Case in Standard Arabic: A Dependent Case Approach

This dissertation is concerned with how structural and non-structural cases are assigned in the variety of Arabic known in the literature as Standard Arabic (SA). Taking a Minimalist perspective, this dissertation shows that the available generative accounts of case in SA are problematic either theoretically or empirically. It is argued that these problems can be overcome using the hybrid dependent case theory of Baker (2015). This theory makes a distinction between two types of phases. The first is the hard phase, which disallows the materials inside from being accessed by higher phases. The second is the soft phase, which allows the materials inside it to be accessed by higher phases. The results of this dissertation indicate that in SA (a) the CP is a hard phase in that noun phrases inside this phase are inaccessible to higher phases for the purpose of case assignment. In contrast, vP is argued to be a soft phase in that the noun phrases inside this phase are still accessible to higher phases for the purposes of case assignment (b) the DP, and the PP are also argued to be hard phases in SA, (c) case assignment in SA follows a hierarchy such that lexical case applies before the dependent case, the dependent case applies before the Agree-based case assignment, the Agree-based case assignment applies before the unmarked/default case assignment, (d) case assignment in SA is determined by a parameter, which allows the dependent case assignment to apply to a noun phrase if it is c-commanded by another noun phrase in the same Spell-Out domain (TP or VP), (e) the rules of dependent case assignment require that the NPs involved have distinct referential indices.
The major conclusion of the dissertation is that the functional head v in SA is a soft phase head, due to its deficient -specification. That is why it is incapable of establishing an Agree relation with the object and assigning the structural accusative case to it. The structural accusative case on the object is, therefore, always the result of the dependent case mechanism.