Abstract
In this chapter I examine the internal structure of Arabic noun phrases in the light of the proposal found in Abney (1987), according to which traditional NPs are DPs (determiner phrases), with an inflectional structure paralleling that of sentences.1 Once the DP analysis is adopted, and N raising (to D) motivated, a number of questions arise with regard to S-structures of nominal phrases. How many inflectional projections are involved in their derivation? And what mechanisms account for cross-linguistic variation in word order, Case, extraction, thematic, and referential properties of these constituents?
Part of this matera is contained in Chapter 4 of Fassi (1989b and c), which is in turn based on Fassi (190a). Another part has been presented as a lecture in Paris VIII (Winter 1990) entitled: ‘Quels chemins pour NSO?’.
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Notes
The idea that D is the head of nominal phrases is originally due to Brame (1982). Abney has elaborated on this idea within GB.
On this terminology, see Marouzeau (1951). On construct states in Hebrew, see Borer (1983), among others.
The preposition li introduced in (2) is a Case mark, as will be explained later on. In Fassi (1985b) and (1987a), I have proposed deriving the order in Arabic NPs via N fronting, generalizing Emonds’ (1980) original V fronting rule. Ritter (1987/1988, 1991) has worked out a DP analysis for deriving Hebrew NP structure which differs in essential ways from mine. See notes 21 and 28, in particular, for comparison.
Traditional grammarians have also pointed out that nunation is a mark of tamakkun,that is of ‘complete nominality’. Some nouns do not have such a property (see Sibawahyi, 800, and Wright, 1974, on the matter).
This [n] form occurs only on so-called sound plurals, and duals. Broken plurals do not carry [n] when they are definite. Traditional grammarians make a distinction between this [n], which they call nuun (i.e. a simple n), and tanwiin (nunation). The distinction is simply graphic, in my view. The two [n] are unified here, and provided a single treatment.
On the properties of Arabic modification, see Fassi (1976 and 1981). See also Fassi (1987a) for tests of Definiteness.
On this view, see e.g. Grimshaw (1987–1990) and Zubizaretta (1987). According to Emonds (1985), nouns theta mark their arguments, but only indirectly. In contrast, Chomsky (1986a) assumes that nouns and verbs do not differ in theta marking capacities, but only in Case marking properties. I will adopt Emonds’ proposal in this work.
See Anderson (1983) and Chomsky (1986a) on a similar idea, though linked to Genitive Case marking. On indirect theta marking in the same spirit, see Marantz (1984) and more recently Pollock (1989b). Traditional grammarians have observed that there is a sort of predication (they call it nisba ‘attribution’) within the genitive construction. If the subject role is to be assigned by virtue of predication, then the possessor role would be, too. I think, however, that theta role assignment and predication are different mechanisms.
An analysis of the complementary distribution of Poss marking and nunation will be proposed in Subsection 5.4 below.
Other alternatives are either that Genitive is assigned to the Possessor by D in an ECM configuration (as proposed by Fassi, 1987a), or by N to its complement. Both options will be shown to be inadequate.
On the intricacies of the Arabic numeral system, see Fassi (1981), and for numeral agreement, Fassi (1984).
One might wonder why AGR in Arabic nominal phrases should be limited to the poor option, while this is not so in clauses, as pointed out to me by a SNLLT reviewer. The way I think of this problem at this point is that this limitation is simply accidental (and/or lexical). AGR nominal morphemes are not specified for NUM in Arabic, while they are so in other languages (Chamorro, Turkish, Hungarian, etc.).
Similar facts are ruled out in Romance. For an analysis, see Giorgi and Longobardi (1991). 16 The only scrambling possibility that we know of with synthetic genitives is to place an adverb between the possessor and the object, as in (i): Your criticism today of the teacher pleased me.
See Abney (1987) on agreement in DPs. On Hungarian, see Szabolsci (1989) and Maracz (1989), on Greek, Horrocks and Stavrou (1987), and on Turkish, Underhill (1976). In Fassi (1989c), D is taken to be the counterpart of T, and AGR in the noun phrase the counterpart of AGR in the sentence. There are other properties of D and T which make them parallel. For example, both T and D may be deictic. They can be treated as ‘binders’, in the sense that both of them discharge a position in a theta grid of a predicate via theta binding (see Higginbotham, 1985, 1986 for details). As for AGR, it seems peculiar, at first glance, to hypothesize that it heads the genitive construction, given the fact that nouns do not usually bear agreement markers, the latter occurring only with predicates. The hypothesis is supported, however, by empirical as well as theoretical evidence, as we will see.
In Jackendoff (1977), for example, the head noun is generated under N, and the article as Spec of N’.
It remains to be seen whether R is a predication or modification relation. The latter view has been defended by Grimshaw (1990), who treats possessors as argument-adjuncts.
I take (38) to be an instance of NP raising in ‘active’ nominals, following an idea of Pollock (1989b). In contrast, I think that the genitive NP in constructions like The city’s destruction may be base generated as a possessor, or treated as a ‘passive’ possessor. I assume that passive raising is regulated by different principles than AGR or D raising (see Fassi, 1988b for details).
An SNLLT reviewer wonders why (37) is not grammatical in English, but is perfectly well-formed in Hungarian. The explanation I have provided is that AGR and D in Hungarian are rich, and hence license Spec to Spec movement. In English, by contrast, these structures violate the AGR Criterion.
In order to handle the facts of complementary distribution in Hebrew construct states, Ritter (1987/1988) proposes that the D position is filled by an article which is lowered onto the constituent following it. Thus, in ordinary DPs, the definite Hebrew marker ha-is prefixed to the head noun, but in construct states it is attached to the genitive. According to her, “This accounts for the fact that ha-is realized on the genitive phrase in a CS but on the head noun otherwise” (p. 17). But this lowering operation has no independent motivation, as far as I can tell. Since the head noun and the possessor can bear different articles, it is unclear why there should be only one article on the head noun in the CS, lowering onto the genitive.
As will be explained later on, any extraction is in fact blocked in the context of an article. It is not clear from the data whether the possessor can raise to Spec of AGR, nor is it clear how the internal structure of nominals is derived in Chamorro. Chung (1990b) proposes that at D-structure, Spec of D (which is to the right of the head) hosts the possessor. The latter is then lowered to adjoin to the head N at S-structure, in the same way that the subject in IP lowers to adjoin to V. This proposal raises a number of theoretical and descriptive problems, as observed in Chapter 2. See also Section 6, below.
I assume that (in)definiteness is a necessary semantic property of nominal expressions, and that D has to be there for interpretive reasons. For an overview of different approaches to (in)definiteness, see Reuland and ter Meulen (1987). If D is filled by an article, it will count as a head and will block antecedent government when it does not agree.
Ibn as-Sarraaj, an Arabic grammarian of the 11th century, defines the noun as ‘what expresses a single meaning, and this meaning might be an individual or a non-individual. Examples of individuals are: rajul ‘man’, faras ‘horse’, hajar ‘rock’, balad ‘country’, ‘Amr,and Bakr. Non-individuals are: Barb ‘beating’, ?akl ‘eating’, dann ‘thinking’, 91m ‘knowing’, 1-yawm-a ‘today’, 1-laylat-a ‘tonight’, and s-sadat-a ‘now’. See Al-?usuul,Vol. 1, p. 36.
He then adds: “I said that it expresses a sole meaning because I want to distinguish it from the verb, since [the latter] expresses some meaning and time, and time is either past, present, or future. You might object that among nouns are ‘today’, ‘tonight’, and ‘now’, and these are times. What is then the difference from verbs? Our answer is that the verb is not solely time, in the same way that ‘today’ is solely time. ‘Today’ has only a time meaning, and it does not convey any another meaning. The verb is [also] divided according to three times […]. Hence if the word expresses time only, it is a noun. If it expresses a meaning and a situated tense (muhsal),it is a verb” (Ibid.,p. 37). On the other hand, Siiraafii defines the noun as “a word which expresses a meaning by itself, without been associated with a situated tense”. See Ibn Ya‘iiI, Vol. 1, p. 22. In the traditional trichotomy of parts of speech (verb, noun, and particle), only verbs and nouns express meanings by themselves, while the particle expresses a meaning ‘with’ the noun or the verb. Moreover, only (inflected) verbs are associated with tense. Thus nouns and masdars are grouped together as not being associated with so-called situated tense. Nouns stand not only for individuals, but also for events (?andaat). As observed by Ibn as-Sarraaj, “… events denote vague (mubham) tenses, because an event can only be in a certain tense. Verbs denote a determined tense (ma‘luum),be it past or non past” (Ibid.,p. 22).
Beside these definitions, grammarians have gathered ‘the things by which the noun is identified’, that is, its properties and marks. Among these is the ability to take a definite article, to receive nunation (when indefinite), to be constructed with a genitive complement, to pluralize, to be able to have a broken plural, to undergo diminutive formation, to be modified by an adjective, etc. Suyuutii provides more than thirty nominal marks and features in Al-Pafbaah wa n-nadaaPir (Vol. 2, p. 9). Obviously, these properties, distributions, and marks, are not realized in every case. Take, for example, masdars, which are classified as nouns, according to the tradition. As is well known, this class of nouns does not allow pluralization, nor diminutive formation. Or take their definition of verbs as necessarily expressing a ‘situated’ tense. This requirement excludes infinitive verbs in English or French from the category of verbs, and we have to classify them as nouns.
For some concrete proposals, see Seghrouchni (1989).
For a different theoretical approach to Hebrew nominalizations, see Hazout (1990).
The non-Arabist reader might wonder why the possessive pronoun in nafsi-hi is hi rather than hu. The form hi is a surface realization of hu when it is immediately preceded by an [i] vowel.
Yip, Maling, and Jackendoff (1987) as well as Mating (1991) have proposed that (grammatical) cases form an autonomous Case tier, and they are mapped onto arguments (or GFs) by principles analogous to those of autosegmental phonology. Following Zaenen, Mating and Thrâinsson (1985), Mating (1991) assumes the following mapping principle: Consequently, NOM is assigned before ACC. See also Kiparsky (1985) and Fassi (1986a) for arguments that Case assignment observes a hierarchy in which Nominative is the highest.
As pointed out to me by Joan Mating, the thematic restrictions on the use of li might be taken to indicate that it is a theta-marker, in addition to being a Case marker. She also observes that the use of English of is thematically restricted, as illustrated by (i): (i) Our help to/* of the poor
Note that the ungrammaticality of (116) cannot be ruled out by ECP, especially if the latter is based on the notion m-command, and Relativized Minimality is adopted. In my approach, these cases are excluded by agreement theory.
On the properties of the English er forms, see Fabb (1984), Sproat (1985b), and Roeper (1986), among others.
There seems to be a tendency to drop PPs or NPs with agentive nominals. See, for example: 1-mustami‘ ‘the-hearer’ (instead of mustami‘ ?ilaa ‘listener to’); see also: al-waahibu ?ahamm-u mina 1-mawhuub ‘the donor is more important than the donated’.
As already indicated, my analysis is close to Sproat’s (1985b) treatment of er nominals in English. It owes also to Abney’s (1987) appealing analysis of English nominal -ings.
Likewise, nouns in Luisedo occur in two forms: absolute and construct. Absolute forms are marked with suffixes, called absolutives, and construct forms without these suffixes. See Kroeber and Grace (1960) for details. On construct and absolute states in Berber, see Ouhalla (1988).
The DP/CP parallelism is further supported by the existence of languages (such as Siouan and Athabaskan) in which complementizers of relative and factive clauses are homophonous with determiners of nominal phrases, as pointed out to me by Ken Hale. Joan Maling (personal communication) has also observed that this fact is quite common. In English, French, and Welsh (among a number of other languages), complementizers of relative and factive clauses are homophonous.
Variants of the NP hypothesis have been proposed for Hebrew by Borer (1983, 1988), Hazout (1990), and Shlonsky (1990). Possessor lowering has been advocated by Chung (1990b) for Chamorro. I think, however, that the analysis adopted here is descriptively more adequate, in addition to being theoretically preferable.
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Fehri, A.F. (1993). Inflectional Projections in Noun Phrases. In: Issues in the Structure of Arabic Clauses and Words. Studies in Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, vol 29. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1986-5_5
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