The Licensing of Structural Case in Standard Arabic

In this paper I propose a new theory to account for the structural Case facts in Standard Arabic (SA). I argue that structural Case in SA is licensed by a feature called Verbal Case (VC). To motivate my proposal, I first argue that the two major theories of the feature(s) responsible for licensing structural Case cannot account for the Case checking facts in SA. I then show that structural Case is not licensed when VC is not licensed, despite the presence of tense, agreement, and mood. Finally, I revitalize an old observation about verbs in SA, basically the fact that they receive some form of case from particles (Sibawayhi 8th century). I formalize this observation and claim that, like DPs, verbs in SA receive abstract formal licensing, thus have a [VC] feature. By showing that Case/licensing is active in the verbal as well as the nominal system, this account argues against proposals eliminating abstract Case from UG, like Marantz (1991) and McFadden (2004), among others.