Arabic-L:LING:Arabic and Generative Grammar

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Tue 18 Dec 2007
Moderator: Dilworth Parkinson <dilworth_parkinson at byu.edu>
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1) Subject:Arabic and Generative Grammar
2) Subject:Arabic and Generative Grammar

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1)
Date: 18 Dec 2007
From:Kevin Schluter <schlu017 at umn.edu>
Subject:Arabic and Generative Grammar

The name that immediately comes to mind when discussing agreement  
asymmetries in Arabic syntax is Elabbas Benmamoun at the University of  
Illinois Champaign-Urbana.

http://www.linguistics.uiuc.edu/benmamou/

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2)
Date: 18 Dec 2007
From:Nimat Hafez Barazangi <nhb2 at cornell.edu>
Subject:Arabic and Generative Grammar

The following empirical evidence also suggests that the Generative  
Grammar Theory  (GGT) does not apply to Arabic.

A colleague of mine and I tried to test the theory with Arab children  
(ages 2-3) acquiring Arabic. We found that even when the children use  
the colloquial version, making the construct SV (e.g., Baba sherib   
"Daddy drank"),  as we ask them to repeat a similar complete SVO  
sentence (e.g.,  Baba sherib almay "Dady drank the water"), they  
reverted to VSO (Sherib baba almay).  The study, obviously revealed  
many other factors that suggests a negative applicability of GGT to  
Arabic, but I cannot discuss in this context .

The above indicates the need for further studies in Arabic language  
acquisition as well as the need for furthering Abdelkader Fassi Fehri  
studies of the linguistic structures of Arabic. Both require more than  
just individual efforts !

Best wishes,

Nimat

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