Cover not available

Article published In: Arabic Linguistics
Vol. 1:1 (2025) ► pp.34–56

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload PDF
EPUB logo with download linkDownload EPUB

On the interplay between case and focus in Classical and dialectal Arabic systems

 | University of Essex
Open Access logo
Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Open Access publication of this article was funded through a Transformative Agreement with University of Essex.

Published online: 5 September 2025
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/arli.00003.cam
Abstract
Dialectal tanwīn and nom-case in Classical Arabic are compared for the first time from within an analytical syntactic approach. acc/​non-​nom-​marking as manifest through the former is argued to reflect the same focus expressed through nom-distribution within the Classical system. The nom-to-acc shift within the dialectal system is hypothesised to have developed as part of a drive towards a more canonical correspondence between case-marking and thematic-role, giving rise to a differential subj-marking system. In revisiting nom-case marking in Classical/Standard Arabic, the study concentrates on those instances where nom-case marks what is here analysed as obj, and what that is implicative of in the grammar. The study adds further to the literature which claims that Arabic is a discourse-configured language and specifically argues that case in the Classical/Quranic and Medieval dialectal Arabic systems is understood as an in situ discourse function index.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Dialectal tanwīn: acc-marked subjs
  • 3.nom-marking in Classical/Standard Arabic
    • 3.1nom-marking: subj/TOP/predicates
    • 3.2nom-marking: Themes
    • 3.3I- & c-structure intricacies yielding nom-marking
  • 4.A hypothesis based on a comparative outlook
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
References (50)
References
Al-Balushi, R. A. (2011). Case in standard Arabic: The untraveled paths. Ph.D. thesis, University of Toronto.
Alexopoulou, T., E. Doron, and C. Heycock. (2004). Broad subjects and clitic left dislocation. In D. Adger, C de Cat and G. Tsoulas (Eds.), Peripheries: Syntactic edges and their effects, pp. 329–358. Dordrecht: Springer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Aoun, J., E. Benmamoun, and L. Choueiri. (2010). The Syntax of Arabic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bakir, M. J. (1979). Aspects of clause structure in Arabic: A study in word order variation in literary Arabic. Indiana: Indiana University Linguistics Club.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bettega, S. (2014). The use of dialectal Tanwin in Qatari Arabic. RiCOGNIZIONI. Rivista di Lingue e Letterature straniere e Culture moderne 1(2), 15–25.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Blau, J. (1966). A Grammar of Christian Arabic, based mainly on South-Palestinian texts from the first millennium, Volume 2671. Louvain: Secrétariat du CorpusSCO.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1981). The emergence and linguistic background of Judaeo-Arabic: A study of the origins of Middle Arabic, Volume 51. Leiden: Brill.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1983). Vestiges of tanwīn -un and the case ending -u as attested in Yemenite Judeo-Arabic texts from the seventeenth century. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 46(3), 529–531. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bresnan, J. (1994). Locative inversion and the architecture of Universal Grammar. Language 70(1), 72–131. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bresnan, J., A. Asudeh, I. Toivonen, and S. Wechsler. (2015). Lexical-functional Syntax. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bresnan, J. and J. M. Kanerva. (1989). Locative Inversion in Chicheŵa: A Case Study of Factorization in Grammar. Linguistic Inquiry 201, 1–50.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Bresnan, J. and S. A. Mchombo. (1987). Topic, pronoun, and agreement in Chicheŵa. Language 63(4), 741–782. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Butt, M. (2006). Theories of case. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Butt, M. and A. Deo. (2013). A historical perspective on dative subjects in Indo-Aryan. Paper presented at LFG13, Debrecen, Hungary.
Butt, M., T. H. King, M. Ninõ, and F. Segond. (1999). A Grammar Writer’s Cookbook. Stanford: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Butt, M. and T. H. King. (1996). Structural topic and focus without movement. In M. Butt and T. H. King (Eds.), Proceedings of LFG96, Stanford. CSLI Publications.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Camilleri, M. (2021). Revisiting Arabic predicative structures. In M. Butt, J. Findlay, and I. Toivonen (Eds.), Proceedings of LFG21, pp. 51–71. Stanford: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Chomsky, N. (2000). Minimalist inquires: The framework. In R. Martin, D. Michaels and J. Uriagereka (Eds.), Step by step, pp. 89–155. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2001). Derivation by phase. In M. Kenstowicz (Ed.), Ken Hale: A Life in Language, pp. 1–52. Cambridge: MIT Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Comrie, B. (2013). Alignment of Case Marking of full noun phrases. In M. Dryer and M. Haspelmath (Eds.), The World Atlas of Language Structures online. Munich: Max Plank Digital Library.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Doron, E. and C. Heycock. (1999). Filling and licensing multiple specifiers. In D. Adger, S. Pintzuk, B. Plunkett, and G. Tsoulas (Eds.), Specifiers: Minimalist approaches, pp. 69–89. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Edzard, L. (2018). The Marked Nominative in Arabic, Semitic, and Afroasiatic. Abhandlungen für die Kunde des Morgenlandes (Harrassowitz) 1151, 105–126. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Eythόrsson, T. and J. Barðdal. (2005). Oblique subjects: A common Germanic inheritance. Language 81(4), 824–881. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Grimshaw, J. (1990). Argument Structure. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hallberg, A. (2016). Case Endings in Spoken Standard Arabic. Ph. D. thesis, Lund University.
Hallman, P. (2020). Head and dependent marking in clausal possession. Linguistic Inquiry 41, 1–30.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Holes, C. (2004). Tanwin in the Arabic dialects of Eastern and South-Eastern Arabia. EDNA, Estudios de dialectolog’ıa norteafricana y andalusί 81, 89–97.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hopkins, S. (1992). Studies in the Grammar of Early Arabic. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ingham, B. (1982). North East Arabian dialects. London: Kegan Paul International.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(1994). Najdi Arabic: Central Arabian. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jackendoff, R. S. (1972). Semantic Interpretation in Generative Grammar. Cambridge: MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Legate, J. A. (2008). Morphological and abstract case. Linguistic Inquiry 39(1), 55–101. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Marantz, A. (2000). Case and licensing. In E. J. Reuland (Ed.), Arguments and case: Explaining Burzio’s Generalization, pp. 11–30. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mohammad, M. A. (1998). The syntax of indefinite subjects in equative sentences in Palestinian Arabic. Ms. University of Florida.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Moutaouakil, A. (1988). Essais en Grammaire Fonctionelle. Rabat: Societé Marocaine des Editeurs Réunis.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Ouhalla, J. (1997). Remarks on focus in Standard Arabic. In M. Eid and R. R. Ratcliffe (Eds.), Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics X, pp. 9–46. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Owens, J. (2006). A linguistic history of Arabic. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Palva, H. (2000). Linguistic notes on a dialectal 17th-18th-century Egyptian Arabic narrative. Oriente Moderno 19(1), 83–97. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2015). Notes on the language of narratives. Studia Orientalia Electronica 691, 114–135.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Prince, E. F. (1992). The ZPG Letter: Subjects, definiteness, and information-status. In W. C. Mann and S. A. Thompson (Eds.), Discourse description: Diverse linguistic analyses of a fund-raising text, 295–326. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rivero, M. L. (2008). Oblique subjects and person restrictions in Spanish: A morphological approach. In R. D’Alessandro, S. Fischer and G. H. Hrafnbjargarson (Eds.), Agreement restrictions, pp. 215–250. New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Shlonsky, U. (2000). Remarks on the complementizer layer of Standard Arabic. In J. Lecarme, J. Lowenstamm and U. Shlonsky (Eds.), Research in Afroasiatic Grammar, pp. 325–344. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Silverstein, M. (1976). Hierarchy of features and ergativity. In R. Dixon (Ed.), Grammatical Categories in Australian Languages, pp. 112–171. Canberra: Australian Institute for Aboriginal Studies.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Smith-Stark, T. C. (1974). The plurality split. Chicago Linguistics Society 10(1), 657–672.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Soltan, U. (2007). On Formal Feature Licensing in Minimalism: Aspects of Standard Arabic Morphosyntax. Ph. D. thesis, University of Maryland.
Stokes, P. W. (2020). A fresh analysis of the origin and diachronic development of “dialectal Tanwīn” in Arabic. Journal of the American Oriental Society 140(3), 637–664.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
(2023). Nominal Case in Christian Arabic Translations of the gospels (9th-15th Centuries CE). Arabica 701, 239–322. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Tyler, M. (2020). Argument structures and argument-marking in Choctaw. Ph. D. thesis, Yale University.
Van Valin, R. D. and R. J. La Polla. (1997). Syntax: Structure, Meaning, and Function. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Wagner, E.-M. and M. A. Ahmed. (2017). From Tuscany to Egypt: Eighteenth century Arabic letters in the Prize Paper Collections. Journal of Semitic Studies 62(2), 389–412. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue