Wh-Movement in Standard Arabic: An Optimality-Theoretic Account

• Authors: Mousa Btoosh
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

This paper is meant to delineate the syntax of wh-movement in Standard Arabic within the Optimality Theory framework. The scope of this study is limited to examine only simple, relativized and indirect verbal information questions. Further restrictions also have been placed on tense and negation in that only past tense affirmative questions are tackled here.Results show that Standard Arabic strictly adheres to the OP SPEC constraint in the matrix as well as the subordinate clauses. Findings also show that Prep-Strand violation is intolerable in all types of information questions. Furthermore, the phonological manifestation of the complementizer is obligatory when the relative clause head is present or when the relative clause head is deleted and a resumptive pronoun is left behind.

Keywords

EN

Wh-movement; constraints; questions; resumptive pronouns; relative clauses

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Journal: Poznań Studies in Contemporary Linguistics
• Year: 2010
• Volume: 46
• Issue: 1
• Pages: 1-26

Dates

published

2010-03-01

online

2010-05-04

Contributors

author

Mousa Btoosh

• Al-Hussein Bin Talal University, Ma'an

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Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/v10010-010-0001-y