Open AccessReference patterns in subjunctive complement clauses of Modern Standard Arabic
Author(s) -
Tali Arad Greshler,
Livnat Herzig Sheinfux,
Nurit Melnik,
Shuly Wintner
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
proceedings of the international conference on head-driven phrase structure grammar
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1535-1793
DOI - 10.21248/hpsg.2016.1
Subject(s) - complement (music) , linguistics , computer science , modern standard arabic , focus (optics) , coreference , argument (complex analysis) , verb , control (management) , subject (documents) , disjoint sets , natural language processing , artificial intelligence , arabic , resolution (logic) , mathematics , philosophy , combinatorics , biochemistry , chemistry , physics , complementation , library science , optics , gene , phenotype
In this paper we investigate the status of controlconstructions in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). MSA has severalembedded clause constructions, some of which resemble control inEnglish (and other languages). However, these constructions exhibitsome notable differences. Chief among them is the fact that theembedded verb carries agreement features that can indicate bothcoreference and disjoint reference between a matrix argument and theunderstood subject of the complement clause. We conducted a thoroughcorpus-based investigation of such constructions, with a special focuson a search for obligatory control in the language. We show that ourfindings contradict accepted generalizations (and predictions)proposed by state-of-the-art theories of control, as they indicatethat there are no "real" control predicates in MSA. We outline an HPSGanalysis that accounts for the MSA data.