others speak it, deriving the rules from their

xxvi
speech and then internalizing those rules all at subconscious
level. Ouhalla, (1994).
Here it appears clearly that the complexity of human languages is
such that learning the from scratch is beyond the reach of living
organisms, which do not have some kind of special
predisposition, i.e. an innate ability of some sort. Consequently,
we can conclude that the innate predisposition to master language
basically consists of a set of rules, i.e. a grammar This type of
grammar is called universal grammar (UG).
UG is a set of rules that all humans possess by virtue of having
certain common generic features, which distinguish them from
other organisms. These universal rules are found in English along
with all other natural languages. Thus any native speaker of any
natural language has the rules of UG, certain rules specific to his
or her language and the lexicon.
Shifting to the task of the linguist, I assume that his/her rule is to
characterize the knowledge that humans have of their language in
formal terms. I.e. The linguist tries to reconstruct via analyzing
the data collected in any language the knowledge that exist in the
mind of native speakers about their language. This directly
means that the task of the linguist is to formulate a theory
sometimes called a model, of language. The process of
formulating such theory is composed of attempts to introduce,
describe and analyze as many data as possible. The result of such
attempts formulates a theory that governs certain constructions,
which may prevail in all natural languages or in some specific
languages rather than others.
An example that represents constructions that exist in all
languages can be syntactic categories like; CP, IP, VP, DP.
Having a theory that accounts for any construction of these in

xxvii
 English must be directly applicable to the same construction in
other human languages. However the example that represents
constructions that are available in certain languages rather than
others is represented in preposition stranding, which is available
in English but not in French, Arabic and Romance languages.
Who did John give the book to?
The preposition to is stranded in the sentence final position

1.5 Characteristics of syntactic rules

As mentioned earlier, the syntactic rules permit speakers to
produce or understand an unlimited number of sentences never
produced or heard before. The production and comprehension of
the new sentences is called as the creative aspect of language use.
Following Fromkin and Rodman (1990: 78), the syntactic rules
in a grammar must at least account for
1. the grammaticality of sentences,
2. word order,
3. structural ambiguity,
4. the meaning relations between words in a sentence,
5. the similarity of meaning of sentences with different
structures, and
speakers’ creative ability to produce and understand any of an
infinite set of possible sentences.

To account for the phenomena above, a grammatical theory is

erected. Such a theory is supposed to provide a complete
characterization of what speakers implicitly know about their
language. This theory is called Universal Grammar

xxviii
1.6 Universal Grammar Theory
Following Chomsky (1981, 1986a, 1986b, 1989), Haegeman
(1990), and many others, Amer (1996) states that universal
grammar (UG) theory is the theory of natural languages and the
expressions they generate. It is generally identified with a
representation of the language faculty with which humans are
endowed. This faculty, which is precisely called mental faculty,
is innate.
UG theory in its conventional form includes four levels of
representation for any natural language. These levels are
represented below.

LEXICON

DEEP STRUCTURE

SURFACE STRUCTURE

PHONETIC FORM (PF) LOGICAL FORM (LF)

The grammar of any language is seen as a mapping between

these levels. Let’s now introduce a brief interpretation for these
levels.
The lexicon contains lexical items which project deep structures
(D-structures); in turn, these are mapped into surface structures
(S-structures) by the rules of the transformational component
(movement or move alpha). The S-structures are then mapped
into phonetic from ( PF) and logical form ( LF) components.
The sub-components of grammar can be further characterized.
The lexicon specifies those aspects of the abstract morpho-
phonological structure of lexical items and their syntactic

xxix
features, including their categorical and contextual features,
which are not predictable by general rule. Consequently the
lexical entry of a verb like hit must specify just enough of its
properties to determine its sound, meaning and its syntactic rules
through the operation of general principles, for the language to
which it belongs (Chomsky, 1981,1989).
D-structure is defined by Chomsky and Lasnik (1991:6) as ‘a
level at which lexical items are inserted from the lexicon and
lexical properties are represented’ This level is referred to as the
internal interface level, since it directly relates the computational
system and the lexicon.’ D-structure is mapped into S-structure
in the computational system by means of Move Alpha (move
anything anywhere unless you face a barrier as will be clarified
later) The S-structure level can in certain respects be construed as
an abstract level involving empty categories left by syntactic
movement. This intermediate level (S-structure) is in turn
mapped into LF and PF, for LF it is standardly assumed that this
mapping is achieved via move alpha as well, but it seems likely
that the mapping to PF includes some fundamentally different
processes.
Chomsky (1989) refers to LF and PF as ‘the interface levels’
which connect the language system with other cognitive systems
of the mind/brain. PF is the component which links the language
system to the perceptual and motor systems involved in language
production and perception. LF, on the other hand, is the level,
which connects language to the conceptual and pragmatic
systems.
The theory of UG is referred to as Government Binding Theory
(GB). This theory is divided into a number of sub-theories, such
as:

xxx
 ase theory, Government theory, Binding theory
Movement theory, Bounding theory, Control X
theory. -
Before referring to some notions and principles in b
these sub-theories, it is a
essential to refer to the syntactic rules, which r
categorize and subcategorize
the sentence into its minimal parts. t
h
e
o
r
y
,

T
h
e
t
a

t
h
e
o
r
y
,

xxxi
 Chapter two

Syntactic Categories

2.1 Introduction
In Chapter 1, we observed that the study of English syntax is the study of
rules which generate an infinite number of grammatical sentences. These
rules can be inferred from observations about the English data. One
simple mechanism we recognize is that in forming grammatical
sentences, we start from words, or ‘lexical’ categories. These lexical
categories then form a larger constituent ‘phrase’; and phrases go together
to form a ‘clause’. A clause either is, or is part of, a well-formed
sentence:

Typically we use the term ‘clause’ to refer to a complete sentence-like

unit, but which may be part of another clause, as a subordinate or
adverbial clause. Each of the sentences in (2b)–(2d) contains more than
one clause, in particular, with one clause embedded inside another:
(2) a. The weather is lovely today.
b. I am hoping that [the weather is lovely today].

10
 c. If [the weather is lovely today] then we will go out.
d. The birds are singing because [the weather is lovely today].

Syntactic Categories

Regarding the syntactic category, it is a set of words and/or phrases in a

language which share a significant number of common characteristics.
The classification is based on similar structure and sameness of
distribution (the structural relationships between these elements and other
items in a larger grammatical structure), and not on meaning.
In generative grammar, a syntactic category is symbolized by a node label
in a constituent structure tree. Also known as syntactic classes
Syntactic categories are of two types: Lexical categories (N, V, P, A,
AdP) and functional categories (IP inflection phrase, CP complementizer
phrase, DP determiner phrase)

2.1. Lexical categories

In the discussion of the constituents of sentences, reference has been
made to nouns and noun phrases, verbs and verb phrases, and
prepositions and prepositional phrases. Nouns, verbs and prepositions are
traditionally referred to as ‘parts of speech’ or ‘word classes’; in
contemporary linguistics they are termed lexical categories. The most
important lexical categories are noun, verb, adjective, adverb and a
preposition, which subsumes prepositions and postpositions. In
traditional grammar, lexical categories are given notional definitions,
i.e. they are characterized in terms of their semantic content. For example,
noun is defined as ‘the name of a person, place or thing’, verb is defined
as an ‘action word’, and adjective is defined as ‘a word expressing a

11
property or attribute’. In modern linguistics, however, they are defined
morphosyntactically in terms of their grammatical properties.
Nouns may be classified in a number of ways. There is a fundamental
contrast between nouns that refer uniquely to particular entities or
individuals and those that do not; the best example of the first kind of
noun is a proper name, e.g. Sam, Ahmed, Elizabeth, Heba, Paris or
London, and nouns of this type are referred to as proper nouns. Nouns
which do not refer to unique individuals or entities are called common
nouns, e.g. dog, table, fish, car, pencil, water. One of the important
differences between proper and common nouns in a language like English
is that common nouns normally take an article, while proper nouns do
not, e.g. The boy left versus *The Sam left (cf. *Boy left versus Sam left).
Common nouns may be divided into mass nouns and count nouns.
Count nouns, as the name implies, denote countable entities, e.g. seven
chairs, six pencils, three dogs, many cars. Mass nouns, on the other hand,
are not readily countable in their primary senses, e.g. *two waters, *four
butters, *six snows. In order to make them countable, it is necessary to
add what is sometimes called a ‘measure word’, which delimits a specific
amount of the substance, e.g. two glasses/bottles/drops of water, four
pats/sticks of butter, six shovelfuls of snow. Measure words can be used
with count nouns only when they are plural, e.g. *six boxes of pencil
versus six boxes of pencils, *two cups of peanut versus three jars of
peanuts. Pronouns are closely related to nouns, as they both function as
NPs. Pronouns are traditionally characterized as ‘substitutes’ for nouns or
as ‘standing for’ nouns, e.g. John went to the store, and he bought some
milk, in which he substitutes or stands for John in the second clause. This,
however, is true only of third-person pronouns like he, she, it, or they; it
is not true of first-person pronouns like I or second-person pronouns

12
like you. First- and second-person pronouns refer to or index the speaker
and addressee in a speech event and do not replace or stand for a noun.
Verbs can likewise be categorized along a number of dimensions. One
very important dimension is whether a verb takes just a subject (an
intransitive verb), or a subject and a direct object (a transitive verb), or a
subject, direct object and indirect object (a ditransitive verb). This will
be referred to as the ‘valence’ of the verb. Another dimension concerns
the kind of situation it represents. Some verbs represent static situations
which do not involve anyone actually doing anything, e.g. know as in
Chris knows the answer, or see as in Pat sees Dana over by the bookcase.
Some symbolize actions, e.g. run as in Kim ran around the track, or sing
as in Leslie sang a beautiful aria. Others refer to a change of state, e.g.
freeze as in The water froze (the change in the state of the water is from
liquid to solid), or dry as in The clothes dried quickly (the change in the
state of the clothes is from wet to dry). Some represent complex situations
involving an action plus a change of state, e.g. break as in Larry broke
the window with a rock (Larry does something with a rock [action] which
causes the window to break [change of state]). This classification of verbs
is quite complex and is more appropriately in the domain of semantics
rather than syntax.
Some examples of adjectives in English include red, happy, tall, sick,
interesting, beautiful, and many others. Adjectives typically express
properties of entities, e.g. a red apple, a tall woman, a beautiful sunset.
Some properties are inherent attributes of an entity; for example, some
apples are red because they are naturally so, whereas some barns are red
because they have been painted red, not because they are inherently red.
Hence color is an inherent property of apples but not of barns. Some
languages signal this distinction overtly. In Spanish, for example, the
adjective feliz means ‘happy’, and whether it is an inherent or permanent

13
property of the person referred to is signaled by the verb it is used with,
i.e. Maria es feliz ‘Maria is happy (a happy person)’ versus Maria está
feliz ‘Maria is happy (now, at this moment but not necessarily always)’.
Spanish has two verbs meaning ‘be’, ser and estar, and one of the
differences between them is that ser plus adjective (es in this example) is
used to signify inherent or permanent attributes, while estar plus adjective
(está in this example) serves to indicate non-permanent, transitory
attributes.
English adverbs typically, but not always, end in -ly, e.g. quickly,
happily, beautifully, rapidly and carefully. Fast and friendly are
exceptions; fast is an adverb without -ly (it can also be an adjective), and
friendly, despite the admonitions of road signs in Texas to ‘drive
friendly’, is an adjective, e.g. a friendly waiter. Adverbs modify verbs,
adjectives and even other adverbs, and they can be classified in terms of
the nature of this modification; manner adverbs, for example, indicate the
manner in which something is done, e.g. The detective examined the
crime scene carefully, or The student wrote beautifully, while temporal
adverbs, as the name implies, express when something happened, e.g.
Kim talked to Chris yesterday, or Dana will see Pat tomorrow. Yesterday
and tomorrow do not end in -ly and have the same form when functioning
as an adverb that they have when functioning as a noun, e.g. Yesterday
was a nice day, Tomorrow will be very special. The most common
adverbial modifiers of adjectives and adverbs are words like very,
extremely, rather, e.g. a very tall tree, the extremely clever student,
rather quickly. This class of adverbs is referred to as degree modifiers.
Prepositions are adpositions that occur before their object, while
postpositions occur after their object. English has only prepositions, e.g.
in, on, under, to, ‘in the house’ (preposition in) ‘over across from the
house’.

14
There are a number of minor categories. The category of determiners
includes articles like a and the, and demonstratives like this and that.
Determiners modify nouns in relation to their referential properties.
Articles indicate roughly whether the speaker believes her interlocutor(s)
can identify the referent of the NP or not; an indefinite article like a(n)
signals that the speaker does not assume the interlocutor(s) can identify
the referent of the NP, while a definite article like the indicates that the
speaker does assume that the interlocutor(s) can identify it.
Demonstratives, on the other hand, refer to entities in terms of their
spatial proximity to the speaker; English this refers to an entity close to
the speaker, while that refers to one farther away. (Which book do you
mean? This one here or that one over there? versus *This one over there
or that one here?) Many languages make a three-way distinction: close to
the speaker (English this) away from the speaker but not far
(English that). These distinctions are also expressed by locative
demonstratives, e.g. English here, versus English there,
Quantifiers, as the label implies, express quantity-related concepts.
English quantifiers include every, each, all, many, and few, as well as the
numerals one, two, three, etc., e.g. every boy, many books, the seven
sisters. Classifiers serve to classify the nouns they modify in terms of
shape, material, function, social status and other properties. They are
found in Arabic and many East and Southeast Asian and Mayan
languages, among others. They are similar in many respect to the measure
words that occur with English mass nouns, but they occur with all nouns
regardless of the count–mass distinctions.
Conjunctions, like and, but and or, serve to link the elements in a
conjoined expression. There are conjoined NPs, e.g. a boy and his dog,
conjoined verbs, e.g. Leslie danced and sang, and conjoined adjectives,

15
e.g. Lisa is tall and slender. All major lexical categories can be linked by
conjunctions to form conjoined expressions.
Complementizers mark the dependent clause is a complex sentence, e.g.
English that as in Sally knows that Bill ate the last piece of pizza. The
final category is particles, which is a classification often given to
elements which do not fall into any of the other categories. Many
particles have primarily discourse functions, e.g. English indeed.
There is an important opposition that divides lexical categories into two
general classes, based on whether the membership of the class can readily
be increased or not. Languages can usually increase their stock of nouns,
for example, by borrowing nouns from other languages or creating new
ones through compounding (e.g. black + board yields blackboard) or
other morphological means (e.g. rapid + -ly = rapidly), but they do not
normally create or borrow new conjunctions or determiners. Lexical
categories such as noun and verb whose membership can be enlarged are
termed open class categories, whereas categories such as determiner or
conjunction, which have small, fixed membership, are called closed class
categories.
The definitions of lexical categories given so far are primarily the
notional ones from traditional grammar. These definitions seem
intuitively quite reasonable to speakers of Indo-European languages, and
they seem to correlate nicely with the syntactic functions of the different
parts of speech. Let us define three very general syntactic functions:
argument, modifier and predicate. In a sentence like the teacher read
an interesting book, the teacher and an interesting book are the
arguments, read is the predicate, and the, an and interesting are
modifiers. Similarly, in Kim is tall, Kim is the argument and is tall is the
predicate. The term ‘argument’ here includes NPs and PPs functioning as
subject, direct object or indirect object. The notions of predicate and

16
argument will be discussed in more detail in the next chapters, but for
now one can say simply that in a sentence the predicate expresses the
state of affairs that the referents of the arguments are involved in. (The
terms ‘predicate’ and ‘argument’ are also used in semantics with a
different meaning; they are being used here and elsewhere to refer to
syntactic notions, unless otherwise noted.) It is usual to distinguish 1-
place, 2-place and 3-place predicates, depending on how many
participants there are in the state of affairs depicted by the predicate.
Being sick is a state of affairs involving only one participant, hence be
sick is a 1-place predicate which takes one argument, e.g. Kim is sick. In
the teacher destroyed the note, there is an action of destroying involving
a teacher and a note. Destroying involves a destroyer and something
destroyed; hence destroy is a 2-place predicate and takes two arguments.
Finally, giving involves a giver, something given and a recipient, and
therefore give is a 3-place predicate and takes three arguments, e.g. The
teacher gave an interesting book to Kim. Given these distinctions, it
seems intuitively clear that nouns would be arguments, verbs would be
predicates and adjectives would be modifiers, and this is in fact the case
very often.
But not always. Nouns and adjectives can function as part of a predicate,
as in Dana is a phonologist and Chris was sick. Even though they are part
of the predicate, they are still formally distinct from verbs; they do not
take tense suffixes like verbs do, i.e. *Dana phonologists or *Chris
sicked. The copula be, a kind of verb, carries these verbal inflections.
Contrast this with the situation in which nouns and adjective-like words
do bear verbal inflections when functioning as predicates, in this instance
agreement in number with the subject.

17
2.3. NP: Noun Phrase
Consider (5):
(5) ------------[liked ice cream].
The expressions that can occur in the blank position here are once again
limited. The kinds of expression that do appear here include:
(6) Mary, I, you, students, the students, the tall students, the students
from Seoul, the students
who came from Seoul, etc. If we look into the sub-constituents of these
expressions, we can see that each includes at least an N and forms an NP
(noun phrase). This leads us to posit the following rule:
(7) NP →(Det) A* N (PP/S)
This rule characterizes a phrase, and is one instance of a phrase structure
rule (PS rule). The rule indicates that an NP can consist of an optional
Det, any number of optional A, an obligatory N,
and then an optional PP or a modifying S. The slash indicates different
options for the same place in the linear order. These options in the NP
rule can be represented in a tree structure:
8. The relative clause who came from Seoul is kind of modifying sentence
(S).

9.
.

18
Once we insert appropriate expressions into the pre-terminal nodes, we
will have well-formed NPs; and the rule will not generate the following
NPs:
(10) *the whistle tune, *the easily student, *the my dog, . . .
One important point is that as only N is obligatory in NP, a single noun
such as Mary, you, or students can constitute an NP by itself. Hence the
subject of the sentence She sings will be an NP, even though that NP
consists only of a pronoun.
To sum up. NP is available in all natural languages including English,
e.g. John, man, family, and father-in-law. It also includes the pronouns
he, she, you, them, etc. It functions as a subject or object in the sentence.
The noun phrase like these is called an ‘argument’ and is assigned
meaning (theta role) and case (nominative, accusative, or genitive) as will
be seen later. Technically, the nouns of one word structure along with the
compound nouns are equally called noun phrases.

2.4. VP: Verb Phrase

Just as N projects an NP, V projects a VP. A simple test environment for
VP is given in (11).
(11) The student .
(11) lists just a few of the possible phrases that can occur in the
underlined position.
(11) snored, ran, sang, loved music, walked the dog through the park,
lifted 50 pounds,
thought Tom is honest, warned us that storms were coming, etc.
These phrases all have a V as their head – as projections of V, they form
VP. VP can be characterized according to phrase structure roles (PS)
by the rule in (12), to a first level of analysis:
(12) VP →V (NP) (PP/S)

19
This simple VP rule says that a VP can consist of an obligatory V
followed by an optional NP
and then any number of PPs or an S. The rule thus does not generate ill-
formed VPs such as these:
(13) *leave the meeting sing, *the leave meeting, *leave on time the
meeting, . . .
We can also observe that the presence of a VP is essential in forming a
grammatical S, and the
VP must be finite (present or past tense). Consider the following
examples:
(14) a. The monkey wants to leave the meeting.
b. *The monkey eager to leave the meeting.
(15) a. The monkeys approved of their leader.
b. *The monkeys proud of their leader.
(16) a. The men practice medicine.
b. *The men doctors of medicine.
These examples show us that an English well-formed sentence consists of
an NP and a (finite)
VP, which can be represented as a PS rule:
(17) S →NP VP
We thus have the rule that English sentences are composed of an NP and
a VP, the precise structural counterpart of the traditional ideas of a
sentence being ‘a subject and predicate’ or ‘a noun and a verb’.
One more aspect to the structure of VP involves the presence of auxiliary
verbs. Think of continuations for the fragments in (18):
(18) a. The students .
b. The students want .
For example, the phrases in (78a) and (78b) can occur in (77a)whereas
those in (78c) can appear in (18b).

20
(19) a. run, feel happy, study English syntax, . . .
b. can run, will feel happy, must study English syntax, . . .
c. to run, to feel happy, to study English syntax, . . .
We have seen that the expressions in (78a) all form VPs, but how about
those in (78b) and (78c)? These are also VPs, which happen to contain
more than one V. In fact, the parts after the auxiliary verbs in (78b) and
(78c) are themselves regular VPs. In the full grammar we will consider to
and can and so on as auxiliary verbs, with a feature specification [AUX
+] to distinguish them from regular verbs. Then all auxiliary verbs are
simply introduced by a secondVP rule:
(20) VP →V[AUX +] VP
One more important VP structure involves the VP modified by an adverb
or a PP:
(21) a. John [[read the book] loudly].
b. The teacher [[met his students] in the class].
In such examples, the adverb loudly and the PP in the class are modifying
the preceding VP. To
form such VPs, we need the PS rule in (81):
(22) VP →VP Adv/PP
This rule, together with (76) will allow the following structure for
(80b):10

21
23.

All in all, verb phrases contain a lexical verb, which is either followed by
other categories or not. Examples for illustration are:
- They traveled.
- They traveled to Mecca.
- John rewarded Mary a nice reward yesterday.
The underlined verbs in the sentences above are verb phrases. Such verb
phrases can appear as stative, i.e. they are followed by a complement but
with no object. Transitive verb phrases, i.e. those which accept only one
object (John wrote the lesson), or ditransitive verb phrase (John gave
Mary a book.)

2.5.3 AP: Adjective Phrase

The most common environment where an adjective phrase (AP) occurs is
in ‘linking verb’ constructions as in (24):
(24) John feels .
Expressions like those in (24) can occur in the blank space here:
(25) happy, uncomfortable, terrified, sad, proud of her, proud to be his
student, proud that he passed the exam, etc.
Since these all include an adjective (A), we can safely conclude that they
all form an AP. Looking into the constituents of these, we can formulate
the following simple PS rule for the AP:

22
(26) AP →A (PP/VP/S). This simple AP rule can easily explain the
following:
(27) a. John sounded happy/uncomfortable/terrified/proud of her.
b. John felt proud that his son won the game.
c. John sounded *happily/*very/*the student/*in the park.
The verb sounded requires an AP to be followed, but in (27c) we have no
AP. In addition, observe the contrasts in the following examples:
(28) a. *The monkeys seem [want to leave the meeting].
b. The monkeys seem [eager to leave the meeting].
(29) a. *John seems [know about the bananas].
b. John seems [certain about the bananas].
These examples tell us that the verb seem combines with an AP, but not
with a VP.

2.5. AdvP: Adverb Phrase

Another phrasal syntactic category is adverb phrase (AdvP), as
exemplified in (30).
(30) soundly, well, clearly, extremely, carefully, very soundly, almost
certainly, very slowly, etc. These phrases are often used to modify verbs,
adjectives, and adverbs themselves, and they canall occur in principle in
the following environments:
(31) a. He behaved very .
b. They worded the sentence very .
c. He treated her very .
Phrases other than an AdvP cannot appear here. For example, an NP the
student or AP happy cannot occur in these syntactic positions. Based on
what we have seen so far, the AdvP rule canbe given as follows:
(32) AdvP→(AdvP) Adv

2.6. PP: Preposition Phrase

Another major phrasal category is preposition phrase (PP). PPs like those
in (33), generallyconsist of a preposition plus an NP.

23
(33) from Seoul, in the box, in the hotel, into the soup, with John and his
dog, under the table,
etc. These PPs can appear in a wide range of environments:
(34) a. John came from Seoul.
b. They put the book in the box.
c. They stayed in the hotel.
d. The fly fell into the soup.

One clear case in which only a PP can appear is the following:

(35) The squirrel ran straight/right .

The intensifiers straight and right can occur neither with an AP nor with

an AdvP:

(36) a. The squirrel ran straight/right up the tree.

b. *The squirrel is straight/right angry.
c. *The squirrel ran straight/right quickly.

From the examples in (34, 35), we can deduce the following general rule

for forming a PP:

(37) PP → P NP
The rule states that a PP consists of a P followed by an NP. We cannot
construct unacceptable PPs like the following:
(38) *in angry, *into sing a song, *with happily, . . .

2.7 Grammar with Phrases

We have seen earlier that the grammar with just lexical categories is not
adequate for capturing the basic properties of the language. How much
further do we get with a grammar whichincludes phrases? A set of PS
rules, some of which we have already seen, is given in (39).
(39) a. S → NP VP
b. NP → (Det) A* N (PP/S)
c. VP → V (NP) (PP/S/VP)

24
d. AP → A (PP/S)
e. AdvP→ (AdvP) Adv
f. PP → P NP
The rules say that a sentence is the combination of NP and VP, and an NP
can be made up of
a Det, any number of As, an obligatory N, and any number of PPs, and so
on.. Of the possible
tree structures that these rules can generate, the following is one example:
40.

With the structural possibilities shown here, let us assume that we have
the following lexical entries:
(41) a. Det: a, an, this, that, any, some, which, his, her, no, etc.
b. A: handsome, tall, fat, large, dirty, big, yellow, etc.
c. N: book, ball, hat, friend, dog, cat, man, woman, John, etc.
d. V: kicked, chased, sang, met, believed, thinks, imagines, assumes etc.

Inserting these elements in the appropriate pre-terminal nodes (the places

with dots) in (40), we are able to generate various sentences like those in
(42):
(42) a. This handsome man chased a dog.

25
b. A man kicked that ball.
c. That tall woman chased a cat.
d. His friend kicked a ball.
There are several ways to generate an infinite number of sentences with
this kind of grammar.
As we have seen before, one simple way is to repeat a category (e.g.,
adjective) infinitely. There are also other ways of generating an infinite
number of grammatical sentences. Look at the following two PS rules
from (38) again:
(43) a. S → NP VP
b. VP → V S
As we show in the following tree structure, we can ‘recursively’ apply the
two rules, in the sense that one can feed the other, and then vice versa:
44.

It is not difficult to expand this sentence by applying the two rules again
and again:
(45) a. Bill claims John believes Mary thinks Tom is honest.
b. Jane imagines Bill claims John believes Mary thinks Tom is honest.

26
There is no limit to this kind of recursive application of PS rules: it
proves that this kind of grammar can generate an infinite number of
grammatical sentences. One structure which can be also recursive
involves sentences involving auxiliary verbs. As noted before where an
auxiliary verb forms a larger VP after combining with a VP

45.

This means that we will also have a recursive structure like the following:

27
46.

Another important property that PS rules bring us is the ability to make

reference to hierarchical structures within given sentences, where parts
are assembled into sub-structures of the whole. One merit of such
hierarchical structural properties is that they enable us to represent the
structural ambiguities of sentences we have seen earlier in (42). Let us
look at more examples:
(47) a. The little boy hit the child with a toy.
b. Chocolate cakes and pies are my favorite desserts.
Depending on which PS rules we apply, for the sentences here, we will
have different hierarchical tree structures. Consider the possible partial
structures of (47a) which the grammar can generate:

28
48.

The structures clearly indicate what with the toy modifies: in (48a), it
modifies the whole VP phrase whereas (108b) modifies just the noun
child. The structural differences induced by the PS rules directly
represent these meaning differences.
In addition, we can easily show why examples like the following are not
grammatical:
(49) a. *The children were in their rooms or happily.
b. *Lee went to the store and crazy.
We have noted that English allows two alike categories to be coordinated.
This can be written
as a PS rule, for phrasal conjunction, where XP is any phrase in the
grammar.
(50) XP→ XP+ Conj XP

29
The ‘coordination’ rule says two identical XP categories can be
coordinated and form the same
category XP. Applying this PS rule, we will then allow (51a) but not
(51b)

Unlike categories such as PP and AP may not be coordinated.

The PS rules further allow us to represent the difference between phrasal
verb (e.g, call off ) constructions and prepositional verb constructions
(e.g. rely on), some of whose properties we have seen earlier. Consider a
representative pair of contrasting examples:
(52) a. John suddenly got off the bus.
b. John suddenly put off the customers.
By altering the position of off , we can determine that off in (52a) is a
preposition whereas off
in (52b) is a particle:
(53) a. *John suddenly got the bus off.
b. John suddenly put the customers off.
This in turn means that off in (52a) is a preposition, forming a PP with the
following NP,

30
whereas off in (52b) is a particle that forms no constituentwith the
following NP the customers. This in turn means that in addition to the PP
formation rule, the grammar needs to introduce the following VP rules:

(54) a. VP → V Part NP
b. VP → V NP Part
c. VP → V PP
Equipped with these rules, we then can easily represent the differences of
these grammatical sentences (52a), (52b) and (53b) in tree structures:
55.

31
As represented here, the particle does not form a constituent with the
following or preceding NP whereas the preposition does form a
constituent with it.
In summary, we have seen that a grammar with lexical categories can not
only generate an infinite number of grammatical English sentences, but
also account for some fundamental properties, such as agreement and
constituency.17 This motivates the introduction of phrases into the
grammar.

2.2. Functional catégories

2.2.1 Complementizer Phrase (CP)

This phrase is a functional category and is headed by a complementiser
like; the relative pronouns. Consider:
1. I met the teacher who taught me English at the secondary
school.
Who in (1), like the rest of relative pronouns, is counted as a
complementizer and functions as a head of the complementizer phrase.
However the wh.NPs like what, who etc locate at the specifier of the CP
as will be seen later.

2.2.2 Inflection Phrase (IP)

It is of the following constituents: tense, person, number, gender, aspect,
case, and mood The English IP contains tense, e.g. present, past. The
stem of the verb must be inflected with one of them. Person is the next
feature of the inflection (subject-verb agreement ‘s’). Number is a basic
feature of the inflection phrase. However, it is along with gender not
available overtly in the English IP, whereas it is available in Arabic, and
other languages. Consider the following example from Arabic:

32
2a. Tal9ab al-bint-u
Feminine-play the-girl
The girl plays.

b. Yal9ab al-walad
Masculine-play the-boy
The boy plays.

c. Al-awlad-u yal9ab-uun
The- boys play-3MP
‘The boys are playing’

Case is visibly (overtly) seen in personal pronouns, e.g. he, him, his, and
the ‘s’ genitive case in English, e.g. John’s book, while nominative and
accusative cases appear covertly (invisibly) in English. However, the
three cases appear overtly in Standard Arabic.
According to the split-inflection hypothesis the IP is split into other
phrases. Theses are like:
Agreement subject Phrase (AgrsP)
Tense Phrase (TP)
Aspect Phrase (AsP)
Mood Phrase (MP)
Agreement object Phrase (AgroP)

2.3. Heads
One of the main properties of the phrases above is that every phrase has a
head. the verb (V) is the head of VP. the inflection (I) is the head of IP,
the noun (N) is the head of NP, the adjective (A) is the head of AP, the
adverb (Ad) is the head of AdP, and the complementizer (C) is the head
of CP.

33
The head in the phrases above is responsible of projecting the other
constituents of the phrase following it, e.g. the grammatical properties of
the VP are determined by the verb. Consider the following examples:

a. The boy plays tennis.

b. *the tennis plays.

The sentence in (b) above is ill-formed because the projected words

precede the projector (i.e. the verb plays). The mechanism of projection is
interpreted by the fist submodule of GBT called X-bar theory.

2.4. X-bar theory

X-bar theory (=Principles and Parameters theory) is considered as a basic
module of GB. It is centrally concerned with D-structure representations
and the imposition of certain constraints on them. It may also be involved
at S-structure in cases of adjunction Horrocks (1987:101) maintains:
X-bar theory provides principles for the projection of phrasal
categories from lexical categories and imposes conditions on
the hierarchical organizations of categories in the form of general
schemata
Such schemata can be formulated according to Chomsky (1989: ) as in
(3) below:

3) a. X’ = XX”*
b. X’ = X’X”*
c. X” = X”*X’

The schemata in (3) can be represented diagrammatically as in (4) below:

34
4).
X”

(spec) X’

X’ (adjunct)

X complement

The maximal projection XP (X”), in (3), is projected from the first level
projection X' (X-bar) combining with an optional specifier. Chomsky
(1986a). The X' is optionally projected from another X' in combination
.with adjunct. X' is projected from X (the head) and a complement

Furthermore, the order of the head and its complement and that of the X'
projection and its specifier are subject to cross linguistic variation; this
variation is generally assumed to follow from the values assigned to the
head parameter in (5a) below and to the specifier parameter in (5b):

(5a) The Head Parameter

(i) X' = YP2 - X (head final)
(ii) X' = X - YP2 (head initial)
(b) The Specifier Parameter
(i) XP = YP -X' (Specifier initial)
(ii) XP = X' - YP (Specifier final)

These principles show that a large range of structures of various

languages may be accounted for in a straightforward way. These could
include English, Arabic, Turkish, Japanese, etc.
Further, we might suppose that an adjunct parameter can have two values:

6a. Adjunct final

b. Adjunct initial

35
The parameters and values given above define logical space of eight
possible phrase structures. For example, English and Arabic are head
initial languages, while Dutch and Japanese are head final. (cf Hoekstra,
1991, and Souali, 1992). English and Arabic are also specifier-initial
languages while Bulgarian is a specifier-final language. (cf Travis, 1989,
and Atkinson 1992).
A further observation related to X-bar theory is that the variable X,
according to Chomsky (1986b), and Abney,(1987), among others ranges
over not only lexical categories e.g. N,V,A,P, etc, but also cover non-
lexical categories namely Inflection (I), Complementizer (C), determiner
(D). Other functional categories are added recently within the Split-
Inflection framework... namely agreement (Agr), tense (T), aspect (ASP),
negation (NEG), quantifier (Q). (cf Pollock, 1989 and Ouhalla, 1991,
Shlonsky, 1981, Chomsky, 1991, Mahajan, 1992, Johns, 1992, and many
others).
Furthermore, the X-bar theory described above allows a
single head to have more than one complement. Therefore
complements are considered sisters of heads. Consistent with
this the representation of an X with two or more
complements is allowed to be as in (7):

7..
X’

X YP ZP

The structure in (7) represents what so called the multiple complement

hypothesis (MCH). In dealing with double object construction this
hypothesis leads to the adoption of the flat structure in (7) above (cf

36
Chomsky, 1981: 48, Barss and Lasnik, 1986, Baker, 1988b, Napoli, 1992,
.among others)

After briefing the X-bar theory let’s now introduce the projection
principle in detail:

2.4.1 Projection Principle:

all lexical information must be reflected in the syntax
(i) representations at each °level of representation are projections
of the features of lexical items, notably their °subcategorization features,
and that (ii) if F is a lexical feature, it is projected at each syntactic level
of representation (°D-structure, °S-structure, °Logical Form).
The Projection Principle entails that sentence (iii) cannot have the
structure in (iv).
(iii) I believe him to be a fool
(iv) I believe [NP him] [S to be a fool]
The NP him is the subject of the embedded sentence at the level of D-
structure, so it has to be analyzed as its subject at all syntactic levels of
representation, even though it has objective case. See also °Extended
Projection Principle. LIT. Chomsky (1981, 1986a).

The Projection Principle is a stipulation proposed by Noam Chomsky as

part of the Phrase Structure Component of Generative-Transformational
Grammar. The projection principle is used in the derivation of phrases
under the auspices of the Principles and Parameters theory. Under the
Projection Principle, the properties of lexical items must be preserved
while generating the phrase structure of a sentence. The Principle, as
formulated by Chomsky in Knowledge of Language: Its Nature, Origin
and Use (1986), states that "lexical structure must be represented
categorically at every syntactic level" (Chomsky 1986: 84). Chomsky

37
further defined the projection principle as "representations at each level
of syntax (MF, D, S) are projected from the lexicon in that they observe
the subcategorisation properties of lexical items." For example, the
verb strangle, apart from the subject, has an obligatory argument, its
object, which must appear in the sentence.

The following subcategorization frame for the verb strangle specifies its

properties; the underlined gap for the location of the verb is followed by
the noun phrase (NP):

strangle Verb, [__ NP]

It is out of this frame that a sentence like the following can be

generated:

Fabio strangled Prince Charles.

A sentence without the object, in violation of the verb's

subcategorization frame and the Projection Principle, would be ill-
formed:
*
Fabio strangled.
After briefing identifying the projection principle let’s now identify the
syntactic projections of the head, starting with VP. The verb (V) projects
a verb bar (V’) to be a place for the adverb in the tree diagram as appears
below. Then the V’ projects a VP as a maximal projection. The maximal
projection has a specifier to the left. In English and Arabic. The specifier
position is the place of the subject at D-structure. Then the (V) as a head
has a complement to the right. Consider the tree diagram below.

38
Verb Phrase:

VP

Specifier V’

V
Complement Adjunct

2.4.2 Inflection Phrase

Inflection Phrase is another functional category and is analyzed
syntactically in two ways:
The non-inflection hypothesis, which deals with IP as one phrase (One
maximal projection). This type is represented diagrammatically as below:

IP

Specifier I’

I complement adjunct

Note that the adjunct position at I’ can be occupied in case of having an

adverb before the verb. Consider the example below:
He directly responded to them
Here the position of the adverb directly is in I’ position to the left.

IP

Specifier I’
NP
he

Adv. I PP

39
 directly responded to
the…….
The second hypothesis is called the split inflection hypothesis and divides
the inflection phrase into its minimal parts considering each part as a
phrase (a maximal projection) such parts as mentioned above are :
Agreement subject Phrase (AgrSP), Tense Phrase (TP), Aspect Phrase
(AspP), Agreement Phrase (AgrOP). Following this classification,
sentences may be diagrammatically represented as follows:

AgrSP

Spec AgrS’
John

AgrS TP

Spec T’

T AgrOP

Spec
VP

Spec V'

V DP

40
2.4.3 Complementizer Phrase
Complementizer Phrase (CP) is represented diagrammatically as follows

CP

Specifier C’

C
complement

CP

Spec C’
who

C IP

Spec I’
t

I
met VP

Spec

t V’

V
t NP
J
ohn

The diagram above shows that the verb was originally based at (V)
position lower on the tree (at deep-structure) then it moves to (I) position
to be inflected with tense, leaving a trace (t). Then the noun phrase in the

41
specifier of VP position moves to IP specifier position then it terminates
at the specifier of CP leaving traces on the IP and VP specifier positions.
A point to notice is that the movement occurs from head to head position
and from specifier to specifier position and every moved element leaves a
trace.
Still, there is another type of movement that differs from the minimal
movement above. This is called long distance movement. Consider the
movement of the logical object (direct object in the sentence below.
What did John write?

CP

Spec C’
what

C
did IP

Spec I’
John

I VP
write

Spec V’
t

V
NP
t

Here the object lower in the tree moves long distance movement directly
to the specifier of CP (what) changing the declarative sentence into a
question.
Movement is free everywhere in natural languages unless the moved
element meets a barrier or bounding node. The barriers in English are NP

42
and IP and the condition for movement which is called subjacency
condition is stated as “No constituent can be moved out of more than one
bounding node.” For convenience, consider the following example:
a) [who did [Mary have [the assumption [t that [John saw t]]]]]]
CP IP NP CP IP
*

It is assumed that the wh-phrase first moves to the intermediate (spec,

CP) position as shown in (a) above. However, its subsequent move to the
matrix (spec, CP) crossing NP and IP violates the principle of subjacency
above. Of course, the case of long distance movement mentioned earlier
obeys the subjacency condition. Now consider the grammatical sentence
in (b) below.
b) [who [do [you [assume [t that [John saw t]]]]]
CP IP CP IP

2.4.4 Noun Phrase

The noun phrase in English along with the NPs in all natural languages is
called an argument as mentioned earlier, but if it occurs either in the
specifier or the complement position and has a referential function (i.e.
meaning). However, the expletives (it and there) are not arguments.

1. It is there. (argument)

2. It seems that the bus is approaching. (non-argument)

The noun phrase has the same structured representation as the previous
phrases.
NP

Specifier N’

N
Co
mplement

43
It is noteworthy that some linguists, notably Brane (1982), Hadson
(1984), Reuland (1986), Abney (1987), Radford (1988), Fassi fehri
(1988), Ouhalla (1991), among others, argue that what have traditionally
been regarded as NPs are in fact projections of DPs and hence are
modifiers of the determiner phrases (henceforth DPs). Therefore a phrase
like the city is called DP and is represented structurally as in (7)

DP

D'

D NP
the

N’

N
City

Naturally, the NP is assigned case and theta role (semantic role) if it

stands as an argument. To see how this argument is assigned Case theta-
role let us consider Case and theta theory:

General exercices on X-bar syntax

Exercise.1
Assign an X-bar structure to the sentences in (1-5):
1. Bill remembers the unhappy experience.
2. Incidentally, Bill left early.
3. John genuinely believes that Bill should resign.
4. Bill went to London to see his parents.
5. Bill arrived after John had left.
Exercise.2

44
Assign an X-bar structure to sentences in (1-4) and explain how the
order inside VP is derived:
1. [Bill sent] [a letter] [to John].
IP VP PP
2. Bill persuaded John to leave.
3. Mary left the file on the desk.
4. The player headed the ball into the net.
Exercise .3 P21
Explain how the sentences in (1-5) are excluded. Identify the
principle violated and explain how it is violated:
1. *The player headed.
*Headed the ball.
2. *Did in which match the player head the ball?

Exercise.4
Suggest a way of dealing with the sentences in (1a,b) and (2a,b) using the
VP-shell structure. Explain whether both types of sentences can be
derived from the same DS.

(1a) John sent Bill a message.

(1b) John sent a message to Bill.

(2a) Mary gave John a book.

(2b) Mary gave a book to John.

45
 Chapter three

Theta theory
Theta theory (or the theory of thematic relations) has been around in the
literature of generative grammar since the 1960s (indeed it has
antecedents in the work of ancient grammarians). It is concerned with the
assignment of thematic roles (theta – roles) to arguments.
An argument is an NP which appears as a
specifiers or a complement and discharges some sort of referential
function in a domain. Accordingly, some NPs are arguments and some
are not. Taking referential function as criterial, arguments include
nominal expressions, pronouns, lexical anaphors, and empty categories
resulting from movement, whereas non-arguments include the expletives
(it, there). From the perspective of grammatical function, specifiers and
complements are arguments but adjuncts are not.
Chomsky (1981) maintains that if we take the referential perspective, it is
also necessary to distinguish between true arguments and quasi-
arguments, the latter being illustrated for English by the expletive it
occurring in ‘weather constructions.’ Justifying this distinction is the
observation that such tokens of it can control an empty PRO in a
subordinate clause and this syntactic relation appears to require some
notion of referential dependency, no matter how vague. We thus have a
situation where the pronoun can be one of three types as shown in (6):
6) a It is there (true argument)
b It is raining (quasi argument)
c It seems that the bus is approaching ( non-argument)
turning now to theta-roles themselves, they refer to the semantic relations
which arguments bear to predicates. A typical list of theta-roles, from
Amer (1996), appears in (7) below:

46
7)
a. Agent (or actor): John bought a book
b. patient: John wrote a letter.
c. Experiencer: John was shocked
d. Possessor: John gave Mary a book.
e. Theme : John gave Mary a book
f. Instrument: he shot the lion with a rifle
g. Locative: John parked the car in the garage.
h. Goal: John gave a book to Mary.
i. Source: John bought the gift from the shop.

In declarative clauses, the agent argument is usually an

external argument while the patient argument is internal.
Therefore, in a sentence like (8) the girl bears the theta-role
agent associated with the verbal predicate ate and the cat
bears theta-role theme.
8) The girl likes the cat

Agent patient
Of course, in passives, which will play an important part in later
discussion, the theme appears as external argument and the Agent, if
expressed at all, is demoted to the complement of a preposition.
Related to, but not identical to the above distinction between arguments
and non-arguments, is a contrast between theta and non-theta (theta-bar)
positions. A theta position is a syntactic position in which an argument
receives a theta role. It refers, at the level of D-structure, to an NP
position that is assigned a theta-role; for instance, a complement position
is always a theta-position, whereas a subject position may be a theta
position or a non theta position. This is illustrated below, where in (9a),

47
John is assigned the agent theta-role, whereas in (9b) there is not
assigned a theta-role at all.
9) John bought a car
There is a man outside.
Note, however, that since subjects can contain arguments, the subject
position is an argument position. Thus, in (9b), there occupies an
argument position and a theta-bar position.
Further examples illustrating the difference between theta and theta-bar
positions appear in (10):

10) a Andrew kisses the baby

theta -position theta-position

b It seems that Andrew is happy

theta-bar position theta-position

In (10a), both the subject and object of kiss are theta-position, in (10b),
the subject of seems is in a theta-bar position, but the subject of the
predicate is happy is in a theta-position.
The theta-criterion is the basic principle of theta-theory. It ensures that an
argument is assigned a theta-role by virtue of the theta-position it
occupies at D-structure. This means that when Move- α applies, the
moved NP leaves a trace from which it inherits its theta-role. Technically,
the NP and its trace constitute a chain which has a unique theta-role. The
theta-criterion requires that every chain receive one and only one theta-
role and a consequence of this is that movement of this type can only be
to a theta-bar position. Otherwise, the movement chain would receive two

48
distinct theta-roles and the theta-criterion would be violated. For detailed
discussion, see Chomsky (1981, 1986a), Aoun (1981).

General exercises on theta theory

1.Identify the theta roles in the following sentence:
2. The president announced the news in the White House.
3. The bottle rolled towards the chair.
4. David bought the bike from Harry.
5. The Queen is in London.
6. Tobias likes pink dresses.
3. Consider the following sentences. State how many theta roles are
being assigned and identify them.

1. The Children are eating.

2. Mary is washing.
3. John drinks.
4. These two students have never met.
5. The professor and his wife were picnicking
6. The analysis led to quite unexpected conclusions.
7. Mary is eating an apple.
8.
John is washing the dishes.

4. One of the consequences of the theta-Criterion is that expletives can

only appear in non-theta-marked positions. The set of non-theta-marked
positions excludes the complement positions. As pointed out in this chapter,
complement positions are theta-marked by definition. Bearing this in mind,
explain whether the sentences in (i-iv) are problematic:

49
 i) They mentioned it to him that he was no shortlisted for the job.
ii) John resents it very much that Bill is always late.
iii) John would hate it for Bill to resign.
iv) They require it of all students that they should attend regularly.

4. Comment on how the Theta Criterion can account for the grammaticality or
ungrammaticality of the sentences below.

(1) a Peter drinks.

b *Peter Mary met John.
c *Peter met.
d *Peter gave Mary.
e *Peter gave flowers.
f *John put the book.
g *John put on the table.
h Peter wrote a letter to Mary.
i Peter wrote a letter.
j Mary washed.
k Mary wondered what the time was.
l That they stole the diamonds surprised the police.
4. Compare the grammatical functions and theta roles of the DPs in the
pairs of sentences below. Comment on changes in either.
(1) a Peter gave Mary flowers.
b Peter gave flowers to Mary.
(2) a The postman delivered the letters.
b The letters were delivered.
(3) a That he left surprised us.
b It surprised us that he left.
(4) a Peter noticed the scar on her ankle.
b The scar on her ankle appeared small.
(5) a Mary is easy to please.

50
b Mary tries to please everybody.
(6) a Who do you want to meet?
b Who do you want to help?
(7) a He took a shower.
b He showered.
(8) a He made the ball role down the hill.
b He rolled the ball down the hill

51
 Chapter four

Case theory
Case theory is largely responsible for determining the distribution of NPs.
It requires that all lexical NPs (NPs that are phonetically realized) must
be marked for ‘abstract’ Case or they will fall victim of the Case Filter
(Chomsky and Lasnik, 1991).
11) * NP if it has a phonetic matrix but no Case.

Unlike theta-theory, case theory is standardly seen as operating

at S-structure and (11) requires that every lexical NP must be
assigned Case at this level of representation. On one construal,
the Case requirement follows from the theta-criterion “since
lexical NP must bear Case in order to be assigned a theta-role”
Stowell (1981: 112).
On this construal, Case assignment makes an NP visible for
theta-role assignment.
An uncontroversial remark is that languages differ in the number of overt
cases they involve. For instance , Latin has six overt cases, appearing on
nouns and adjectives, German has four cases appearing on determiners
and Arabic has three cases.
As far as English is concerned, it has three morphologically marked
cases: nominative, accusative and genitive. These cases are overt in the
personal pronoun paradigms and a typical summary of how Case
assignment functions is offered by Sells (1987:53):
- If inflection contains TNS, Nominative Case is assigned to the [NPS]
position
- A verb assigns accusative Case to [NP, VP]
- A preposition assigns Accusative or Oblique case to [NP, PP]

52
-Nouns and adjectives do not assign case
- Case is assigned under government with the exception of genitive
- Genitive case is assigned in the structure of [NP-X]
It is of importance that the subject of a finite clause is assigned
nominative case under government by INFL in VSO language
such as Modern Standard Arabic, and in a configuration of
spec-head agreement in SVO language like English.
Consider a finite clause in English such as (12):
12) he will play strongly
such a sentence has the following structure:

13)

IP

NP I’

He

Nominative Case I VP

Will

Play strongly

The NP subject he, is assigned Nominative Case because it is in spec-

head configuration with a finite INFL.
An example illustrating Nominative Case assigned under government is
drawn from the MSA VSO word order in (14a).
14) a katab-a zayd-un d-dars-a
wrote Zayd-nom the lesson –acc
‘Zayed wrote the lesson’

(14a) can be represented as in (14b)

53
14b. I’

I VP

Katab-a

NP V’

Zayd-un

Nominative Case V

NP

D-

Dars

The subject Zayd in (14b) is assigned structural Nominative Case by the

inflected verb under government (cf. Chapter 2 for detailed discussion).
Regarding Accusative Case, we note that an NP is assigned this Case if
governed by a transitive verb; thus, the standard configuration under
which Accusative Case assignment takes place is as follows:
(15)

V’

V NP

Accusative Case

Putting the two models of Case assignment in (13) and (15) together,
Cases in (16a) are assigned as in (16b).
16) a John cashed the dog.

54
 IP

NP1 I’

John

I VP

past

Nominative Case V

NP2

Chase

the dog

Acc
usative case

Turning now to prepositions, a prepositional complement NP is marked

Oblique Case (or Accusative). For example, consider the NP in (17a)
17) a I saw him in the pharmacy
the prepositional phrase in the pharmacy has the structure in (17b):
17) b
PP

P NP

In

The pharmacy

55
 Oblique

Or accusative case

In English, as in many other natural languages, it has been suggested that

Case can only be assigned under strict adjacency this could explain the
ill-formedness of the following example:

18) * John read carefully the book.

It is of some interest that even if adjacency is important in English, this

claim does not appear to generalize to Arabic. For example, consider:

(19):Zayd-un qara?-a l-yawm-a kitaab-an

Zayd-nom read the – day-acc book-acc
‘Zayd read a book today’

Switching attention to the direction of Case assignment, the examples

cited above clearly show that in English Accusative and Oblique Cases
are assigned to the right, while Nominative Case is assigned to the left.
Of course, not all grammatical categories are Case assigners. In English,
nouns, adjectives, the infinitive marker to and the passive participle
appear not to have Case to assign, as is illustrated in (20):

20.a* the demolition the house

b* John is proud Mary
c* John to be happy] please Mary sd
d* It was demolished the house

the ill-formedness of the examples in (20) is due to violations of the Case

Filter; the house in (20a) is not assigned Case since it is preceded by the
N demolition, which is not a Case assignor. Similarly, Mary in (20b),
which is preceded by the adjective proud, John in (20c), which is
followed by the infinitive maker to and the house in (20d)_ which is
preceded by the passive participle, all fail to satisfy the Case Filter.

56
In contrast to the fairly traditional Case Theory I have just described, it is
noteworthy that Chomsky (1986a) adds N and A to the list of Case
assignors, and distinguishes two types of Case: structural case, and
inherent case. The former is assigned by virtue of a structural relation at
S-structure, while the latter is assigned by virtue of a thematic relation at
D-structure. We shall have more to say about this contrast in connection
with the treatment of DOCs.

Case filter
Case Filter: Every overt NP must be assigned abstract case.
The Case Filter is comparable to a bouncer in front of a discothèque. A
bouncer checks the people who want to enter and says: "You're in. ... You
stay out!" In the case of the bouncer, the criterion why he lets someone in
or not is not always transparent. Sometimes it's due to some visitor's
shoes the bouncer refuses to let him in, another time it's a visitor's hair. In
most cases, of course, he waves people through. The Case Filter is similar
in that he also says to the audible NPs "You're in. ... You stay out!" Yet
his criterion is clear: "If you bear Case, you're in. If you don't, you stay
out." The NPs that bear Case and have made it are the ones that enter into
grammatical sentences. The ones that don't bear Case and haven't made it
don't enter into grammatical sentences.
Exercises and problems
Exercise 1 Give the X-bar structure of the following sentences and
explain how the DPs receive thematic roles and Case.
(1) a John’s message arrived.
b David made the ball roll to the wall.
c David rolled the ball to the wall.
d John sank Jim’s boat.
e Jim’s boat sank.

57
 f Jim’s boat was sunk.
g Bill caught a bird.
h The bird was caught.
i Sam coughed.
j John sent a message to Mary.
k Mary was sent a message.
l Jim took his shoes off.
m Jim took off his shoes.
n John thinks that Jim knows that Mary gave his book to Jane.
Exercise 2.
According to the analysis in the text, why are the sentences in (1)
ungrammatical?
(1) a. * He claims to he understand Hegel.
b. * He claims he to understand Hegel.

Exercise 3.
Given the discussion in the textbook so far, exactly one of the following
statements is true. Which is it? Briefly explain your choice.
(1) a.   All subjects are agents.
b.   All agents are subjects.
c.   All subjects check nominative case.
d.   All noun phrases that check nominative case are subjects.
Exercise 4.
Both sentences in (1) are intended to have the same meaning. In a
sentence or two, explain why they contrast in grammaticality.
(1) a. ok It appears that they may solve the problem.
b. * Theyi appear that ti may solve the problem.

58
2. Show the distribution of nominative versus accusative case in
English.
Exercise 5.
Consider the sentences below. How do the DPs acquire case?
(1) a John met Mary in the park.
b For me to survive this week will be quite difficult.
c Everybody goes to see the painting.
d John persuaded Bill to go to see a doctor.
e Mary gave a book to John for.

Exercise 6.
Identify the DPs in the following sentences and state which Case is
assigned to them by which items.
(1) a Jim sent a bunch of flowers to Jane.
b For Jim not to buy the house at a lower price wasn’t the best
decision in his life.
c The teacher believed that all his students would pass the exam.
d All the students were believed to pass the exam.
e John will never trust Jane.
f Which experiment did the professor mean when he asked whether
we were able to do it?
g John read an interesting book about the cold war.
h It was raining when I looked out of the window.
i The children wanted it to be snowing during the whole day.
j Jane believed Jack to be able to repair the car.

Exercise 7.
Consider the examples below. How do the DPs acquire case?
(1) a John met Mary in the park.

59
 b For me to survive this week will be quite difficult.
c Everybody goes to see the painting.
d John persuaded Bill to go to see a doctor.
e Mary gave a book to John.

Chapter five
Government

Setting aside the spec-head relation between a nominative subject and a

finite INFL in a SVO language, the previous section has assumed that

60
Case assignment can take place only when the Case assignor and the NP
to which it assigns Case bear a structural relation, one to another, known
as government. This relation has many definitions but one which will
serve to introduce the topic is:
21) α governs B if
a α c-commands B – and
b every maximal projection dominating α dominates B.

this definition employs the structural relation c-command and this itself
can be defined in a number of ways. For our purposes here, the original
definition from Reinhart (1979) in (22) will suffice:
(22) α c-commands B – if the first branching node dominating α - also
nominates B, and (a) α does not dominate B, (b) B does not
dominate α

A more liberal notion of command, also extensively employed in

linguistic theory, is m-command. This can be defined as in (23):

23) α m-commands B – iff

a. α does not dominate B
B does not dominate α
the minimal maximal projection dominating α also dominates B

(21) above requires that a governor c-commands the category that it

governs and that intervening maximal projections such as CP and NP are
barriers to government. Consider then the structure in (24):

Y max

Y B max

61
 B α max

α S

In this structure, α governs B, but B doesn’t govern α, nor does Y

govern into B. The reason, quite simply, is that introducing maximal
projections (α max. B max respectively) serves to block these candidates
for government.
Further, government in linked to theta and case assignment as appears in
the following:
A governs B if and only if
(i) A is a governor;
(ii) A m-commands B;
(iii) no barrier intervenes between A and B;
where
(a) Lexical heads (V0, N0, P0, A0) and tensed I0 are governors;
(b) maximal projections are barriers.

The adjacency condition constitutes a further requirement on case

assignment.
The case filter operates not as an independent principle of the grammar.
The visibility condition relates it to theta theory: an NP needs to be
visible in order to be theta-marked; in order to become visible an NP
needs to be case-marked.
The notion chain establishes a link between a theta position and a case
position. Otherwise we could not maintain the requirement that an NP can
only be theta-marked if visible., i.e. when case-marked.
Starting from the definition in (21), there are several particular types of
government, which at one time or another have been seen as having an
important theoretical role to play.

62
Head government
This notion is defined by Rizzi(199theta:6) as follows:

25. X head governs Y iff

a. X= (A, N, P, V, AGR, T, etc.)
b. X m-commands Y
c. No barrier intervenes
d. Relativized minimality is respected.

As ((25a) makes clear, only a zero level category can be a head governor,
and the remaining clauses of the definition are concerned with
establishing appropriate locality constraints on this type of government.

Antecedent government
Once more, we can turn to Rizzi (199theta:6) for a definition of this
notion
26) X antecedent governs Y iff
a. X and Y are coindexed
b. X c-commands Y
c. No barrier intervenes
d. Relativized minimality is respected.

As co-indexation is induced by movement, this structural relation plays

a fundamental role in structures involving movement. As X and Y in
(26a) are free to range over all categories, antecedent government is an
issue for all species of movement, including the major types of A-
movement, as in passive and raising structures, and A’-movement as in
Wh-movement, and head movement. Again (26b-d) constitute Rizzi’s
attempt to identify the appropriate locality constraints on this type of
government.

63
Proper government
Proper government has to do with the licensing of empty categories
resulting from movement, and it is often employed in a statement of the
empty category principle (ECP). A simple statement of ECP is:
27) A non-pronominal empty category must be properly governed.

In this context, proper government can be defined disjunctively in the

following terms:
28) α properly governs B, iff
a. α head governs B, or
b. α antecedent governs B.

The theoretical role of the ECP has been in explaining the differences in
extraction possibilities for objects on the one hand, and subjects and
adjuncts on the other. Consider the English examples in (29):

29) a who does John said that Bill saw

b* who does John said that it saw Bill

In (29a), the trace is head governed by the verb and immediately satisfies
the ECP via condition (28a). in general, long distance movement is
legitimate from object position, as in (29a). in (29b), on the other hand,
the trace is not head governed and the structure requires antecedent
government are not satisfied and the structure is ill-formed. In general,
long distance movement from subject position is not legitimate.
Arabic is identical to English in this specific respect. Examples similar to
those in (29) are illustrated in (30):

30) a man ?9taqad-a zayd-un ?anna hid-an ra?a-t

who thought zayd-nom that hind-acc saw
who did zayd think that hind saw’
b* man ?9taqad-a zayd-un ?anna ra?a-t belaal-an

64
 who thought zayd-nom that saw belaal-acc.

Many complications follow from these initial observations and for a

comprehensive discussion within the theoretical framework assumed
here, the reader is referred to Rizzi (199theta).
Of course, there are other important notions appearing in the definitions
of this section, most obviously those of barrier (Chomsky, 1986b) and
relativized minimality (Rizzi, 199theta). Both of these contribute to the
idea that there are constraints on grammatical relations such that they
cannot obtain across an element of a particular type. The elegant idea of
Rizzi, which largely supersedes Chomsky’s framework, is that an
intervening head will block head government, an intervening A-position
will block antecedent government arising in the context of A-movement
and an intervening A’-position will block antecedent government arising
in the context of A’-movement. Again, many complex issues arise when
these matters are seriously pursued, but what we have here is sufficient
for this general introduction.

General exercises:
Exercise1.
ECP 1. (Empty Category Principle)

A trace must be governed

(1) *John is illegal [CP[IP t to park here]]
(CP is a barrier to government; non-finite Infl isn't a governor)

ECP 2

65
version:
A trace must be properly governed (Proper government is
government by a lexical head)

(2) *Who do you think [that [t solved the problem]]

(t is not properly governed)

(3) Which problem do you think [that [John solved t]]

(t is properly governed by solve)

(4) *Who do you think [CP t' [.3 that [IP t solved the problem]]]

(5) Either that somehow blocks antecedent government or that

somehow turns C' into a barrier for antecedent government
(6) ?*Which car did you leave [before Mary fixed t] Subjacency -
an 'adjunct island'

(7) *How did you leave [before Mary fixed the car t] (t is not
properly governed, so the ex. violates both Subjacency and the
ECP)

(8) Similarly for all islands: extreaction of an adjunct in violation

of Subjacency always yields crashingly bad results.

66
 (9) Lasnik and Saito technology: A trace that is properly
governed is marked +(; one that is not is marked - (. The ECP says
*[-(]

(10) How do you think [t[(that) [ Mary fixed the car t]]] (Why no
"that-trace effect with adjuncts?)
(11) Lasnik and Saito proposal: Adjunct traces are not gamma-
marked in overt syntax (maybe because they aren't present yet). In
LF (as in overt syntax) that can be deleted.
(13) Argument traces are gamma-marked in overt syntax (or we
lose the that-trace effect for subjects).
(14) *How2 do you wonder [when1[John said t1[ t2' [ Mary solved
the problem t2]]]]
(15) Intermediate traces must be properly governed. (t 2 is
antecedent governed by t2'; so it must be the latter the is not
properly governed in violation of the ECP.)
(16) Further, gamma-marking must be specifically at levels
. If t2' could properly govern t2 and then delete, (17) would be a
'mere' Subjacency violation.
(17) Chomsky's version of this, from the mid-1980's: "Adjuncts
must be fully represented". That is, all the traces in the chain of
the moved adjunct must remain.
(18) *Who left why
(19) Suppose all WH-phrases move eventually, creating an
adjunction structure.

67
(20) LF: CPe i who1 IP why2 who1 t1 left t2 t2 is not properly
governed
(21) *Who t1 said [ [ John left why]] Again, intermediate traces
must be properly governed.
(22) ?*Which car did you leave [before Mary fixed t]
Exercise 2
1. Account for the ungrammaticality of the following
sentences:
b. * Howi have they forgotten [ which problem ]j they should solve tj ti?
c. * [ Which problem ]i have they forgotten [ how ]j ti should be solved ti tj?
a.   [ Which problem ]i should [IP ti be solved ti ] ?
b. * [ Which problem ]i have [IP they forgotten [CP howj [IP ti should be solved ti
tj ] ] ] ?
b. * Howi have [IP they forgotten [CP [ which problem ]j [IP to solve tj
ti ] ] ] ?

Chapter Six

Binding theory

Binding theory is principally concerned with the way pronominal

elements and other types of nominal expressions relate to each other. It
deals with the distribution of over anaphors like the reflexive himself or
the reciprocal each other, overt pronouns like me, her, him, and over
referring expressions (R-expressions) like Mary, the boy, etc.

68
Binding theory contains three principles, each one dealing with one of
these types of expression:
a. An anaphor must be bound in a local domain
b. A pronominal must be free in a local domain.
c. An R-expression must be free everywhere.

As a structural notion, binding is defined in terms of c-command co-

indexation as follows (Chomsky 1986a: 164)
α binds B iff α c-commands B and is coindexed with B
if a nominal expression is not bound it is said to be free.
A major topic in Binding Theory has been that of how to define ‘local
domain’ and I will follow the standard assumption of classical GB that
the local domain for anaphors is the same as that for pronominals. (for an
alternative view, see Huang, 1982). A popular definition of this domain is
as an items governing category which is defined as follows:

31) B is the governing category for α iff B is the minimal category

containing α, a governor of α, and a subject accessible to α.

Conditions A, B and C with ‘local domain’ understood in this way are

responsible for the grammatical patterns in (32):
32)
a. Mary entertained herself by reading an exciting story.
b. Mary praised me
c. She praised John
d. Sally said that Mary is proud of herself.
e. Mary said that Sally knows her
f. He claimed that he knows John.

In (32a) herself is an anaphor. According to Principle A, it must be bound

by an antecedent in its governing category; the NP Mary is such an
antecedent. In (32b), the pronominal me must be free in it governing

69
category, i.e. it must not be bound by Mary; thus the sentence is only
grammatical on a contraindexing of Mary and me. In (32c) coindexing of
she and the R-expression John is excluded by principle C, which requires
that the R-expression must be free everywhere. In (32d) Mary must bind
the anaphor herself, since it is the only potential binder within the
appropriate governing category. Thus Sally cannot bind the anaphor
herself because it is outside this governing category. In (32e), on the other
hand, the pronominal her must be free in its governing category and this
requires that it is contraindexed with Sally. It can, however, be bound by
Mary or it may acquire its reference from some discourse antecedent.
Finally, in (32f), the R-expression John must not be bound by either of
the potential pronominal antecedents, since it must be free everywhere
according to principle C.
Turning to MSA, we see the general principles of binding illustrated in
(33), which parallels (32):

33a zayd-un salla nafsa-hu

zayd-nom entertained himself
zayd entertained himself

b hind-un salla-t-haa
hind-nom entertained her
‘hind entertained her’

c hiya kallam-a-t zayd-an

she spoke zayd-acc
‘she spoke to zayd’

d hind-un qaala-t ?nna fatima-ta faxuura-tun bi-nafs-I-haa

hind-nom said that Fatima-acc know her
‘hind said that fatima knows her’

f huwa qaal-a ?anna-hu ya9rif-u zayd-an

he-nom said that-he know zayd –acc
‘he said that he knows zayd’

70
Binding theory is extended to deal with aspects of the distribution of
various empty categories. Thus, the trace of A-movement is regarded as a
non-overt anaphor which must be bound locally; this provides one route
to constrain A-movement to a local operation. More importantly for our
subsequent purposes, the trace of A’-movement is viewed as a non-overt
R-expression, a variable, and as such principle C requires it to be free of
binding from an A-position. A well –known consequence of this is the
Strong Crossover phenomenon, as in the following examples:

34) a* who does he trust ti

b* who does he think Mary trusts ti

in these examples, ti is bound by he locally in (34a) and non-locally in

(34b) and the examples are ill-formed, i.e. (34a) cannot be interpreted as
(35a) and (34b) cannot be interpreted as (35b).

a. who is the X such that X trusts X

b. who is the X such that X thinks Mary trusts X

if tj is an R-expression in these structures, the correct facts follow.

General Exercises
Exercise 1
1. Discuss the implications of the Binding Theory for the
interpretation of the italicised DPs in the following examples:
(1) Mary has hurt herself in the fight.
(2) Mary seems to have invited herself.
(3) Mary expects some pictures of herself to be on sale.
(4) Mary expects that she will meet Bill
(5) She expects that Mary will meet Bill.

71
Exercise 2,
Discuss the binding domain for the reflexives in the examples
below:
Mary does not like John’s pictures of her.
*Mary does not like John’s pictures of herself.
*Mary does not like any picture of herself.
*Mary does not like any pictures of her.
* Himself likes John.
* Himself was invited by John.

Exercise. 3 ( Binding
Discuss the application of the Binding Theory to the italicized
DPs in the following examples.

a. Which pictures of himself did John prefer?

b. Pictures of each other Mary and Thelma did not want.
c. For himself, John wanted a book.
d. The girls seem to each other to be the best candidates.
e. John seems to him to be the best candidate.
f. * Himself likes John.
g. John has invited himself to the party.
h. * Himself was invited by John.

Exercise 5. Anaphors

72
1. Bracket each noun phrase, then underline the anaphor and
double-underline the NP that binds it (the antecedent).
o. [The student] steeled [herself] for [the exam].
a. The cat licked itself fastidiously.
b. The mother told the little boy all about himself.
c. We composed a song for ourselves.
d. The shy deer and the elk showed themselves to us.
e. That girl’s friends whispered amongst themselves.

2. Bracket each noun phrase and underline the anaphor. Then,

for each (non-anaphoric) noun phrase, state whether it can be
coindexed with, and whether it c-commands, the anaphor.
a. *[[George’s] sister] sang to [himself].
b. *A portrait of herself fell on Mary.
c. * The psychologist spoke about me to myself.
d. * Himself sometimes frightens Gerald.
e. * I gave a picture of you to yourself.

Exercise 6. Pronouns
Underline the binding domain of the pronoun. Then, for each
other bracketed NP, indicate in the chart whether it is coindexed
with the pronoun, whether it c-commands the pronoun, and
whether it is in the pronoun’s binding domain. For

73
ungrammatical sentences, underline (in the chart) the NP binder
that causes the Principle B violation.
a. *[Kazuko]i told [the truth]j to [her]i.
b. * [[This girl’s]i brothers]j paddled [them]j around [the
lake]k.
c. [The shopkeeper]i said that [the burglar]j had scared
[her]i.
d. * [The witness]i steeled [him]i for [the cross-
examination]j.
e. * [The genealogist]i told [the duchess]j about [her]j.
f. [The nurse]i wrapped [[the patient’s]j shawl]k around
[her]j.
g. [[Gerald’s]i sister]j voted for [him]i.
h. *[[Bob]i and [Doug]j]k always talk about [them]k.
i. [Paul Martin]i thinks that [he]i will win [the election]j.

Chapter Seven

Movement theory

The transformational component of earlier versions of transformational

grammar is connected with the principle of Move alpha in the version of
the theory we are adopting here. However, it remains necessary to
distinguish various types of Move alpha.

74
XP-movement
Movement of a maximal projection can only be from its base-position to
another XP position. For instance a Wh-NP can move from its base
generated position to [spec,CP] leaving a trace (an example of A’-
movement), and any NP can move from its base generated position to
another NP position under certain circumstances (A-movement). The
latter type of XP-movement is typically motivated by Case Theory and is
subject to such constraints as may be imposed by the ECP and the Theta
Criterion. We have already seen illustration of the former and the latter
will prevent what, in earlier frameworks were raising-to-object analyses
of, for example, order-constructions.
X-movement
Another major type of movement is often referred to as head movement.
It is stadnardly invoked in the form of verb movement with the verb
moving from its base position to the INFL position in VSO languages
like MSA as will be discussed in Chapter 2. The moved category adjoins
to the host category so that the combination of both elements forms a new
complex zero-level category (Alharbi, 199theta). Traditionally, which
blocks movement of a head over an intervening head position. Travis
(1984: 13) formulates the HMC as (36):
35) An X may only move to Y which properly governs it.
In recent GB works, it has been argued that the HMC should be
subsumed by the ECP (cf. Chomsky 1986b:71; Ouhalla 1988:341-7;
Baker 1988a:54) or under Relativized Minimality (Rizzi199theta)
Constraints on wh- movement
The island constraints
Apparent unboundedness of wh- movement. Given that wh- phrases in
direct and indirect questions occupy their surface position as a result of

75
movement, the question arises of how far a wh- phrase can move from the
position where it is interpreted. Examples like (19) suggest that the
distance is in principle (that is, apart from performance considerations
such as limitations on memory) unlimited, or unbounded. Examples like
(19b-e), where a wh- phrase moves out of the CP where it originates, are
called long-distance wh- movement (also known as long movement or
nonlocal movement).
(19) a.   [CP Whati was he reading ti ] ?
b. [CP Whati did he say
[CP that he was reading ti ] ] ?
c. [CP Whati does she believe
[CP that he said
[CP that he was reading ti ] ] ] ?
d. [CP Whati are they claiming
[CP that she believes
[CP that he said
[CP that he was reading ti ] ] ] ] ?
e. [CP Whati do you think
[CP that they are claiming
[CP that she believes
[CP that he said
[CP that he was reading ti ] ] ] ] ] ?
A typology of islands. However, contrary to what the pattern in (19)
suggests, Ross 1967 argued that wh- movement is not in fact unbounded.
For instance, although wh- movement out of that clause complements to
verbs is completely acceptable, as shown in (19b-e), wh- movement out
of that clause complements to nouns is not, as shown in (20) and (21).
For clarity, the heads associated with the complement clauses are
underlined in the next few examples.
Noun complement:
(20) a.   He made the claim [ that he has met Subcomandante Marcos ] .
b. * [ Who ]i did he make the claim [ that he has met ti ] ?
(21) a.   He mentioned the fact [ that he had run into Julia Roberts ] .
b. * [ Which celebrity ]i did he mention the fact [ that he had run into

76
 ti ] ?
Particularly striking is the contrast between (20b) and (21b) on the one
hand and the essentially synonymous examples in (22) on the other.
(22) a. [ Who ]i did he claim [ that he has met ti ] ?
b. [ Which celebrity ]i did he mention [ that he had run into ti ] ?

The Comp-trace effect

Another constraint on wh- movement is the so-called Comp-trace effect.
Notice first that long-distance wh- movement of complements and
adjuncts is unaffected by whether the complement clause is headed by an
overt complementizer or a silent one (indicated in the following examples
by ø).
(23) a.   [ Which friends ]i did they say { that, ø } they saw ti ?
b.   [ Which way ]i did they say { that, ø } they would fix the leaky
faucet ti ?
By contrast, long-distance movement of subjects is possible only with a
silent complementizer. The presence of an overt complementizer
immediately preceding the trace of wh- movement is ungrammatical;
hence the name of the effect.
(24) a.   [ Which friends ]i did they say ø ti saw them?
b. * [ Which friends ]i did they say that ti saw them?
There is some variation among English speakers with regard to the status
of (24b) (Sobin 1987). But even speakers who judge (24b) to be
acceptable report a Comp-trace effect in connection with movement out
of indirect questions. As we have just seen, indirect questions are islands,
and so long wh- movement is not completely acceptable to begin with.
However, it has been observed that indirect questions introduced by
whether or if tend to give rise to relatively weak island effects; in the
examples in (35), this weak effect is indicated by ?*.
(25) a. ?* [ Which friends ]i did they worry whether they snubbed ti ?
b. ?* [ Which way ]i did they wonder if they could fix the leaky

77
 faucet ti ?
General exercises:
WH-Movement
1.
In the English root wh-questions in 1-4, two movements take place,
point out these two movements generally.

1.Whom will Thelma meet after lunch?

2.Whom is Thelma meeting after lunch?
3.Whom has Thelma met after lunch?
4.Whom did Thelma meet after lunch?

2. Which sentence is grammatical and which is ungrammatical? please

give the reasons.

a. Who_i do you think [CP that [IP they told me [CP t_i that [IP t_i
would come]]]]?
b. Who_i do you think [CP that [IP they told me [CP t_i [IP t_i would
come]]]]?
which sentence is grammatical and which is ungrammatical? why?

a. Why_i do you wonder [CP whether [IP they told me [CP t_i that [IP
he would invite her t_i]]]]?
b. Why_i do you wonder t_i [CP whether [IP they told me [CP that [IP
he would invite her ]]]]?

3. Hint: 1. Just use capital letters for "CP" and "IP".

2. Use underline "_" to notate the traces. e.g "who[_i ]" and "t_k"

3. Notice that, do enter exactly one blank when you want to spearate
two words or letters. e.g. "IP t_k" , but not "IP t_k"

4. Do NOT add any other unnecessary symbols.

78
 Here is an example how this question is supposed to be answered
[CP ]who[_i ]did[_k IP ]John[t_k ]meet[t_i ]
give a S-structure of the following sentence.

(CP) Which  book (_i) did (_k IP) Mary (t_k) buy (t_i) ?

4. Hint: 1. Just use capital letters for "CP" and "IP".

2.Please use underline "_" to notate the traces. e.g "who[_i ]" and "t_k"

3.Please notice that, do enter exactly one blank when you want to
spearate two words or letters. e.g. "IP t_k" , but not "IP t_k"

5. Do NOT add any other unnecessary symbols.

Here is an example how this question is supposed to be answered .

[CP ]who[_i ]did[_k IP ]John[t_k ]meet[t_i ]
Please give a S-structure of the following sentence
(CP) What  did (_k IP) Mary (t_k) buy (t_i) ?
6. Hint: 1. Just use capital letters for "CP" and "IP".

2. Use underline "_" to notate the traces. e.g "who[_i ]" and "t_k"

3. Notice that, do enter exactly one blank when you want to spearate
two words or letters. e.g. "IP t_k" , but not "IP t_k"

4. Do NOT add any other unnecessary symbols.

Here is an example how this question is supposed to be answerde.

[CP ]who[_i ]did[_k IP ]John[t_k ]meet[t_i ]
give a S-structure of the following sentence
(CP) With  which  knife (_i ) did (_k]
[IP) Mary (t_k ) cut ( ) the bread (t_i ) ?

79
 Chapter eight
Bounding theory

Bounding theory provides a further alternative for specifying the locality

conditions on movement. Its central condition is Subjacency, which relies
on the notion of bounding node. In Chomsky (1973) Subjacency is
formulated as (37):

37. Subjacency Condition:

No constituent can be moved out of more than one bounding
node.

Bounding nodes have typically been described as NP and IP in English

and the working of (37) can be exhibited in (38)

38. [who [did [Mary have [the assumption [t that [John saw t]]]]]]
CP IP NP CP IP
*

It is assumed that the wh-phrase first moves to the intermediate [spec,

CP] position as shown in (38). However, its subsequent move to the
matrix [spec, CP] crossing NP and IP violates Subjacency. Of course,

80
there are cases of long distance movement in which a wh-item may make
a series of moves, each of which obeys the Subjacency Condition as in

(39)
[who [do [you [assume [t that [John saw t]]]]]
CP IP CP IP

Throughout the 198thetas, the importance of Subjacency has been

reduced with the increasing focus on ECP, Minimality and Barriers.
However, its role in developing theory has been such that it remains part
of the technical apparatus necessary to understand the literature.

General exercises
Account for the ungrammaticality of the following sentences:
a.   Whati did [IP you { read, write } [DP a book about ti ] ] ?

b.   Whoi did [IP you take [DP a picture of ti ] ] ?

c. [ { Which, how many } states ]i do [IP you know [DP the capitals of ti ] ] ?

d. ?*Which car did you leave [before Mary fixed t]

e. ?*What do you believe the claim that Lisi bought t

The that-trace effect:
What is the that-trace effect?
In English, the subordinating conjunction that is often optional.
(1)        You think that John kissed the baby.
(2)        You think John kissed the baby.
(1) and (2) are both acceptable sentences in English: that is present in (1)
but absent in (2).
When we ask a question about an element inside the subordinate clause,
that usually remains optional, as in (3) and (4). Note how who(m) appears
in sentence-initial position. However, we still intuitively feel that, in this

81
particular example, it is the direct object of kissed. Since direct objects in
English follow the relevant verb (the baby follows kissed in (1) and (2)),
we can capture this intuition by putting a trace of who(m), represented as
twho(m), in the position just after kissed.
(3)        Who(m) do you think that John kissed twho(m)?
(4)        Who(m) do you think John kissed twho(m)?
However, there are instances when that is not optional. When we ask a
question about the subject of the subordinate clause (corresponding to
John in all the examples so far), that must be absent (* means that the
sentence is unacceptable).
(5)        *Who do you think that twho kissed the baby?
(6)        Who do you think twho kissed the baby?
The unacceptable configuration involves that followed immediately by a
trace, hence this effect is called the that-trace effect (Perlmutter, 1968).
Why is the that-trace effect interesting?
The that-trace effect is interesting in a number of respects, but I’ll just
mention two of them. The first is the question of how we, as English
speakers, come to ‘know’ that there is a contrast between (5) and (6)
given that that is generally optional as we saw in (1) and (2), and (3) and
(4). Unless you’ve studied syntax, you’ve probably never been explicitly
taught that there exists a that-trace effect in English at all. So how do we
learn such an effect? Phillips (2013) looks at how frequent examples like
(3-6) are in a corpus of speech directed at children. This is what he found
(Phillips, 2013: 144):
(7)a. Who do you think that John met __?              
b. Who do you think John met __?                    
c. *Who do you think that __ left?                        
d. Who do you think __ left?                              
The corpus contains 11,308 examples of wh-questions (i.e. questions
involving the wh-phrases who, what, etc.). Out of the 11,308 examples,

82
there were no examples of the form in (7c), i.e. cases where the subject of
the subordinate clause is questioned. This is the configuration that
English speakers judge unacceptable. What is particularly interesting is
(7a). Out of the 11,308 examples, there were only two tokens where that
is present and the direct object of the subordinate clause has been
questioned. Yet speakers judge such sentences as acceptable. If examples
like (7a) are so rare, why don’t speakers hypothesise that (7c) just
happens to be very rare as well? Alternatively, given how rare it is to find
that in wh-questions, why don’t speakers hypothesise that that is
generally impossible in wh-questions? Either way, it is quite difficult to
see how the contrast between (5) and (6) (or (7c) and (7d)) can be
acquired purely from child-directed speech. We thus hypothesise that
there is something about the way the syntax (of English) works that
allows us to ‘know’ about the that-trace effect. This is a classic argument
based on the poverty of the stimulus.
The second point of interest comes from the fact that English has a that-
trace effect as well as an anti-that-trace effect. The anti-that-trace effect
can be seen in relative clauses. In English, we can form relative clauses
using that. In general, that is optional in relative clauses just as it is in (1-
4) above (we use traces again and the relative clause is in boldface).
(8)        The baby girl that John kissed twoman is called Mary.
(9)        The baby girl John kissed twoman is called Mary.

In (8) and (9) we have relativised a direct object; baby girl is interpreted
as the direct object of kissed inside the relative clause.
Now, if we relativise a subject, that is no longer optional. In such cases,
that is obligatory.

(10)      The man that tman kissed the baby is called John.
(11)      *The man tman kissed the baby is called John.

83
Once again there is something special about the relationship between that
and the subject of the subordinate clause. However, the effect in (10) and
(11) is the exact opposite of the that-trace effect seen in (5) and (6)! As
seen in (5), that immediately follow by a trace is unacceptable; that must
be absent, as in (6). In (10) and (11), the situation is reversed. As seen in
(10), that immediately followed by a trace is acceptable; the absence of
that results in unacceptability, as in (11). We thus call the effect in (10)
and (11), the anti-that-trace effect.
The problem for us, then, is that there is something about the syntax of
English that allows us to ‘know’ that the that-trace effect exists, but
which also allows the existence of its opposite, the anti-that-trace effect.
The challenge, which I am working on at the moment, is to find out what
that something is!

84
 Chapter Nine
Control Theory

The final module which I wish to mention in this brief introduction is

Control theory.
Control Theory is concerned with the empty category designated PRO.
From the point of view of Binding Theory, this can be seen as both
pronominal and anaphoric and it occurs in the subject position of
infinitivals and gerunds as in (40):

1a. the thief tried [PRO to escape] but the landlord captured him
b. [PRO studying Italian] is difficult for me.

It is important to distinguish PRO from the pure pronominal pro which

appears as subject of finite clauses in pro-drop languages such as Arabic,
Italian, Spanish, Rumanian, Hebrew, and other (Borer, 1981). It has been
argued that the subject of what would be a non-finite clause in English is
always pro in Arabic and Souali (1992: 200) gives (2) as an example of
the sort of representation he favours.

1. he:wala zaydun [pro sira:?a ha:tihi l-kutub-i]

tried-3.s. m Zayd-nom buying-acc these the books-gen
‘Zayd tried to buy these books’

The domain of Control Theory. Obligatory and non-obligatory control

Control is the relation between an antecedent and the missing PRO
subject, i.e., it is the relation between PRO and its controller. Control
theory deals with problems of the following type:
a) What elements/positions can control?
b) What is the exact nature of the relation between PRO and its
controller? Is it an obligatory or an optional relation? Is it a one-to-one
relation?

85
c) How is a controller picked up in a given structure? This section
surveys the variety of empirical phenomena that fall under CT,
establishing a typology of control. A first relevant empirical distinction
is that between obligatory control and optional control. The term
obligatory control designates configurations that lead to ungrammaticality
if a suitable controller is not overtly present. In (1a) the Indirect Object (=
IO) is the required controller, in its absence the sentence is
ungrammatical, in (1c) and the needed controller is the direct object (=
DO); its absence leads to ungrammaticality, in (1e) and (1g) the expected
controller is the main clause subject.

(1) a. I ordered them [PRO to leave].

b. *I ordered [PRO to leave].
c. They forced them [PRO to leave].
d. *They forced [PRO to leave]
e. I promised him [PRO not to perjure myself].
f. *I promised him [PRO not to perjure himself.
g. I tried [PRO to give up smoking]

Verbs like order, force, promise, try have often been described as verbs of
obligatory control, (Bach (1979), Bresnan (1982), Farkas (1988) among
many). Verbs of obligatory control always require PRO-TO complements
and are incompatible with FOR-TO complements. The examples show
that the controller of PRO is, like the infinitive clause containing PRO, an
argument of the main clause predicate. Exactly which argument is the
controller depends on the lexical properties of the verb. Thus, order is a
verb of obligatory IO control, force is a verb of obligatory DO control,
promise and try are verbs of obligatory subject control. From the more
general perspective of control theory, obligatory control (= OC) is the LF
configuration in which the controller and the infinitive complement
containing PRO are coarguments of the same predicate. In example (1a),
for instance, the controller and the infinitive complement are co-

86
arguments of the verb order, in example (1g), the controller is the subject
and the complement clause the direct object of the verb try, a.s.o.
Obligatory control contrasts with situations of non-obligatory control (=
NOC) i.e., cases where the infinitive need not be controlled by a clause-
mate DP. Here are a few examples. In (2a) the controller is either Mary or
John, as shown by the agreement with the reflexive in (2b). Notice that
the second controller DP, Mary, is in a clause higher than the main
clause. This is said to be a situation of long-distance control, since the
infinitive clause and the controller are not clause mates.

(2) a. Mary knew that it damaged John [PRO to do it].

b. Mary knew that it damaged John [PRO to perjure himself/
herself].

Consider now sentences like (3), which are also examples of non-
obligatory control: this time there is no controller, and yet the sentences
are grammatical. The interpretation of PRO in such examples is that of an
arbitrary indefinite generic pronoun, roughly equivalent with one. That
the interpretation of PRO is one is shown by agreement phenomena;
notice the presence of the reflexive oneself and of the possessive one's in
examples (3 ):

(3) a. [PROarb to vote for oneself] would be a mistake.

b. [PROarb to love one's neighbour] is a Muslim duty.
c. [PROpro to see] is [PROarb to believe]

For detailed discussion of generalized Control Theory, extended to cases

of pro, see Li (1990), Huang (1989) and others.
With our theoretical assumptions in place, we shall now turn to a
preliminary description of MSA and PA.

87
General exercises
Exercise 1. Account for the ungrammaticality of the sentences below:
*I ordered PRO to leave
*They forced PRO to leave
*The chair managed { PRO managed PRO to gather at 6]
*The chair preferred[PRO to gather without him]

Exercise 2 Is the empty category in the sentences below a PRO or the

trace of the DP John?
(1) a. Johni seems ei to be clever.
b. Johni tries ei to be clever.
c. Johni appeared ei to be clever.
d. Johni was believed ei to be clever.
e. Johni wanted ei to come.
f. Johni was likely ei to come.
g. Johni was too tired ei to come.
h. Johni was unable ei to come.
i. Johni was certain ei to come.
j. Johni was happy ei to come.

Exercise 3 Decide where we have a PRO subject in the following

structures and whether the sentences instantiate subject control, object
control or arbitrary control.
(1) a Jack wondered whether to trust Jill.
b The electrician promised the owner of the flat to do a good job.
c The teacher told the student to register for the course next
semester.
d It is important to keep your word.
e I am glad to be back home.

88
f To err is human.
g Mary tried to feed the elephants.
h The teacher plans to write another study on causatives.

89
 Chapter ten
Word Order in MSA

Traditionally, MSA is viewed as having two major sentence types,

nominal and verbal. The former starts with a noun, while the latter can
start with a verb. In what follows, we shall be concerned exclusively with
verbal sentences. At the outset, we should note that English has only one
major word order (SVO) whereas MSA, as observed by Homeidi (1986),
Mohammad (1989), Fassi Fehri (1993), and many others, allows a
number of word orders. To illustrate, consider the following simple
sentences:

1a katab-a l-walad-u d-dars-a

Wrote-3MS the boy-nom the lesson-acc
‘The boy wrote the lesson’.

b* katab-uu l-awalaad-u d-dars-a

Wrote-3MP the boys-nom the lesson-acc
‘The boys wrote the lesson’

c. katab-a l-awlaad-u d-dars-a

Wrote the-boys the lesson
‘The boys wrote the lesson’

2a katab-a-t l-benet-u d-dars-a

Wrote-3FS the girl-nom the lesson-acc
‘The girl wrote the lesson’

b* katab-n-a l-banaat-u d-dars-a

Wrote – 3FP the girls-nom the lesson-acc

c katab-a-t l-banaat-u d-dars-a

Wrote – 3FS the girls-nom the lesson-acc
‘The girls wrote the lesson’

90
the examples in (1a) and (2a) exhibit VSO word order, and also display
‘weak agreement, which is based on gender only (cf.. Fassi Fehri, 1988a;
Mohammed, 1989, and others). Therefore (1b) and (2b) which exhibit
3
gender and number are not licit, and the singular verb forms in (1c) and
(2c) are required even with plural subjects. The paradigms in (1) and (2)
should be compared with those in (3) and (4):

3) a al-walad-u katab-a d-dars-a

The boy-nom Wrote-3MS the lesson-acc
‘The boy wrote the lesson’.

b al-awlaad-u katab-uu d-dars-a

The boys-nom Wrote-3MP the lesson-acc
‘The boys wrote the lesson’

c* al-awlaad-u katab-a d-dars-a

the boys-nom Wrote-3MS the lesson-acc
‘The boys wrote the lesson’

4a l-benet-u katab-a-t d-dars-a

The girls-nom Wrote-3FS the lesson-acc
‘The girl wrote the lesson’

b l-banaat-u katab-n-a d-dars-a

The girls-nom Wrote – 3FP the lesson-acc
‘The girls wrote the lesson’

c* l-banaat-u katab-a-t a-dars-a

The girls- nom Wrote – 3FS the lesson-acc
‘The girls wrote the lesson’

These examples exhibit SVO word order with the verb displaying ‘rich’
agreement which involves person, number and gender. This SVO word
order has been seen by some as an instance of topicalisation in MSA.
Indeed, the Arabic traditional grammarians of Basra interpreted the
subject in SVO order as a topic (Sibawayhi, 8 th century reported in Fassi
Fehri, 1993). On this construal, the verbal suffix is constructed as a clitic

91
and this view has been adopted by Bakir (1980), Fassi Fehri (1981),
Ayoub(1982), Murasugi (1992) and others. Linguists such as these view
subject in (3) and (4) as base generated in the sentence initial position
[ spec, CP]. However, this view can be questioned, by considering the
example in (5):

(5) ?z-zwaar-u HaDar-ii

Visitors-nom arrived-3. M.pl.
‘The visitors, they arrived. The visitors arrived’

As the translation suggest, this sentence is in fact structurally ambiguous,

and Fassi Fehri (1993) referring to similar data suggests that it can have a
topic reading or a subject reading. If this judgement is correct, then the
outline structures corresponding to the two readings might plausibly be
(6a) and (6b) respectively:

6a. CP (b)

IP
NP
NP
?z-zewaar P
IP
C

HaDar-uu
HaDar-uu

In (6a), the subject occupies a position external to IP[spec, CP], and the
verbal suffix is construed as a clitic suffix, whereas in (6b) the subject is
located in [spec, IP] and the verbal suffix is construed as an agreement
suffix. Linguists adopting this view state that the subject in (6b) is moved
from its base generated position to the sentence initial position [spec, IP].

92
In what follows we adopt the view that the subject is located in [spec, IP]
in SVO order. We assume, along the lines proposed by McCawley
(1970), Kitagawa (1986), Speas (1986), Kuroda (1988), Koopman and
Sportiche (1991), and Fassi Fehri (1993), that the thematic subject is base
generated in VP internal position in both word orders. And that the VSO
order is derived by verb movement to I. The SVO order involves a further
raising of the subject to [spec, IP].
Under this analysis, the two sentences in 7. whould have the
representations in (7a) and (7b) respectively:

7)a katab-alawlad-u d-dars-a

wrote the boys-no, the lesson-acc
‘ the boys wrote the lesoon’

b alawlad-u katab-u d-dars-a

the boys-nom wrote the lesson-acc
‘the boys wrote the lesson’

8)a IP

Spec I’

I VP

NP V’

V NP
t

93
b IP

Spec I’

I VP

NP V’
t
V NP
t

In addition to VSO and SVO orders, MSA also contains what we shall
5
refer to as Oacc-initial and Onom-initial word orders. These are
illustrated in (9) and (10) respectively:

9a.ad-dars-a, katab-a Zayd-un

the lesson-acc wrote Zayd-nom
the lesson, Zayd wrote’

b ad-dars-a, Zayd-un katab-a

the lesson-acc Zayd-nom wrote
the lesson, Zayd wrote

10aad-dars-u, katab-hu Zayd-un

the lesson-nom wrote it Zayd-nom
the lesson, Zayd wrote it’

b ad-dars-u, Zayd-un katab-hu

the lesson-nom Zayd-nom wrote-it
the lesson, Zayd wrote it’

It should be noted that in (10a,b), the object clitic is obligatory.

94
If a language displays a number of superficial word orders, it is natural to
ask which, if any, of these is basic and which are derived. There are at
least two proposals within the transformational framework, which have
argued that the underlying word order of MSA is SVO (Lewkowicz,
1971; Awawad, 1973). A majority of scholars, however, have maintained
that the underlying word order is VSO (see Bakir, 1980; Foster and
Hofling, 1987; Fassi Fehri, 1993 and many others).
In what follows, I will suppose that the VSO word order must be
considered as the canonical word order of MSA, since it is the order,
which is pragmatically found in neutral contexts. Here I offer a couple of
observations relevant to this claim.
First, this word order occurs in both root and embedded sentences.
Consider the following examples:

11)a katab-a zayd-un d-dars-a

wrote Zayd-nom the lesson-acc
‘zayd wrote the lesson’

B ?uriid-u ?an yuqaabil-a Zayd-un Hind-an

want-I that meet Zayd-nom Hind-acc
‘Iwant Zaydto meet Hind’

c* ?uriid-an Zayd-un yuqaabil-a hind-an

Want-I that Zayd-nom meet Hind-acc

The observations in (11) provide prima facie evidence for VSO order
being the basic word order in MSA.
Secondly, consider object extraction as in (12) below. We find only the
order VS following the extracted object and we do not find SV. This is
further prima facie evidence for the V-initial word order being basic.

12a.maaDa katab-a Zayd-un

What write Zayd-nom
‘What did Zayd-nom write

95
b maaDoa Zayd-un katab-a
What Zayd-nom write

This asymmetry between VS and SV orders extends to embedded

questions as well. By way of illustration, consider the examples in (13):

13a. hal ta9lam maaoa katab-a Zayd-un?

Q know-you what wrote Zayd-nom
‘Do you know what Zayd-nom wrote

Again, after wh-embedded objects, in these examples we find only VS

and not SV order.

Questions:
1. VSO is the canonical word order of SA. Do you agree? Prove.
2. In sentences beginning with a NP, this NP is considered by Arab
gramarians as A subject or topic. Explain clarifying the views of
Both Bosra and Cofa schools.
3. Using UG theories identify the position of the NP in Arabic SVO
sentences.
4. Palestinian Arabic is considered as SVO language. Do you agree?
Why?
5. Why does Arabic accept nearly five word orders while English
accepts only one word order?
6. English is poor agreement while Arabic is of rich agreement.
Explain

96
 Chapter eleven
Contrasts in the lexical system of English and MSA

possessive DPs / TPs

The main cases I am going to discuss here are represented in examples

(1) and (2), taken from ENG and MSA respectively:

(1) a . Here is [ Talal’s car ]

b . [The enemy’s attack ] on the peaceful village
was condemned by the government
(2) a . sami ’-tu ?ila [Hadiith Talaal ] albaariHa
listened-I to speech talaal yesterday
‘I listened to Talal’s speech yesterday’

b . zaara-t [Qasra al-malik] fi al-madiina

visited-she place the-king in the-city
‘she visited the king’s placein the city’

Two contrasts become evident from juxtaposing the above structures in

ENG and MSA. The first of these contrasts reflects a contrast in word-
order restrictions. From the above examples, we see that possessors
occupy a prenominal position in ENG, whereas they occupy postnominal
position in MSA. In other words, whereas ENG is a SN (subject + noun)
word- order language, MSA is a NS word-order language.
Two different mechanisms are at play in deriving the surface subjects
word-orders in (1) and (2) above. The two word-orders are derived via
the application of two types of movement. More particularly, the ENG
word-order in (1) is derived by the application of a SSM , whereas the
Arabic order in (2) is derived by apply a HHM.

97
___________________________________________________________
SSM spec. to spec. movements HHM head to head movements

Under X-bar theory, possessors (in both ENG and MSA) are generated in
the same structural position underlyingly viz., the [spec. NP] position,
mainly for theta-marking purposes.
So, we can represent the underlying structure of the ENG example in (1b)
as in (3), and represent the structure of the MSA example in (2a) as in (4):

(3) DP
D’

D NP

DP N’
S’ N
(4)
Enemy attack

TP

T’

T NP

TP N’

AGR N

Talaal Hadiith

98
However, the possessive phrase enemy in (3) is later moved to the [spec.
DP] position in order to be case-marked by D to its left. This movement
can be explained in terms of the DCAP. According to one of the values of
this parameter, case in ENG is assigned rightward by lexical categories
and leftward by functional categories. This in turn means that the only
available position in which the possessive phrase enemy can receive case
from D is the [spec. DP] position. Consequently, this possessive DP is
raised to the [spec., DP] position, and as a result, we get a Specifier-to-
Specifier movement in ENG. This movement is from the [spec., NP ]
position into the [Spec., DP] position. As a result of this SSM, we have
the subject+noun word-order in (1). We can represent this movement in
schematic form in the following diagram:

5. DP

DP D’

D NP
enemy
DP N’
CASE S’ N

attack

In MSA, on the other hand, no SSM is necessary. The directionality of case

assignments (DCAP) which specifies that in MSA, case is assigned

rightward uniformly by both lexical and functional categories

presupposes that possessive TP Talaal in

99
(4) can receive its case from T in the [Spec., NP] position. However, the
NS word- order is derived by HHM when the head N Haddith moves to T
in order to provide morphological support for T. this HHM can be
illustrated as follows:

(6) TP

T’

T NP

TP N’
AGR N
CASE t
Hadiith Talaal

HHM
The second contrast between ENG and MSA relating to their possessive
phrases can also be accounted for in terms of one of the parameters of
Case Theory Viz., the RCAP. More precisely, we assume that whereas in
ENG the range of case-assigners include such determiners as the ‘s
genitive case-assigner which assigns case to possessive DPs (see diagram
3 above), in MSA, by contrast, there is no such determinter and the
genitive case of possessors is assigned by an empty AGR in T (see figure
4 above).
At surface–structure ‘ the ENG.’s determiner is cliticised to the
possessive DP’ resulting in forms like the following :

(7) a . this is [Mary’s hat ]

100
b. [ The actor’s suicide ] shocked me .
In MSA by contrast’ the genitive case is realised morphologically by a
zero morpheme i , as is shown in the following examples :

(8) a . [ riHlat al-fariiq-i ] ?ila pariis

trip the-team to paris
‘the team’s trip to paris’

b . zur-tu [ bayt nabiil-in al-jadiid]

visited-I hourse Nabiil the-new
‘I visited nabil’s new house’

Complement DPs / TPs

ENG differs from MSA in that in MSA, a head N can be directly followed by a
complement TP at surface-structure, whereas a head N in ENG can not do so at
surface structure, as is illustrated by the following examples respectively:

(9)a. ?aQlaQa-ni [tadmiir al-madiina]

annoyed-me destruction the city
‘the city’s destruction worried me’

b. ra?ai-tu [ suurit ziad al-jadiida ]

saw-I picture Ziad the-new
‘ I saw Ziad’s new picture’

(10)a. [ * Imprisonment the actor ] was unexpected

b. have you seen [*picture Mary with silver frame]

The corresponding well-firmed structures to the ENG examples in (10)

are the following:

11.a. [The actor’s imprisonment ] was unexpected

b. Have you seen [ Mary’s picture with silver frame ? ]

Within the framework of X-bar syntax, the structures in (10) and (11)
above would essentially have the same underlying structure. For example,
given our arguments above, then a MSA noun phrase like (9a) would
have the following underlying structure:

101
(12) TP
T’

T NP
N’
AGR
N TP

tadmiir

al-madiina

Given that (i) complements are theta marked elements and (ii) that a head
N can only mark its sister complements, then the TP complement l-
madinna must originate as a sister of the head N in order to be theta-
marked by N in this position.
Similarly, following Chomsky (1970), the ENG noun phrase in (11a) are
well-formed at DS. Under the NP /DP- analysis of noun phrases, the
corresponding DS to the ENG noun phrse in (11a), for example, would
have the following schematic form:

102
(13) DP
D’

D NP
N’
e
N DP

Imprisonment Theta-marking
The actor

From the above diagram, we see that the complement DP the actor
originates as a DS direct object without of on a par with the direct object
of the verbal counterpart of the above nominalisation (i.e. ‘imprison the
actor’). It is generated as a sister of N in order to get its theta role from N
in this position.
However, what makes the structures in (9) and (11) differ at surface-
structure is ascribable to differences in movement rules between the two
languages. The MSA structures in (9) involve two different movements,
whereas their ENG counterparts in (11) involve one movement only.
To be less abstract, given the RCAP, which specifies that in MSA nouns
are not direct case-assigners, it follows that in (12), the complement TP
al-madiina ‘ the direct city’ has to be moved to a position in which it is
able to receive case. Furthermore, given the DCAP, which specifies that
in MSA case is assigned rightward by all categories, it follows that the
only available position for the TP al-madiina to receive case is the [Spec.,

103
NP] position where it will be case-marked by AGR in T under
government. This CSM of the complement al-madiina together with a
HHM of the head N tadmiir to the head T-position in order to provide
lexical supprot to T, will have as a result the derivation of the surface
MSA NO word order in (9/a). these CSM and HHM are represented in
the following diagram:

(14) TP

T’

T NP

AGE TP N’
Case
Tadmiir Al-madiina N TP

The RCAP also specifies that nouns in ENG are not direct case-assigners,
which means that in (13), the complement DP the actor is caseless and
thus violates the CFC. In order to avoid the violation of the CFC, this DP
is moved into a position in which it can receive case. Given the DCAP,
which specifies that case in ENG is assigned rightward by lexical
categories and leftward by functional categories, it follows that the only
available position for the complement DP the actor to be case-marked is
the [Spec., DP] position in which it will be assigned case by the genitive
‘s determiner to its left. Consequently, we have a CSM (complement-to-
specifier movement), which will derive the ON word-order in (11/a). We
can represent this movement in a schematic form as follows:

104
(15) DP
DP D’
The actor D NP
Case N’

S’ N DP

imprisonment

CSM

In sum, the MSA surface NO word-order in (9) is derived via the

application of two movements namely, a CSM and a HHM, whereas the
ENG ON word-order by the application of a CSM involved in the
derivation of the ENG structures in (11) is different from the CSM
responsible for the MSA forms in (9). In ENG, the CSM moves the
complement DP form its underlying position as a sister of N into the
[Spec., DP] position, whereas in MSA, the CSM moves the complement
TP / DP to the [Spec., NP] position. As was discussed above, this
difference in the CSM between the two languages is attributable to the
DCAP, and results in the difference in their word-ordering of
complement TPs / DPs.
My analysis of ENG and MSA complement DPs / TPs will also predict
an instance of +TR on part of the Palestinian learners of ENG. This

105
positive prediction is based on the grounds that nouns in both languages
can case-mark their complement DPs / TPs indirectly via a dummy
prepositions, compare respectively:

(16) a. [ the imprisonment of the actor ] was unexpected

b. This is [ a picture of Mary with silver frame ]

(17) a. ?aQlaQa-ni [ al-tadmiir al-‘aniif li-l-madiina]

worried-me the-destruction the-severe to-the-city
‘ the sever destruction of the city worried me’

b. ghassaan [ al-mudarrib al-jadiid li-fariiq ]

Ghassaan the-manager the-new to-the-team
‘Ghassaan is the new manager of the team’

The intervention of the dummy case-assingers of and li is obligatory

when the whole DP / TP is headed by an overt determiner. In (16/a), for
example, the overall noun phrase is headed by the definite article, as will
be seen from the following diagram:

(18) DP

D’

D NP

N’

the

N DP

Imprisonment the actor

106
Given that the is not itself a case-assigning determiner, it follows that, if
moved to the [Spec., DP] position, the complement DP the actor will be
unable to receive case and a result, it violates the CFC. In order to avoid
violating this condition, an of is inserted. The function of of is to assign
case directly to the complement phrase the actor, thus satisfying the CFC
on of insertion, see Chomsky, 1970).
In MSA likewise, the use of the dummy case-marker li, which
corresponds to of in ENG, becomes inevitable when the head T-position
of the matrix noun phrase is filled by the article. To take a concrete
example, I represent the underlying structure of the example in (17/a) as
in (19):

19.

TP

T’

T NP

N’

al

AP N’

Al-‘aniif N TP

Tadmiir al-madiina

107
In (19), the presence of the non-case-assigning determiner al will block
that of the case-assigning category AGR in this position. This in turn
blocks the CSM of the complement al-madiina, since any TP moved to
the [Spec., NP] position will be caseless thus violating the CFC. The
insertion of li which assigns case directly to the complement phrase al-
madiina will satisfy the relevant condition.

Adjectival Phrases
Within the framework of X-bar, Aps were analyzed (in both MSA and
ENG) as N-bar syntactic adjuncts, that is as elements which recursively
expand an N-bar into another N-bar.
A number of contrasts arise between MSA and ENG in relation to this
type of nominal modifier. The first of these contrasts stems from a
difference in word-order restrictions. An AP in MSA follows the noun it
modifies, whereas in ENG it occurs in prenominal position in the
majority of cases, cf. Respectively:
(20) y-a’mal Jamiil fi [ma’mal daXm ]
he-works Jamil in factory big
‘ Jamil works in a big factory’
(21) He built [ a nice villa ] beside the seaside
the respective structures of (20) and (21) are as depicted in (22) and (23)
below :
TP
T’

T NP
N’
[-def]
ma’mal AP N’

108
 A’ N

DaXm

HHM

(23)
DP
D’

D NP
N’
a
AP N’
A’
A N’

Nice villa

Within the framework of X-bar syntax, we can interpret the above

disparity between ENG and MSA in the linear ordering of their APs in
terms of the Head-periphery principle, which is a universal principle
which accounts for the distribution of ‘heads’ in relation to other
constituents within phrases (see originally Stowell, 1981 in Radford,
1988). The examples in (20) suggests that noun phrases in MSA are head-
first structures in which the head N precedes its modifying APs. Further
support for the claims that noun phrases in MSA are head_first structures

109
comes from the fact that the head N also precedes other types of nominal
modifiers such as complement and possessive TPs/DPs and PPs.
The analysis of noun phrases in MSA as head-first constructions
harmonizes with other analyses of other phrases in MSA. Consider for
example the linear ordering of the heads of phrasal structures such as APs
and VPs in (24) and (25) respectively:

(24) kaana al-TaQs [ baarid jiddan ] albaariHa

was the-weather cold very yesterday
‘ the weather was very cold yesterday’

(25) [ lam ya-takallam kathiiran ‘an al-mawDuu’ ]

not he-spoke much about the-subject
‘ he did not speak much about the subject’

As the examples in (24) and (25) show respectively, both the head A
barrid and the head V yatakallam are positioned before the degree phrases
modifying them. What these examples suggest, is that MSA exhibits a
maximal structural symmetry across phrasal categories in so far as the
relative distribution of their head constituents is concerned.
On the other hand, the ENG examples in (21) suggest that noun phrases
in ENG are not head-first structures. In ENG, the distribution of the head
N in relation to its modifiers varies considerably. Thus, whereas N
precedes complement and adjunct PPs, postposed genitive phrases and
APs, it follows other constituents like complement DPs, possessive DPs,
some APs and numerals.
Another contrast arises between MSA and ENG in relation to this type of
modifier. This contrast is related to the fact that APs in MSA copy down
grammatical features such as Number, Gender and Definiteness from the
modified head N, as is shown by the following examples:

(26) talaal wa samiir [ awlaad azkiyaa?]

110
Talal and samir boys clevers
‘ Talal and samir are clever boys’

(27) [al-walad al-Tawiil ] huwa ?aX-i

‘ the tall boy is my brother ’

By contrast, APs in ENG do not inflect for definiteness, number or

gender, hence the ungrammaticality of the following examples:

(28) a. Have you seen [ * the huge the skyscraper ] on TV ?

b. I like [ * reds flowes ]

Another contrast arises between MSA and ENG as a result of the

postulation that MSA is a head-first language whereas ENG is not rigidly
a head first language. In more concrete terms, given the UDBC which
requires premodifiers to be head-final constituents, it follows that since
APs in MSA are postnominal modifiers, it follows that they can have
their own complements in this position, as is illustrated in the following
sentences:

(29) a. Jamaal [ walad faXuur bi-?abii-h ]

Jamal boyproud in father-his
‘Jamal is a boy proud of his father’

b. ya-skun fi [ bayt mujaawir li-bayt-I ]

he-lives in house next to-house-my
‘He lives in a house next to mine’

By contrast, the fact that APs in ENG occur in prenominal position

entails that they cannot have a complement in this position, as the
ungrammaticality of the following examples shows:

(30) a. He made [ a similar to mine suggestion

b. He stayed in [ * the next to mineroom ]

111
The ungrammaticality of the ENG examples in (30) is due to the fact that
these sentences violate the UDBC. On the other hand, there is no
violation of this constraint in phrases containing postnominal APs like the
ones in (29) above.
The UDBC can be violated by extraposing the PP complement of the AP
into postnominal position as in:

(31) He made [a similar proposal to mine].

When extraposed, this PP is probably adjoined to whole DP as is shown

in figure (32) below:

32.
DP PP

D’ to mine

D NP
N’
a AP N’
A’ N

A PP

Similar proposal

However, an important similarity can be identified here between ENG

and MSA. As was mentioned earlier, in the marked case, there are
instances in ENG in which an AP follows the noun it modifies and

112
therefore, it can be followed by its complement PP in this position. The
following are examples:

33.a. She bought [a dress similar to mine]

b. She is [a woman proud of her son]

Questions
1. Compare between the DP of English and the TP of Arabic clarifying theta
marking, case assignment and movement.
2. Compare between the IP and the DP of English clarifying theta marking, case
assignment and movement.
3. Compare between the IP and the DP of Arabic clarifying theta marking, case
assignment and movement.

113
 Chapter twelve
The syntactic derivation of Double object construction in Arabic

the dative sentence has a DO and an IO, and that

the IO in Arabic is preceded by the preposition /i 'to' as appears in the
examples, of S initial structures in (1) :

)1a) zayd-un ?a9Taa kitaab-an li-hind-in

Zayd-nom gave book-acc to-Hind-gen
'Zayd gave a book to Hind'

b? zayd-un ?a9Taa li-hind-in kitaab-an

Zayd-nom gave to-Hind-gen book-ace

c* zayd-un ?a9Taa li-hind-in

Zayd-nom gave to-Hind-gen

d?? zayd-un ?a9taa kitaab-an

Zayd-nom gave book-ace

e zayd-un ?a9taa hind-an kitaab-an

Zayd-nom gave Hind-ace book-ace
'Zayd gave Hind a book'

Based on (1), the general properties of datives can be immediately

established.
First, the dative construction exhibits a DO + pp complement structure as
appears in the well-formed (1a). Secondly, sentences with the alternative
PP+DO structure are not fully accepted (1b). Third, the ill-formed
sentence in (1c) shows that the deletion of the DO is not tolerated and
(44d) is marginal due to the absence of the PO.
The well-formed sentence in (1e) represents the DOC where the IO
precedes the DO. .

114
To account for the derivation of datives and DOCs, I will suggest that the
former is derived from the latter. This proposal requires two assumptions.
The first is that the IO is a PP in all positions, and that the prepositional
head of the PP is null in DOCs, i.e., is not realized phonologically, if and
only if the PP is governed by a Case assigning verb. Second, the
derivation of datives relies on the lexical preposition preceding the IO
and on Larson's notions of V' -reanalysis and complex predicate' as will
be illustrated in Section 5.5. To clarify how the DOC is derived, we first
assume the partial D-structure in

(2):
VP

PP V'

P• NP V NP
IO DO

Of course, this is incompatible with the word order of the DOC unless we
assume an empty verb position to the left of the pp (IO) at D-structure;
then we can derive the S- initial word order by movement. I therefore
propose (3) below as the D-structure representation of DOCs and datives,
and assume that the surface word order of DOCs is derived by the
movement of the verb to a position to the left of the IO which is base
generated as the head of a higher VP. Assuming also that the subject is
base generated in the specifier of the higher VP (c! Kitagawa, 1986;
Kuroda, 1988; Koopman and Sportiche, 1988), (3) yields (4) following
Verb raising (ultimately to I) and subject movement:

115
3.
IP

I"

I VP

NP V'
zayd
V• VP

PP V'

P• NP V NP
IO ?a9Ta DO
hind kitaab

116
4.
IP

NP I'
zayd
I VP
?a9Taa

NP V'
t
V VP
tj
PP V'

P• NP V NP
IO tj DO
hind kitaab
The D-structure of DOCs in (4 ) can be motivated in various ways. First,
the Theme is realized as an 'inner' DO lower in the tree. Plausibility for
this view can be. derived from the fact that this object has an intuitively
'closer' semantic and syntactic relation to the verb than does the IO in
both DOCs and datives, as is indicated by the observation that the latter
can be omitted in some cases (due, we suppose, to a lexical property of
specific verbs), but not the former. By way of illustration consider the
sentences in (5) and (6) below:

5a hal baa9-a zayd-un hind-an kitaab-an?

Q sold Zayd-nom Hind-ace book-ace
'DtdZayd sell Hind a book?'

b hal baa9-a zayd-un kitaab-an?

117
Q sold Zayd-nom book-ace
'Did Zayd sell a book?'

c* hal baa9-a zayd-un hind-an?

Q sold Zayd-nom Hind-ace

6a hal arsal-a zayd-un risaala-tan li-hind-in

Q sent Zayd-nom letter-ace to-Hind-gen
'Did Zayd send a letter to Hind?'

b hal arsal-a zayd-un risaala-tan

Q sent Zayd-nom letter-ace
'Did Zayd send a letter?'

c* hal arsal-a zayd-un li-hind-in

Q sent Zayd-nom to-Hind-gen

Due to the occurrence of the two objects, (5a) and (6a) are grammatical.
In 5b) and (6b) the sentences are grammatical even though the IO is
omitted, whereas 5c) and (6c) are deviant because of the deletion of the
DO.
Second, (5) clearly involves a claim that the IO as a pp appears in
specifier position and the DO appears as a complement. In this section we
shall see how this analysis enables us to produce a straightforward
account of how DOCs work.
Third, we assume that although there are two sorts of Case (structural and
inherent), these Cases are assigned in the same configuration. In (5), we
have a situation of a single Case assigner and two arguments which need
Case. These arguments are in different positions, therefore they cannot
both be in the right configuration. Consequently, it must be the case that
the verb can move so' that it appears in two different configurations, each
of which is appropriate for one of the arguments and it is the empty verb
position that creates this possibility. Of course, the IF contains another
head position which allows the verb to move in a further step to get tense

118
and agreement from INFL which assigns Nominative Case to the subject
under spec-head agreement. The subject moves from its base position to
the higher spec of IP to yield the S-initial word order and to be assigned
Nominative Case under spec-head agreement.

Case assignment
After outlining the derivation of the DOC, we move to investigate
precisely how Case is assigned to the two objects in this construction.
As noted, the S-structure of the DOC in (6) poses a problem for Case
theory in that there are two NPs which must receive Case in order to pass
the Case Filter. We suppose that verbs in MSA and Palestinian Arabic
(PA), however, can as in most languages only assignstructural Case to
one NP (Chomsky, 1981; Larson, 1988; Baker, 1988b; Ouhalla,
1994, among others). The obvious question is: what about the other NP?
The issue raised is of course identical to that of how the second NP in an
English DOC like (7) is assigned Case:

7. John gave Mary a book

According to the proposal of Chomsky (1980), some verbs can assign

another type of Case, Inherent Case, in addition to structural Case.
Extending this idea to Arabic ditransitive verbs will provide them with
enough Case assigning potential to ensure that their arguments satisfy the
Case Filter. Next, we have to consider the issue of which object receives
the structural Case, and which object has the Inherent Case in the DOC
and why. Before investigating this matter, it is crucial to note that
Inherent Case is assumed to differ from structural Case in one very
important respect. Following Baker (1988b) (also Chomsky 1986b;
Ottosson, 1991; Belletti, 1988), we suppose that the former is assigned
under government at D-structure, and the assigning head must theta mark

119
the relevant NP. By contrast, the latter is assigned under government at S-
structure, and there need not be any direct thematic relationship between
the assigning head and the NP. Modifying this, we might suppose that
structural Case can be assigned at S structure or at intermediate levels in a
derivation. We can then suggest that the verb, in its base generated
position assigns Inherent Accusative Case to the DO at D-structure.Then
it raises to the empty verb position, and discharges its structural Case in
the empty verb position to the IO via the empty preposition. Finally, it
raises to I to be inf1ected and then, following Koopman and Sportiche
(1991), Ouhalla (1991), among others, the external argument is assigned
structural Nominative Case from I under spec-head agreement.
The DO which is always base generated in the lower complement
position in ditransitive clauses of MSA and PA cannot be promoted under
passivization.
If we suppose that Inherent Case is retained under grammatical processes,
we now have an account of this asymmetry.
Given this analysis, Case assignment to the subject and the two objects in
(8 a) can be structurally represented as in ( 8 b)

8a)zayd-un ?a9Taa hind-an kitaab-an

Zayd-nom gave Hind-acc book-acc
'Zayd gave Hind a book'

120
8b.
IP

NP I'
zayd
nom. Case
I VP
?a9Taa

NP V'
t
V VP
tj
structural Case PP V'

P• NP V NP
IO tj DO
hind kitaab
inherent Case
This schema indicates clearly how the analysis is consistent with some
common assumptions about Case assignment. First, the verb's structural
Case is assigned to the most adjacent' object hind, where 'adjacency' is
computed during the derivation or at S-structure. This leaves only
Inherent Case available which is assigned to the argument of the verb
kitaab at D-structure. Second, the structurally Case marked
intervenes between the Inherently Case marked NP and the verb.
Having formulated a proposal as to how arguments are assigned Case in
DOCs, we move next to consider theta role assignment

121
.Theta -role assignment
Ditransitive verbs have three theta-roles to assign. In this section we shall
consider how this process occurs. In pursuing this, echoing to some
extent Falk (1990). we shall assume a theta theory
based on (9)

9. Theme: assigned directly by the verb

Possessor: indirectly assigned via a higher
projection of the verb.

Goal: assigned directly by a governing preposition

Agent: assigned compositionally by verb + Theme + Possessor (or Goal)

We shall first see how (9) works in a completely mechanical fashion.

Then we shall look for some evidence for it.
According to the proposed theory, and in line with Falk (1990), the verb
in the lower position directly assigns Theme to the DO which is base
generated in the complement position and is canonically governed by this
verb. Diverging from Falk's proposal, the PO which is base generated as
part of the PP in [spec, VP] is assigned Possessor theta-role
compositionally via a higher projection (V') of the lower verb. This theta
role is directly assigned via the next highe\ projection (the lower V')
under sisterhood to the PP and then it is transmitted via the empty
preposition, which is not a theta-role assigner, to the IO. The process of
transmission through the null preposition entails that this theta-role is
assigned indirectly..

Theta-role assignment in datives

According to (9) above, in datives, the DO is assigned Theme theta-role
directly by the verb at D-structure, whereas the PO is assigned Goal
theta-role by the lexical preposition preceding it; unlike the null

122
preposition, the lexical preposition has an inherent theta-role to assign,
and the question of having the theta-role assigned compositionally does
not arise. We therefore maintain that, although the DOC and
dative construction have the same syntactic configuration at D-structure,
the choice of lexical versus empty preposition actually triggers a different
mode of theta-role assignment in the two cases; the theta-role of the
complement of the lexical PP must be licensed by a strategy different
from that licensing the IO in DOCs above and we assume this to be the
dative preposition li..

Datives in Hebrew
Hebrew offers no motivation for a productive relationship between DOCs
and dative constructions. According to Givon (1984)
there is no dative shifting via which an indirect (prepositional, object (IO)
may lose its semantic Case. Accordingly, only the DO can appear as a
bare accusative (cf also Belletti and Shlonsky, 1995). Consider (10) and
(11) :
. 10a . Zayd natan sefer la-hind
Zayd gave book to-Hind
'Zayd gave a book to Hind'
b zayd natan la-hind sefer
Zayd gave to-Hind book
'Zayd gave to Hind a book'

c* zayd natan hind sefer

Zayd gave Hind book'

11a. ha mone hesbiir it ha-oi9uur la talmiid

The teacher explained acc the-lesson to-the-pupil

b ha mone hesbiir la talmiid it ha-oi9uur

The teacher explained to the pupil acc the-lesson

c* ha mone hesbiir it ha-oi9uur talmiid

The teacher explained acc the lesson the pupil

123
As these examples show, Hebrew,. unlike Arabic, does not accept the
DOC, and this raises the question of why this language does not accept
this construction while Arabic does. This question has been answered in a
variety of ways in the literature. Larson (1988) connected the availability
of DOCs with P-stranding. His generalisation, following Kayne (1984), is
that languages which accept dative shift also accept P-standing, and not
vice versa. As Hebrew does not have either DOCs or P-stranding, it is
consistent with this generalisation. However, as we have seen, the
generalisation is directly contradicted by Arabic which in spite of
fallowing dative shift does not accept P-stranding. Obviously a
generalisation which is so blatantly falsified cannot form the basis for an
explanation.
Another attempt to deal with the same phenomena appears in Tremblay
(1990).
He claims that the possibility of having dative shift is directly related to
the possibility of having head-final NPs [NP N] languages which have
head-final NPs accept dative shift while languages which do not have
head-final NPs do not accept dative shift. Illustrative examples from
English and French are from Tremblay (1990: 552)

12a Jean gave Mary a book

b Mary's book

13a * J eanne a donne Marie un livre

b* Mane livre

Again, this correlation is confounded by Arabic and so can hardly be used

to explain the absence of DOCs in Hebrew. Although the two Semitic
Languages have head initial NPs, Arabic allows DOCs while Hebrew

124
does not. Possessive NPs in Arabic and Hebrew are exemplified in (14)
and (15)
14 kitaab-u hind-in
book-nom Hind-gen
'Hind's book'

15 sefer ha-saxkan
Book the actor
'The actor's book'

On the basis of the above, it is necessary to find another strategy to

account for the presence of DOCs in Arabic and English and their
absence in Hebrew and other languages. Patterning to the account
developed in this chapter, we might suggest that
Hebrew, French and other languages lack the option of an empty
preposition strategy for syntactically realising a Possessor argument. In
other words, having or not having an empty preposition strategy is
entirely equivalent to having or not having a DOC in a language. To the
extent that this is plausible, it has the consequence that the Hebrew
verb natan lacks the full semantic potential of English give and Arabic ?
a9Taa.

Dative and Double object constructions in English

Regarding the dative alternation, English has three categories of verbs
like those of Arabic investigated above. This immediately entails the
conclusion that the analysis developed for Arabic above can be applied to
English without significant modification. To remind the reader, many
verbs display a productive relationship between DOCs and dative
constructions. Ditransitive verbs generally have alternate forms with the

IO in a pp as shown in (16-17),
16a She gave him a book
b* She gave to him a book

125
c She gave a book to him
d * She gave a book him

17a John threw Mary the ball

b* John threw to Mary the ball
c John threw the ball to Mary
d* John threw the ball Mary

18a He paid her one pound

b* He paid to her one pound
c He paid one pound to her
d* He paid one pound her

As can be seen, the structure of the sentences above are identical in the
relevant. respects to their counterparts in Arabic, and this yields a
straightforward application of the analysis developed in this chapter.
However, the memberships of the three categories of verbs are not
identical across the two languages, and it is necessary to address these
differences before concluding this chapter.

Semantic constraints
It has been claimed that the range of verbs that participate in the DOC is
relatively narrow in Arabic, whereas English has a wide range of verbs
which appear in this construction. Thus, in comparing the English verbs
which participate in DOCs with their near synonyms in Arabic, we find a
lack of correspondence across the two languages. For convenience,
consider the English and Arabic verbs listed in (5) (6) and (7) below:

List 5): alternating verbs in English and Arabic

Alternating verbs
English Arabic
give pass ?a9Taa 'gave'
pay post ?9aar-a 'borrowed'
kick feed? saIl am-a 'handed'
trade? e-mail wahab-a 'granted'
promtse hand baa9-a 'sold'

126
Telephone buy nawal-a 'handed'
throw get manaH-a 'granted'
flick bring ?qraD-a 'borrowed'
lend radio ?hdaa 'gifted'
grant offer wa9ad-a 'promise'
assIgn sell
WIre serve
Teach satellite
tell send
toss make
loan telegraph

6)
verbs participating in only DOCs in English and Arabic
Verbs allowing only DOCs
English Arabic
cost kallaf-a 'cost'
ask sa?a/-a 'asked'
bet kasaa 'bought clothes for someone
save ? axbar-a 'told'
deny razaq-a'sustained'
charge kafa?-a'rewarded'
refuse da9aa 'named'
spare kanaa 'named'
fine waqaa 'avoided'
forgive

7) verbs participating in only datives in English and Arabic

Verbs accepting only datives

English verbs Arabic verbs

donate shrraH-a 'explained'
contribute ?rshd-a 'guided'
distribute qaddam-a 'offered'
say katab-a 'wrote'
push ?rsal-a 'sent'
carry ?aHDar-a 'brought'
report wajjah-a 'directed'
pull ram a 'kicked'
lift naqa/-a 'carried'
ease DabaH-a 'slaughtered'
?abraq-a' telegramed'
tabara9-a 'donated'

127
 ?a9aad-a 'returned'
zawwaj-a 'marry a female to male'
xaTab-a 'have a female engaged to male'

The lack of correspondence between the verbs appearing in the tables

above gives rise to the question of how is the variation between the two
languages to be accounted for?
Regarding this question, we propose that the variation between the two
languages in the number and identity of verbs which either alternate or do
not hinge on rather subtle semantic issues. Both languages have the null
preposition option, so the differences cannot be due to the major syntactic
choice. We propose, then, that some verbs allow the options of both
nulll1exical preposition (the alternating verbs). and others do not. This, in
turn, comes down to the lexical entry of verbs, with some verbs allowing
only the Goal or Possessor theta-role in one or other language. That is,
there are relatively slight differences in the meaning potentials of cognate
verbs in the two languages, a not unexpected conclusion in the light of
cross-linguistic investigation. of semantic fields. This possibility for
variation between English and Arabic in the number of verbs which
alternate, could, in principle, be investigated in terms of a more structured
set of semantic classes These may include: possessional verbs whose
Goal is an animate (e.g., give), animate control verbs (e.g., pass), verbs
with an informational dimension with an animate Goal (e.g., tell), and
positional verbs such as throw (Gruber, 1992, Lefebvre, 1994). Following
Lefebvre's account of Fongbe in spirit, the counterpart verbs in Arabic
might be limited to. the possessional verbs (e.g. ?a9Taa) and verbs with
an informational dimension, (e.g., wa9ad-a) and this might account for
the limited number of verbs which either alternate or only accept DOCs
in Arabic.

128
Questions:
1. Trace the accounts of double object and datives derivation? Which one are you
in favor of? Why?
2. How do case and theta roles are assigned to the IO and Do in ditransitive
clauses?
3. Why does "send" accept both DOC and dative while the verb "?rsal" accepts
only dative?
4. Why do ditransitives are more in English than in Arabic and German?
5. Why does the verb "cost" accept only DOC whereas "donate" accepts only
dative construction.
6. Why does English accept DOC while French and Hebrew do not?

129
 references

Anderson, s. (1988): objects (indirect and not so direct) in English and

elsewhere. In D. Rose & theo Vennemann (eds), on language,
Routledge: London: pp., 287-314.

Aoun, J. (1988) the Formal Nature of Anaphoric Relations. Ph.D.

Dissertation, MIT.

Aoun, J. & li, a. (1989): Scope and constituency. Linguistic inquiry 20:
141-172.

______(1993): Syntax of Scope. The MIT press.

Aoun J., Benmamoun, a and Sportiche, D. (1994): Agreement and

conjunction in some varieties of Arabic. Linguistic 25: 195-220.

Barss, J. and Lasnik, H. (1986): a note on anaphora and double objects.

Linguistic inquiry 17: 347-354.

Belletti, A. and Rizzi, l. (1988): psyche-verbs and 0- theory. Natural

language and linguistic theory 6: 291-352.

Belletti, A. and Shlonsky. U. (1995): the order of verbal complements: a

comparative study. Natural language and linguistic theory, 13:
489-526.

Benmamoun, e. (1992): functional and inflectional morphology:

problems of progection, representation and derivation. Unpublished
Ph. D. dissertation, university of southern California.

______(1993) the status of agreement and agreement projections in

Arabic. Studies in the linguistic sciences, 13, No 1:61-71.

______(1995): spec-head agreement and overt case in Arabic.

Unpublished paper.

Plunkett, b. (1993): the position of subjects in modern standard Arabic. In

Mushira Eid and Clive holes (eds) perspectives on Arabic
linguistics 101:231-260.

130
Borer h. (1981): Comments on the pro-drop phenomena. In hagit borer
and Youssef Aoun (eds) Theoretical Isswes in the Grammar of
Semitic languages. V.3, MIT working papers in linguistics.

Bowers, J. (1993): the syntax of predication. Linguistic inquiry VOI. 24,

No 4: 591-656.

Chomsky N. (1955): The Logical Structure of Linguistic Theory.

Cambridge, mass, MIT press.

______(1977): on wh-movement. In P. Culicover, t Wasow and a.

Akmajian (eds). Formal syntax. New york: academic press.

______(1980): on binding. Linguistic Inquiry, 11: 1-46.

______(1981): lectures on Government and Binding. Dordrecht: Foris.

______(1986b): Barriers. Cambridge, Mass: MIT press.

______(1993): A minimalist Programme for linguistic theory. In k. Hale

and s. Keyser (eds), the view from building 20. Essays in Honour
of Sylvain Bromberger, Cambridge mass: MIT press, pp., 1-52.

Chomsky, N. and lasnik, H. (to appear) principles and parmeters theory.

In J. Jacobs, A. Von stechow, W. Sternfield and T. Vennemann
(eds), syntax: an international handbook of contemporary research.
Berlin: de Gruyter

Czepluch h. (1982) case theory and the dative construction. Linguistic

review, 2:1-38.

Diesing, m. (1990) : verb movement and the subject position in Yiddish.

Natural language and linguistic theory, 8:41-79.

Dryer, M. (1986): on primary objects, secondary objects and antidative.

Language, 62: 808-845.

Emonds, J. (1985): A Uified Theory of Syntactic Categories. Dordrecht:

foris.

______(1993): projecting indirect objects. Linguistic Review, 10: 211-

263.

131
Falk, c. (1990): on double object constructions. Working papers in
Scandinavian syntax, 46: 53-100.

Fassi fehri, A. (1988a): Agreement in Arabic binding and coreference. In

M. barlow & C. ferguson (eds), Agreement in Natural Languages:
Approaches, Theories, Descriptions. 107-158. Stanford, ca: center
for the study of language and information.

______(1993): Issues in the Structure of Arabic Clauses and Words.

Dordrecht: Kluwer academic publishers.

Foster, J. and Hofling, c. (1987) Word order, case, and agreement,

linguistics 25: 475- 499.

Green, T. (1990): subject inversion and the that-trace effect' in cheng, l

. S. and demirdache MIT working papers, vol. 13: 87-99.

Givon, T (1984): Direct object and dative shifting: semantic and

pragmatic case. In Plank, F. (ed) objects. Academic press, London.

Gruber, J. S. (1992): proper argument projection in Igbo and Yorbuba in:

c, Collins and V. manfredi (eds), MIT working papers in:
linguistics, 17: 139-165.

Haegeman, l(1985-1986) The double object construction in west Flemish.

Linguistic Review: 5, 281-300.

______(1991): Introduction to Government and Binding Theory. Oxford:

Blackwell.

Hersland, M. (1986) The double object construction in Dunish, in L.

Hellan and k. Christensen (eds), topics in Scandinavian syntax,
Dordrecht: Reidel.

Hoekstra E. (1991): On double objects in English and Dutch. In k. Leffel

and d. Bouchard (eds), Views on Phrase Structure. Kluwer academic
publishers, pp.83-95 Durdrech.

Holes, C. (1995): Modern Arabic: Structures, Functions and Varieties.

Longman London and new york.

Hudson, R. (1992): So-called double objects and grammatical relations.

132
 Language, 68: 251-276.
_____(1990) On Larson's analysis of the double object construction,
Linguistic Inquiry, 21: 421-456.

Johnson, k (1991): Object positions. Natural language and linguistic

theory, 9: 557-636.

Kayne, R. (1981) On certain differences between French and English.

Linguistic inquiry, 12:349-37.

Kitagawa, Y. (1986): Subject in Japanese and English. Unpublished

Ph.D. dissertation. Amherst, MA: university of Massachusetts.

Kopman, H. and Sportiche, d.(1982): variables and the bijection

principle. The linguistic Review, 2: 139-160.

Larson, R.(1988): On the double object construction linguistic inquiry,

19:335-391.

_____(1990): Double objects revisited: reply to Jackendoff. Linguistic

inquiry, 21: 589-632.

Lefebvre, C.(1994): New facts from fongbe on the double object

constructions. Lingua, 94: 69-123.

Lewkowicz, N. (1971) Topic-comment and relative clause in Arabic.

Language 51: 810-25.

Li, y.(1990): The specificity condition and CED. Linguistic inquiry, 23:
510-516.

Majdi, B. (1990): word order and proper government in classical Arabic,

in Mushira Eid (ed), Current issues in linguistic theory. Vol.
perspectives on Arabic linguistics 1. John Benjamin's publishing
company, Amsterdam Philadelphia.

Mohammad, M. (1989): The Sentential Structure of Arabic, Ph.D.

dissertation, university of southern California.

Napoli, J. (1992): the double object construction, domain asymmetries,

and linear precedence. Linguistics, 30: 837-871.

Nishigauchi, T. (1984): Control and thematic domain, language, 60: 215-

133
 260.

Ouhalla, J. (1988): the Syntax of Head Movement A Study of Berber

Ph.D. dissertation, university college, London.

_____(1991): Functional Categories and Parametric Variation, London:

Routledge.

_____(1994): Verb movement and word order in Arabic. In Lightfoot, D.

et al, (eds), Verb Movement, Cambridge university press.

Perlmutter, D. M. (1968). Deep and Surface Structure Constraints in

Syntax. Doctoral dissertation, MIT.

Phillips, C. (2013). On the nature of island constraints II: Language

learning and innateness. In J. Sprouse & N. Hornstein (Eds.),
Experimental Syntax and Island Effects (pp. 132–157). Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press.

Pollock, J. Y (1989): Verb movement, universal grammar, and the

structure of IP. Linguistic inquiry, 20: 365-424.

Postal, P. and Pullum, G. (1988): expletive noun phrase in subcategorized

positions. Linguistic lnquiry, 19: 635-670.

Ritter, B. (1987): a head movement approach to construct state noun

phrases, MS, MIT, Cambridage, mass.

Rizzi, l. (1990): Relativized Minimality Cambridge, mass: MIT press.

Saito, M. (1992): Long distance Serambling in Japanese. Journal of the

east Asian linguistics, 1: 69-118.

Souali, E. (1992): Adjunctions and Projections in Syntax, Ph. D.

dissertation, university of Geneva.

Sprouse, R. (1989): On the Syntax of Double Object Constructions in

Selected Germanic Languages. Ph. D dissertation, Princeton
university.

Travis, D.A (1979): Inflectional Affixation in Transformational

Grammar: Evidence from the Arabic Paradigm. Ph. D dissertation,
university of Puerto Rico.

134
Trevis, L. (1984): Parameters and the Effects of Word order Variation.
Ph. D. dissertation, MIT.

Tremblay, M(1990) : an argument sharing approach to ditransitive

constructions. in Auron L. Halpem, The Proceedings of the North
West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, 540-564.

_____(1991): Possession and Datives: Binary Branching from the

Lexicon to Syntax. Ph. D. dissertation McGill university.

Yang, S. Y. (1991): The Dative Alternation in Chinese and English.

Ph. D. dissertation, the university of Connecticut.

135
The Author's Brief Biography
Prof. Dr. Walid Amer was born on April 3rd, 1954, in Khanyouns, Gaza
Strip. His village of origin is Beitdaras / Palestine. His undergraduate years
were spent in Manoofyia university/Egypt and his graduate years were
spent at Glasgow University/UK where he received his master degree in
linguistics in 1986. During the years 1987 to 1993, Amer was a lecturer at
the Islamic University of Gaza. He has attained his Ph.D. in 1996 from
Essex university/UK and completed his doctoral dissertation, entitled “On
Double object Construction and Datives in English and Arabic". The major
theoretical viewpoints of the dissertation appeared in this book
“Introducing Syntax,” which was first published in 2001. This formed part
of a more extensive work,“
In his works in syntax Amer supported Chomsky in arguing that human beings were in fact
born with the innate ability to realize the generative grammars that constitute every human
language. Children make use of this innate ability to learn the languages that they are exposed
to.
Prof. Amer rejoined the staff of the Islamic university (IUG)/ Department of English as An
assistant Professor in 1996 and then an associate Professor 2004 after then he was appointed
full professor in the department of English/IUG in 2014.
In 2010 he was appointed Dean of the Faculty of Arts at IUG.
During the years 1987 to 2018 Amer taught several courses in linguistics, language and
translation. Along with his teaching career he published several influential papers and books
in the these fields.
Prof. Amer participated in various international conferences both locally and internationally.
In 2012 he was appointed president of the international conference of language and linguistics
held at IUG and was honored with the university first class medal. His final products are his
book "Issues in Contrastive Linguistics", this book, and a textbook titled "Success at
University Certificate. English Textbook For Palestinian Learners. Upper-intermediate
Level" 2016

136