SPLITTING THE CP DOMAIN OF STANDARD ARABIC CLAUSAL STRUCTURE

Abstract

This paper argues that the CP (Complementizer Phrase) clause structure of standard Arabic shows a split in all clausal stages in the sense of Rizzi (1997, 2004). In Rizzi’s system, there is a Finiteness (Fin) node dominated by a Topic (Top) node which is dominated by a Focus (Foc) node. The Foc node is dominated by another Top node which is in turn dominated by the Force node heading the entire clausal structure - the Force Phrase (ForceP). The present work seeks to establish such a parallel articulation of the left periphery of the clause in Standard Arabic as comprising such functional categories as Topic, Focus and Finiteness, highlighting in the meantime the role of Topics in ‘higher predication’ in the clause structure of Standard Arabic. The proposed decomposed CP of Standard Arabic will be motivated by data from sentences displaying the Sbject-Verb-Object (SVO) order, specifically topicalized/clitic left-dislocation structures. These constructions provide evidence for a decomposed CP and for the correlated Topic and Focus interpretation at the interface level. Article visualizations: