The syntax of Arabic vocatives

Abstract

Abstract This paper examines the syntactic structure of Arabic vocatives, focusing on case-marking of vocatives. The assignment of accusative and nominative-like case can be accounted for in the light of Hill (2017)’s proposal which provides the basic structure of the vocative phrase. This paper argues that in Arabic vocatives (i) the particle YAA is a transitive probe with valued [ACC-Case] and unvalued [2nd] and [Distance] features; (ii) The D has the unvalued case feature [u-Case], and it has both the [2nd] and [+Distance] features if it is a free pronoun and (iii) The vocative noun carries the valued [2nd] and [+/-Distance] features. Based on these assumptions, I argued that indefinite vocatives are assigned accusative case only if they are merged with an overt D -n, otherwise a nominative-like case surfaces on the noun by default. Proper names have the same analysis since the presence of the indefinite article -n is a prerequisite for accusative case assignment. Concerning vocatives as heads of Construct States, N-to-D movement takes place in order to assign [+def] feature to D and is assigned accusative case by YAA. Regarding vocatives in demonstrative phrases, the existence of a null D prevents the vocative noun from being assigned an overt accusative case. Concerning vocative pronouns, only accusative case is assigned since the determiner carrying the [u-Case] feature is overt.