TY - JOUR
T1 - Why verbless sentences in Standard Arabic are verbless
AU - Al-Balushi, Rashid
PY - 2012/3
Y1 - 2012/3
N2 - This article aims to account for why verbless sentences in Standard Arabic lack a copular verb. In contrast to previous accounts which attribute the absence of the copula to some defect of present tense, I claim that a verbless sentence does not take a copula because its nominals do not need structural Case. The proposed analysis argues that structural Case is licensed by a "Verbal Case" feature on the relevant Case-checking heads, and assumes the Visibility Condition. The present analysis is based on a unique interaction between tense and word order, and on the observation that verbless sentences are finite clauses composed of a topic and a predicate, as well as on the observation that they do not involve licensing of structural Case.
AB - This article aims to account for why verbless sentences in Standard Arabic lack a copular verb. In contrast to previous accounts which attribute the absence of the copula to some defect of present tense, I claim that a verbless sentence does not take a copula because its nominals do not need structural Case. The proposed analysis argues that structural Case is licensed by a "Verbal Case" feature on the relevant Case-checking heads, and assumes the Visibility Condition. The present analysis is based on a unique interaction between tense and word order, and on the observation that verbless sentences are finite clauses composed of a topic and a predicate, as well as on the observation that they do not involve licensing of structural Case.
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=84859528966&partnerID=8YFLogxK
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UR - https://www.researchgate.net/publication/317135944_Why_verbless_sentences_in_Standard_Arabic_are_verbless
U2 - 10.1353/cjl.2012.0017
DO - 10.1353/cjl.2012.0017
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:84859528966
SN - 0008-4131
VL - 57
SP - 1
EP - 30
JO - Canadian Journal of Linguistics
JF - Canadian Journal of Linguistics
IS - 1
ER -