Abstract
The Arabic traditional grammar as well as Chomsky’s mainstream theory may not be able to provide a good analysis of some fixed Arabic phrases. The challenge of such data directly stems from the fact that the general syntactic rules assumed by the two opposing theories cannot explain the syntactic and the semantic aspects of the fixed Arabic data. I argue that the Construction Grammar provides an adequate account that does not rely on syntactic structure alone, as assumed by the mainstream theory or the Arabic traditional grammar, but rather it links phonological, syntactic, and semantic information together in one basic construction by means of some correspondence rules. The Arabic data proves that there is a strong need for a linguistic theory that takes into consideration all data of different range of productivity.
Highlights
I discuss some Arabic data of irregular phrases that prove to be problematic cases for syntactic rules affecting phrases derived in syntax by means of merger
I argue that the Construction Grammar provides an adequate account that does not rely on syntactic structure alone, as assumed by the mainstream theory or the Arabic traditional grammar, but rather it links phonological, syntactic, and semantic information together in one basic construction by means of some correspondence rules
The Arabic data proves that there is a strong need for a linguistic theory that takes into consideration all data of different range of productivity
Summary
I discuss some Arabic data of irregular phrases that prove to be problematic cases for syntactic rules affecting phrases derived in syntax by means of merger. Such data tend to be empirically challenging data to be explained by either the Arabic traditional syntactic theory or even Chomsky’s mainstream theory (1981; 2015). Ibn ؟asfuur (1982) and alxaliil ibn Ahmad alfarahiidii (1985) among other early Arab syntacticians include similar examples from Arabic poetry where the subject and the object get non-default case marking. In such cases, it is semantics rather than case marking that determines the syntactic grammaticality (azZ؟ubii, 2012).
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