Pronouns Functioning as Syntactic Heads in Equative and Predicative constructions in Arabic. A Minimalist Perspective

Abstract

This dissertation explores pronouns which, I argue, function as syntactic heads in Arabic. Specifically, the concentration of this work is based on equative copular and verbless constructions and on predicative copular and verbless constructions. I refer to the pronominal syntactic heads which occur in predicative and equative constructions as PRON, pronsupport, pronQuestion. All of them take the form of nominative subject pronouns, while each one has its own properties, function and distinctive syntactic location where it is Merged. PRON is only licit with equative sentences but illicit with predicative ones. It is optional, can co-occur with the copula, and its person feature is always default third-person. I argue that pronsupport is generated in T head to support the negative particle /ma/ ‘not’ which cannot stand by itself as a single word at Spell-Out. This pronominal head is obligatory in both equative and predicative constructions. Moreover, it does not occur with the copula, and it agrees with the subject in all the -features. Finally, I discuss the function of pronQuestion which is to form yes/no interrogative sentences. It is generated in the Focus head, and it agrees with the full DP subject in all the -features. However, if the subject is a pronoun, either pronQuestion is not pronounced or its agreement with the subject is suspended. The fact that all the pronominal heads (i.e., PRON, pronsupport and pronQuestion) can appear together in one construction supports the claim that they are distinct from each other. My main proposal is that the structures of equative and predicative constructions are different from each other. I propose that in the case of the predicative constructions, the lexical predicates NP, AP or PP are specified with a lexical semantic property feature. This semantic property feature undergoes transfer to the functional Pred head, endowed with a semantic function. The nature of this semantic function is to predicate a property of some entity to produce a proposition. Therefore, the DP in Spec-PredP is shared between a lexical predicate (i.e., NP, AP, or PP) which provides the semantic property feature, on the one hand, and a functional head (i.e., Pred head) that turns such semantic property feature into a propositional function that must have an argument DP of type entity to form the proposition. With respect to the structure of the equative constructions, I propose that they consist of two DPs which are symmetrically Merged to make a small clause. Such two DPs are composed of two co-referential features in their D heads. Finally, the case system in these constructions is puzzling for which I provide a solution to explain their idiosyncratic properties.