34.2074, Review: Arabic Dislocation

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LINGUIST List: Vol-34-2074. Thu Jun 29 2023. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 34.2074, Review: Arabic Dislocation

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Date: 08-May-2023
From: Ferid Chekili [feridchekililg at yahoo.fr]
Subject: Syntax, Typology: Alzayid (2022)


Book announced at https://linguistlist.org/issues/33.1751

AUTHOR: Ali A. Alzayid
TITLE: Arabic Dislocation
SERIES TITLE: Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 271
PUBLISHER: John Benjamins
YEAR: 2022

REVIEWER: Ferid Chekili

DESCRIPTION

The monograph under review, Arabic Dislocation, by Ali A. Alzayid and
published in 2022 by John Benjamins, consists of seven chapters. A
bibliography and an index complete the book.

In Chapter 1 (“Introduction”), the author identifies the main topics
to be discussed in the book, together with their role in relation to
pragmatics and syntax, in particular, the question of how information
structure affects word order. The chapter also reviews the literature
on left- and right-dislocation in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). In
addition, it deals with Cinque’s paradox, the observation that clitic
left dislocation (CLLD) in the world’s languages exhibits the
properties of both movement and base-generation at the same time. The
author argues that the source of the problem resides in the use of a
mono-clausal analysis of the phenomenon of dislocation to be discussed
in a later chapter. He concludes that a novel approach based on a
bi-clausal analysis of dislocated XPs, analysed as fragments (see
later chapters), is required to deal with dislocation in MSA. His use
of the bi-clausal analysis, he claims, differs from that of previous
research which maintains that the dislocated XP undergoes movement. He
instead relies on pragmatics rather than syntax to account for island
phenomena (generally taken to be a movement diagnostic).

In Chapter 2 (“Dislocation and clitic resumption in MSA. A new
taxonomy”), the author compares the properties of CLLD and Hanging
Topic Left Dislocation (HTLD) as described, e.g., in Cinque (1997) and
previous work. He then turns to dislocation in Arabic and concludes
that the Arabic data show that clitic-resumed configurations are not
uniform as they do not obey Cinque’s diagnostics. Therefore, he
argues, clitic resumption constructions in MSA are best divided into
four types: CLLDI and CLLDII and CLRDI and CLRDII (CLRD stands for
clitic right dislocation; II corresponds to Hanging topic dislocation
in the mainstream literature). The motivation behind this new
classification is the fact that it is derived from a single property,
namely, case (mis)matching, instead of several properties as assumed
in the previous literature on dislocation. More specifically, he
proposes that the difference between CLLDI/CLRDI on the one hand and
CLLDII/CLRDII on the other has to do with whether the dislocated XP is
connected to the host clause, i.e. CLLDI/ CLRDI, just in case there is
a case-matching relation between a correlate and a dislocated XP;
otherwise, it is CLLDII/ CLRDII.

In Chapter 3 (“Dislocation and information structure”), the author
argues that, although dislocation is assumed to have an
information-structural import, there is no agreement on the exact
nature of these information structural notions such as topic and
focus. The author further claims that CONTRAST is what characterises
Arabic dislocation, with contrastive topic appearing in the left
periphery and contrastive focus in the right periphery. He goes on to
show that 'aboutness', 'givenness' and 'referentiality' which are
proposed in the literature to play an important role in the
investigation of topics, “are not sufficient to account for left dXPs
in MSA” (54) and proposes the 'question under discussion' (QUD)
framework as an alternative analysis. In other words, “Arabic
dislocation is taken to be an answer to a QUD: while the answer is a
contrastive topic in a CLLDI articulation, the answer must be a
contrastive focus in a CLRDI articulation” (63). Finally, he takes up
the issue of the interpretation of 'atypical' topics in the left
periphery, which the previous literature attributes to “the
interpretive content of clitics” (88). He argues, instead, that it is
“the contrastive content of the dXP that underlies the interpretation
of atypical topics in MSA” (88).

Chapter 4 (“It is a single clause? The monoclausal analysis”) reviews
the literature on the syntax of CLLDI and CLRDI in MSA and other
languages based on a mono- clausal analysis where the dislocated XP
and the associated clitic appear in the same clause. Each reviewed
proposal is followed by a 'Discussion' section in which the author
considers the merits and shortcomings of the proposal. In sum:
-Demirdache's (1991,1997) analysis is deemed attractive but is
rejected by the author because of certain drawbacks of a theoretical
and empirical nature.
-Cinque's (1990) analysis provides a solution to the paradoxical
status of left-dislocation. However, it, too, is rejected as it “comes
at the cost of proposing stipulative and spurious constructs which are
suspect from a minimalist perspective” (105).  Turning to CLLDI in
Arabic, the author reviews the proposals of Ouhalla (1997) and Aoun &
Benmamoun (1998). These are rejected as they do not provide “a
treatment for Cinque's paradox” (150). He then turns to clitic right
dislocation by considering, first, Kayne (1994) and second,
TP-external approaches to right dislocation, specifically, right
dislocation as derived by movement and as derived by base-generation.
In both cases, the author shows their shortcomings with respect to
Arabic, caused mostly by the mono-clausal approach on which they are
based.

In Chapter 5 (“It is a double clause indeed! The biclausal analysis”),
following the work of, e.g., Ott & de Vries (2012 & subsequent work)
on Germanic languages, it is proposed that CLLDI and CLRDI in MSA are
best analysed as bi-clausal with the dislocated XP belonging to “an
inaudible root clause which is deleted at PF” (151). He further claims
that the dislocated XPs in MSA are 'fragments' with silent-invisible-
syntax, and provides a number of arguments for silent syntax in the
ellipsis site. He then identifies the merits of such an analysis, in
particular, its explanation of Cinque's paradox: the incompatible
properties of CLLDI and CLRDI -movement vs. Base-generation- are
derived from “three well-motivated operations in natural languages:
Cataphora/anaphora, ellipsis and coordination” (184). Finally, he
considers three sets of argumentation, typically used in mono-clausal
approaches to account for left- and right-dislocation, namely,
agreement, clitic doubling, and resumption, and concludes that they do
not explain the MSA facts.

Chapter 6 (“The elliptical analysis: Miscellaneous issues”) discusses
the “technical implementation of the bi-clausal analysis” (187).
First, he shows that the proposed analysis is able to resolve the
apparent information structural paradox, namely, the fact that the
remnants are interpreted as 'focal' and 'given' information at the
same time. The proposed analysis, he argues, can also account for the
prosody of CLLD and CLRD: under the bi-clausal analysis, the prosodic
specificities of the dislocated XPs are predictable since the
dislocated XP is outside the host clause and hence may display
different prosody. Finally, the author argues that the theory of
dislocation would be improved if movement operations (of the
dislocated XP) were totally barred. To do this, he has to demonstrate
that island effects are only apparent and are better analysed as
pragmatic violations rather than syntactic ones. (See the explanation
on pages 209-211.)

Chapter 7 ('Concluding remarks') is a short summary of the previous
six chapters.

EVALUATION

As mentioned by the publishers (back cover of the book), although
dislocation has been the object of much research in the world's
languages, this hasn't been the case for MSA, and therefore, this
monograph can be seen as a welcome contribution to the study of
dislocation in MSA. Although the chapters are not accessible to the
general reader but rather require some knowledge of (generative)
syntax and information structure, they are of a high standard and
constitute a useful contribution to the analysis of Arabic, in
particular, the left- and right-peripheries. They also add to our
knowledge of syntax and typology more generally.

Unfortunately, the book loses much of its value due to some problems
of form, including, English sentence structure, transliteration and
bibliography:
-Transliteration is either unreadable (e.g., ʔʕlmu , p.3, syyratiyhi,
p.27), or used inconsistently (e.g., ʕ and long V are used for the
same sound, pp. 26-27, Ali-GEN is sometimes transcribed as alyian,
p.34 and on other occasions ali-en, p. 115), or used incorrectly
(e.g., Hind-an qablat-u-ha
                            'I meet Hind' (qablat should be qabalt;
meet should be met).
-The bibliography needs to be revised; for instance, some titles of
edited works are missing. Conversely, some authors of edited works are
missing.

Several claims lack proper explanation or haven't been sufficiently
elaborated; for instance:
-Regarding the referential nature of topics, after showing that there
are several counter arguments, the author still assumes that it is a
condition on topics (59ff.)
-Similarly, in connection with the problems of the cartography
program, specifically, the fact that it 'undergenerates', and,
independently of whether this undergeneration problem is correct, the
argument from the MSA data is not convincing as the facts mentioned,
(namely, focus in MSA can occur in clause-final, clause-initial, and
internal positions) may be caused by the scrambling nature of MSA.
-Regarding Cinque's paradox, the author maintains that none of the
approaches adopted by Arab scholars “provide a cogent treatment for
Cinque's paradox, and hence they are rejected” (150): There's no
reason to deal with Cinque's paradox if, for them, no such paradox
exists, rather, movement and base-generation are jointly used to
account for the data.
-Finally, regarding the evidence for invisible syntax, in particular,
case connectivity (“the short answer must bear the same morphological
case as in non-elliptical contexts” (157)), there is no explanation
for how this kind of evidence can account for the non-structural
approach illustrated in example 11 (156):
Who wants the apple?
Me/him/them
*I/he/they

Some statements are incorrect or ambiguous, for instance,
-on p. 9 the author writes: “all Arabic data … are produced by the
author (being a native speaker of the language”. It is a known fact
that MSA is taught in schools and that there are no native speakers of
the language.
-an argument adduced by the author for the claim that fragments in MSA
contain silent syntax is the fact that the MSA “verb in fragment
answers is inflected for the same tense were it in its canonical
position in a full sentence” (examples (19) and (20). This argument
ignores the proposal that infinitives in Arabic are inflected (Albaty
& Ouali, 2018; Jalaneh, 2022), hence saraga could be an infinitive.

Finally, the author objects to other approaches on the basis that they
cannot account for cross-linguistic differences. However, he doesn't
say how his own proposal is compatible with other languages besides
MSA. For example, he argues that his new taxonomy, namely, CLLDI and
CLRDI, can be derived from a single property contrary to previous
studies (214), but he doesn't say whether this single property can
account for the phenomena in other languages.

Notwithstanding these shortcomings, which do not impact negatively on
the significance of the research, the monograph remains a real
contribution to the phenomenon of dislocation in Standard Arabic.

References

Albaty, Y. & Ouali, H. (2018). Restructuring and control in Arabic.
Brill's Journal of
     Afroasiatic languages and linguistics 10. 1-30
Aoun, J. And Benmamoun, E. (1998). Minimality, reconstruction, and
movement.
     Linguistic Inquiry, 29(4): 569-597.
Cinque, G. (1990). Types of A'-dependencies. MIT Press. Cambridge, MA.
Cinque, G. (1997). Topic constructions in some European languages and
     connectedness. In Materials on left dislocation.
Demirdache, H. (1991). Resumptive chains in restrictive relatives,
appositives, and
     dislocation structures. Ph.D thesis. MIT.
Demirdache, H. (1997). Dislocation, resumption and weakest crossover.
Materials on
     left dislocation: 193-231.
Jalabneh, A.M. (2022). PRO vs pro in Arabic syntax: theoretical
analysis. Theory and
     Practice in Language Studies, vol. 12, No. 7: 1271-1277
Kayne, R. (1994). The antisymmetry of syntax. Vol. 25. MIT Press.
Ott, D. & de Vries, M. (2012). Thinking in the right direction: an
ellipsis analysis of
     right dislocation. Linguistics in the Netherlands, 29(1):
123-134.
Ouhalla, J. (1997). Remarks on focus in Standard Arabic. Amsterdam
studies in the
     theory and history of linguistic science series 4: 9-46.

ABOUT THE REVIEWER

Ferid Chekili has been acting as an independent researcher since his
retirement from the university of Bahrain and the academy of
diplomatic studies, Bahrain, in 2020. His research interests include
comparative syntax, the syntax-morphology interface, generative SLA
and language education.



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