Mandative, Adverbial Subjunctive Complementizer Phrases and Argument Structure: A Contrastive Study Between Arabic and English

Abstract

The objective of this article is to differentiate between mandative complementizer phrases from adverbial subjunctive complementizer phrases whether they constitute argument structures to verbs or not in Arabic and English. As both phrases are initiated by complementizers, theoretically, the issue becomes a problem to decide whether every phrase initiated by a complementizer constitutes an argument structure or not though the complementizers might be deleted at LF in both languages. Thus, the researchers refer to Chomsky’s (1981-1995) minimalist views to help us draw a clear distinction between them for better semantic interpretations at LF. The results illustrate that there are certain similarities and differences between the two languages; for instance, Arabic has mandative phrases that constitute argument structures but do not permit the complementizer ?an ‘that’ and the subjunctive marker [a] to be omitted at LF; likewise, English has mandative phrases that constitute arguments, but they permit the complementizer ‘that’ to be omitted at LF. Arabic has a unique independent adverbial subjunctive phrase initiated by ?anla ‘not that’, but it does not constitute an argument structure to any verb; however, English does not have this type of phrase. Arabic also has dependent adverbial subjunctive phrases initiated by the adjuncts (i) ?idh ‘then’, (ii) likai ‘in order to’, (iii) hatta ‘until’, li ‘to’ and li ‘let’; they must be followed by the complementizer ?an ‘that’; but, they do not form internal arguments to verbs. Arabic has a dependent complementizer phrase in the indicative initiated by ?ida ‘if’ which constitutes an argument and bears a theta role. Similarly, English has a dependent adverbial complementizer phrase initiated by the complementizer ‘whether’ / or ‘if’; it constitutes an argument to a verb in the matrix clause, but it is always in the indicative form. Finally, though theoretically ϴ - roles do not have [+ interpretable] power at LF, they must be assigned to arguments at spell-out to produce grammatical sentences at LF in both languages.

Keywords: ϴ- roles, Argument structure, Spell-out, LF, Complementizers, Interpretable, Subjunctive

DOI: 10.7176/JLLL/75-06

Publication date: January 31^st 2021