Is morphological case a feature of individual nominal elements?

Basem Ibrahim Malawi Al-Raba’a

2023

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DOI 10.1075/sal.12.06alr
Data confidence 70 medium
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Abstract

Abstract This study examines morphological Case marking in Standard Arabic. Hypotheses of Case distribution inside the determiner phrase are contrasted with the hypothesis that Case is a property of lexical elements only. I will show that Case is realized on nominal elements as a result of a head-to-head relation between the Case-assigner and assignee rather than a relation between a head and the whole phrase. This argument is supported by empirical evidence from Arabic as well as from other languages. I will also show that Arabic differs from other languages in that a nominal element can receive Case from a non-local head, and that Case marking does not always result from phi-agreement relations, as seems to be standardly assumed in the syntactic literature.