Interface account to the syntax of the item binisbali In Haili variety of Najdi Arabic

Abstract EN

This paper offers a generative, minimalist account to the syntax of the complex „particle‟ binisbali, frequently used in the dialect of Hail, Haili, (HA henceforth), a Najdi variety, spoken in the north part of Saudi Arabia.

Using the mechanisms of the model of the theory of the Minimalist Syntax, the principles of the cartographic project Rizzi (1997) and the topics typology of Frascarelli and Hinterhölzl (2007), and abstracting away from the current theoretical assumption that binisbali is a Topic marker in the sense of Reinhart (1981)، I argue that binisbali is a Shifting Topic marker in the sense of Frascarelli and Hinterhölzl (2007), being Externally merged in the left periphery of the sentence and attracting a DP that expresses S-Topic to be merged (attached) to it.

Empirical (syntactic) evidence supporting this line of thought comes from the fact that binisbali+DP expressing shifting Topic is disallowed in embedded clauses, while conceptual (semantic) evidence can be captured by the observation that binisbalionly marks the an element that can be accessed within the common ground of the sentence, and, at the same time, is the main topic of the ongoing discourse but has been digressed from.

It turns out that binisbali imposes selectional restrictions on (or subcategorises for) the expression to which it is prefixed, being a DP.

This research provides evidence that analysis by means of incorporation (Baker 1980, Ouhalla 1988) to the merger of the DP and binisbali is implausible, and, alternatively, given current assumptions of minimalist analysis to sentence derivation (Chomsky 2000, 2001), a feature [Top] is valued on the item that expresses Topic, that is, the DP, this research advances a minimalist account.

That is, information of S-Topic is located on the head STop, where the DP expressing shifting Topic immediately preceded by the S-Top particle, is merged in the Spec position of S-TopP.