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Camillieri, Maris: Arabic predicative locative structures: Insights for LFG

Canonical copular predicative locative structures in Arabic involve a theme and a locative argument. In such structures the copula, which is broadly available in non-present tense contexts, strictly agrees with the theme, which is the subject of the structure, and can be [+/-DEF]. The locative argument in such structures can similarly be [+/-DEF]. There are four logical possibilities in LFG with which to analyse such locative predicative structures. Previous considerations of Arabic predicative structures have not given any attention as to whether a distinction should be made in the analysis of different non-verbal predicative structures, or whether it simply suffices to have a uniform analysis for all. I here argue that when one considers structures that are synchronically related to predicative locatives, such as the inverted locative counterpart, as well as constructions that are diachronic developments and grammaticalisations out of predicative locatives, which in Arabic include possessive and existential structures, along with their hypothesised developmental progression, and the constraints they exhibit, synchronically, only one of the four possible analyses emerges as the optimal one. Arabic locative predications are best analysed under a double-tier analysis where the non-SUBJ GF is mapped onto an OBL, following Bresnan (1989,1994), Bresnan and Kanerva (1990), Falk (2004) and Bresnan et al. (2015), specifically: `null-be/be_loc '. In some respects, this analysis parallels that of Falk (2004) for locative Hebrew structures. The difference, however, is that Falk does not provide a uniform analysis for these. He assumes that while copula-taking locative (and existential) structures associate with this sort of predicate argument-structure (or a part of it, in the case of existentials), copulaless counterparts are endowed with a single-tier analysis that parallels other types of copulaless predicative structures. My proposal, in contrast, is that the Arabic data calls for a uniform analysis of locative predications, irrespective of the presence or absence of the copula.


December 22, 2022
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