On the syntax of hearer-oriented clitics in a rural Jordanian variety

Al-Rabaa B.I.M.
2022 Pacini Editore S.p.A./AU-CNS

Italian Journal of Linguistics
2022 #34 Issue 2 3 - 34 pp.

This paper examines the categorial status of hearer-oriented clitics in a rural Jordanian Arabic variety and how they are derived in syntax. Using several diagnostics, it will be argued that such clitics, which must be attached to verbs, are inflectional affixes rather than pronominal elements. This sort of clitics will be analyzed as adjunct applicatives that are projected in a separate, adjunct plane before being incorporated into the primary plane/structure (Haddad 2014). It will be proposed that such applicatives enter the derivation with unvalued phi-features and therefore must establish an agreement relation with a hearer argument in order to value their features. For such agreement relation to proceed in the syntax, I assume, following Sigur sson & Maling (2010), that a second person pronoun (a logophoric patient = ΛP) situated within the complementizer phrase (CP) is contextually controlled by the hearer argument from discourse, and that ΛP serves as a goal that values the uninterpretable features of the probing applicative. Finally, it will be further argued that the hearer-oriented applicatives are exempt from binding, presumably because they are inflectional affixes, not pronouns.

adjuncts , hearer-oriented clitics , Jordanian Arabic , pragmatics , syntax

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Department of English, KIMEP University, Almaty, Kazakhstan

Department of English

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