Properties of the Arabic language
5.1 Types of alternations
5.1.1 Argument alternations
The meaning of a sentence is a compositional construct in which the verb plays a crucial role. However, the contribution of a verb in the meaning of a sentence varies from cases where it is the central meaning forming element to cases where the construction is responsible for building the meaning.
In the first case, the verb and its arguments are associated with a more or less invariable meaning. The meaning of the sentence is predominately related to the verb and syntactic alternations affect the argument realization without any impact on the meaning of the sentence. For instance, the concept of possession transfer described by verbs like Pact
˙aa ‘give’,manah
˙a‘accord’, sallama ‘hand’, etc. can be realized either with the argument structure in (1) or (2).
(1) V SUBJ OBJ OBJ2 (2) V SUBJ OBJli ‘to’ OBJ
The two argument structures have the same meaning and the general conditions under which the event is true are the same in both structures. The speaker’s decision to use one of these structures has more to do with information packaging priorities than with preferences related to two distinct meanings (Valduvi, 1992;
Vallduvi & Engdahl,1996).
The sentences built on the basis of the two alternating argument structures in (1) and (2) are an instance of the dative alternation (Rappaport, 2008). If we consider an argument structure to be the projection of a given meaning, than we shall say that the two argument structures are alternating realizations of the same meaning as exemplified in (3).
(3) Dative Alternation
a. Pahdaa l-malik-u l-waziir-a sajjaad-an.
presented DEF-king-NOM DEF-minister-ACC carpet-ACC-IND
‘The king presented the minister with a carpet.’
b. Pahdaa l-malik-u sajjaad-an li-l-waziir-i.
presented DEF-king-NOMcarpet-ACC-IND to-DEF-minister-GEN
‘The king presented the minister with a carpet.’
Similarly, the causative alternation is realized by omitting the subject in the structure V SUBJ OBJand promotes the object to its position. As can be seen in (4), Arabic marks the causative base verbqat
˙aca ‘cut’ with the inchoative prefix Pin-.
(4) Causative/Inchoative Alternation a. qat
˙aca l-fallaah
˙-u ˇs-ˇsajarat-a.
cut DEF-farmer-NOM DEF-tree-ACC
‘The farmer cut the tree.’
b. Pin-qat
˙aca-t ˇs-ˇsajarat-u.
INCH-cut-F DEF-tree-NOM
‘The tree has been cut.’
The causative/inchoative alternation and other related alternations preserve the meaning and relate the alternating sentences by subsumption. That is, the mean-ing of the inchoative sentence in (4b) is included in the meanmean-ing of the causative sentence (4a).
5.1.2 Alternating constructions
In two alternating constructions, the verb is not the main determinator of the sentencial meaning. In terms of event decomposition we shall say that the meaning denoted by the verb and its arguments is associated with a new meaning component contributed by unsubcategorized elements. This can be illustrated with the resultative alternation(Levin, 1993, 99–101) in English in (5).
(5) Resultative Alternation a. John hit the door.
b. Paul hit the door open.
In (5a) the verb hit denotes an event involving contact by impact with the object door. There is no way to entail a change of state of the object at the end of the event. In (5b) however, we have to do with a complex event consisting of the door being opened as a result of the previous event of hitting. The complex event is the result of adding a new element to the arguments selected by the verb.
We shall notice here that the verb plays an undergoing role similar to the role arguments play in a simple event. As answer to the question: ”What happened to the door?” the speaker is more likely to answer with: ”the door has been opened”
than with: ”the door has been hit”. Additionally, replacing the verb hitwith a semanticly different verb like pullwill have only a marginal effect on the meaning of the sentence, since in both cases the event describes a state of affairs of the door becoming open.
However, we cannot arbitrarily replace the verb hitsince the resultative construc-tion in (5b) sets grammatical and semantic restricconstruc-tions to its predicates. For instance, in English, a resultative phrase cannot be predicated of the subject of a transitive verb or of obliques (see (6) and (7)) (for the comprehensive list of restrictions on the resultative alternation see Levin,1993, 99–101):
(6) * Polly cooked the cookies dirty.
(on the interpretation where Polly becomes dirty.) (Levin, 1993, 100)
(7) a. The Silversmith pounded the metal flat
b. * The silversmith pounded on the metal flat. (Levin, 1993, 100) From a semantic point of view, stative verbs and verbs of directed motion are excluded from the resultative construction, as shown in (8) and (9).
(8) * She loved him dead.
(9) * Willa arrived breathless.
(on the interpretation where the arriving makes Willa breathless) (Levin, 1993, 100)
In Arabic, verbs of non-verbal expression like bakaa ‘cry’ and s
˙araxa ‘scream’ are found in the so-called object reaction construction, a construction built by adding a nonsubcategorized object to the intransitive verb to express a reaction of an emotional experience (10):
(10) a. baka-ti l-Pumm-u.
cried-F DEF-mother-NOM
‘The mother cried.’
b. baka-ti l-Pumm-u h
˙asrat-a-haa cried-F DEF-mother-NOM sadness-ACC-her
‘The mother cried her sadness.’
The simple event originally introduced by the verb, which consists of an animate agent emitting a sound, composes with a new component h
˙asrat‘sadness’ to build a complex event which can be paraphrased as “the mother expresses her sadness by crying”. Similarly to the resultative alternations in example (6) and (7), the object reaction construction imposes constraints on the verb and its arguments.
In Arabic, the object should be related to the subject by a personal pronoun (-haa ‘her’ in example (10). A definite, non-referenced object as in (11) is to my knowledge not acceptable. An indefinite (nunated) non-referenced object introduces a different meaning, which can be paraphrased with “the sadness caused the mother to cry” (12).
(11) * baka-ti l-Pumm-u l-h
˙asrat-a.
cried-F DEF-mother-NOM DEF-sadness-ACC
* ‘The mother cried the sadness.’
(12) baka-ti l-Pumm-u h
˙asrat-an.
cried-F DEF-mother-NOMsadness-ACC
‘The mother cried from sadness.’
While adding unsubcategorized arguments in the resultative construction and the object reaction construction gives rise to a complex event structure, other arguments trigger no change in verb meaning. In Arabic, as in many other languages including English, the cognate object constructionis built by adding an unsubcategorized object with a zero-relation to the verb (the so-called “cognate object”). With intransitive verbs as in (13) as well as with transitive verbs as in (14), the cognate object does not add any new element to the event structure associated with the verb and the meaning of the sentence is in both cases controlled by the verb.
(13) Cognate Object Construction Alternation (intransitive):
a. naama t
˙-t
˙ifl-u.
slept DEF-child-NOM
‘The child slept.’
b. naama t
˙-t
˙ifl-u nawm-an camiiq-an.
slept DEF-child-NOM sleep-ACC deep-ACC
‘The child slept a deep sleep.’
(14) Cognate Object Construction Alternation (transitive):
a. qabbala zayd-un salmaa.
kissed Zayd-NOMSalma(ACC).
‘Zayd kissed Salma.’
b. qabbala zayd-un salmaa qublat-an haarat-an.
kissed Zayd-NOMSalma(ACC) kiss-ACC hot-ACC
‘Zayd gave Salma a hot kiss.’
Cognate object alternations impose only grammatical constraints on the verb but no semantic constraints. The treatment of about 8000 Arabic verbs in this dissertation reveals only few cases where the cognate object construction was not possible due to semantic criteria.1
1This is mainly the case with verbs of the classParaada‘want’