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Why verbless sentences in Standard Arabic are verbless

DOI:10.1017/S0008413100002188
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Rashid Al-Balushi at Sultan Qaboos University
Rashid Al-Balushi
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Abstract

This article aims to account for why verbless sentences in Standard Arabic lack a copular verb. In contrast to previous accounts which attribute the absence of the copula to some defect of present tense, I claim that a verbless sentence does not take a copula because its nominais do not need structural Case. The proposed analysis argues that structural Case is licensed by a “Verbal Case” feature on the relevant Case-checking heads, and assumes the Visibility Condition. The present analysis is based on a unique interaction between tense and word order, and on the observation that verbless sentences are finite clauses composed of a topic and a predicate, as well as on the observation that they do not involve licensing of structural Case.
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Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique 57(1): 1–30, 2012
Why verbless sentences in Standard Arabic
are verbless
RASHID AL-BALUSHI
Sultan Qaboos University
1. I NT ROD UC TI ON
This article aims to account for why present-tense topic-predicate sentences in Stan-
dard Arabic (SA), so-called verbless sentences, lack a copular verb, unlike their
non-present-tense counterparts. In contrast to previous analyses which attribute the
absence of the copula to some defect of present tense (Fassi Fehri 1981, Benmamoun
2000, Soltan 2007), I claim that a verbless sentence does not take a copular verb be-
cause its nominals do not need structural Case. The proposed analysis is in line with
a conception of Case where structural Case is not licensed by φ-agreement or tense,
but rather by a “Verbal Case” feature [VC] on the relevant Case-checking heads; thus
structural Case is contingent on verbal licensing (Al-Balushi 2011). The present ac-
count assumes the Visibility Condition, under which structural Case is necessary to
make arguments visible at LF for θ-role assignment (Aoun 1979, Chomsky 1981),
and argues for a unique interaction between tense and word order. It is based on the
proposal that verbless sentences are finite clauses (encoding [T], [φ], and [Mood])
composed of a topic and a predicate, as well as on the observation that they do not
involve licensing of structural Case.
The article is organized as follows. Section 2 provides background to the ana-
lysis. Section 3 presents a review of previous accounts of verbless sentences in SA
and responds to them. Section 4 discusses the interaction between tense and word
order and reveals the crucial patterns for the proposed analysis, which is presented
in section 5. Section 6 presents an apparent counterargument and shows that it does
not constitute a threat to the proposed analysis. Section 7 concludes the article.
2. BAC K GRO UN D
This section presents the approach to SA clause structure, the morphosyntactic ana-
lysis of verbless sentences, and the theory of structural Case adopted here.
I would like to thank Diane Massam, Elizabeth Cowper, and two CJL reviewers for valu-
able comments on earlier versions of this article.
cCanadian Journal of Linguistics / Revue canadienne de linguistique 57(1): 1–30, 2012
... Apparently, the order is pre-determined by the canonical word order of the language. Al-Balushi (2012) argues that SA is essentially a VSO language and that it resorts to the SVO order to convey the deictic interpretation with present tense (imperfective form) verbs, as well as for topicalization purposes. Present tense verbs in the VSO order convey generic readings, as the contrast between (79) and (80) shows. ...
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