Vocatives of Entreaty in Arabic: Evidence for PP Selection
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17507/jltr.1403.05Keywords:
Vocative Phrases, Speech Acts Layer, Speakers, Arabic, MinimalismAbstract
Across languages, it is argued that vocative phrases are composed of a vocative head that selects a noun phrase (NP) or a determiner phrase (DP) as its complement. Based on data from Standard Arabic, in addition to selecting NPs and DPs, the study reveals patterns where a vocative head may select a prepositional phrase (PP). This class of vocative constructions appears in situations where speakers are calling for help and is referred to as nɪdaʔ ʔalʔɪstɪɣaθa ‘Vocative of Entreaty.’ This study focuses on the syntax of nɪdaʔ ʔalʔɪstɪɣaθa ‘Vocative of Entreaty’ and expands the boundaries that limit the selection options of vocative heads to NPs and DPs. For this purpose, the study utilizes the Minimalist program (Chomsky, 1995) for data analysis and follows Hill (2013) in analyzing vocatives as speech act projections. This study is significant because it challenges all previous accounts on vocatives (Haddad 2020; Abdelhady 2020; Al-Bataineh 2019) and reveals new patterns where a vocative particle becomes obligatory in vocative phrases, provided that its complement is a PP. This type of data has implications for proposals related to case assignment patterns of nominals that are c-commanded by VOC.
References
Abdelhady, S. (2020). The syntax of ostensible categories in Arabic. PhD. Memorial University of Newfoundland. Canada.
Abdelhady, S. (2021). A Minimalist analysis of jā for coordination in Jordanian Arabic. SKASE Journal of Theoretical Linguistics. 59-79.
Abdel-Hady, S, & Branigan, P. (2020). The impact of speech act projections on categorization: Evidence from ostensible lexical categories in Arabic. The Syntax-Pragmatics Interface in Generative Grammar, 1-21.
Abuladze, L. & and Andreas, L. (2013). The vocative in Georgian. Vocatives (1). 25–42.
Akku, F. & Virginia, H. (2018). Speaker Visibility in Syntax. Proceedings of the 35th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, ed. Wm. G. Bennett et al., 49-58. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.16.
Akkus, F. & Virginia, H. (2018). The speaker in inverse vocatives. 35th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics (WCCFL 35), 49–58. ed. Wm. G. Bennett et al., 49-58. Somerville, MA: Cascadilla Proceedings Project.16.
Al-Bataineh, H. (2019). The Syntax of Vocatives in Arabic. Brill’s Journal of Afroasiatic Languages and Linguistics (1). 1-36.
Al-Samirai, F. (2000). Kitab manɣani ʔal naħu. Jordan: Dar Al-Fikir.
Boneh, N. & Ivy, S. (2010). Deconstructing possession. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory 28:1–40.
Chomsky, N. (1995). The Minimalist Program. MIT Press.
Faouaid. (2020). https://www.faouaid.com/2020/11/istighathah.html. Retrieved on 17, May, 2019.
Fassi Fehri, A. (2012). Key Features and Parameters in Arabic Grammar. Amsterdam, John Benjamins Publishing Company.
Girvin, C. (2013). Addressing changes in the Bulgarian vocative. Vocatives: Addressing between system and performance. Germany: De Gruyter Mouton.
González López, L. (2020). Vocatives with determiners: the case of vocatives preceded by possessives. Isogloss. Open Journal of Romance Linguistics (6), 1-30. doi:10.5565/rev/isogloss.59.
Haddad, Y. (2020). Vocatives as parenthetical adjuncts: Evidence from Arabic. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 5. Ubiquity Press.132. doi:10.5334/gjgl.1302.
Hallman, P. (2022). Head and Dependent Marking in Clausal Possession. Linguistic Inquiry (53). 551–570. doi:10.1162/ling_a_00416.
Hill, V. (2007). Vocatives and the pragmatics–syntax interface. Lingua (117). 2077–2105. doi:10.1016/j.lingua.2007.01.002.
Hill, V. (2013). Vocatives: How Syntax meets with Pragmatics. Netherlands: Brill.
Hill, V. (2017). Vocatives in the Balkans. Revista Letras (1). 30-96.
Hill, V. (2022). The syntactization of kinship in vocative phrases. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 7. Open Library of Humanities. doi:10.16995/glossa.6557. https://www.glossa-journal.org/article/id/6557/.
Jaradat, A., Bassil, M., & Anas, H. (2022). On Pragmatics-syntax Interface: The case of vocative nominals in Jordanian Arabic. Jordan Journal of Modern Languages and Literatures 14.351–370. doi:10.47012/jjmll.14.2.7.
Larson, R. (2014). On Shell Structure (1 edition). New York and London: Routledge.
Larson, R. (1985). On the syntax of disjunction scope. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 3. 217–264. doi:10.1007/BF00133841.
Levison, S. (1983). Pragmatics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Moutaouakil, A. (2014). Pragmatic functions in a functional grammar of Arabic. Walter de Gruyter: Germany
Naïm, S. (2003). La prédication possessive et l’émergence de formes d’avoir en arabe oriental. Bulletin de la Société de linguistique de Paris 98:359–383. https://doi.org/10.2143/BSL.98.1.503780.
Radford, A. (2009). An introduction to English sentence structure. Cambridge university press.
Shboul, A. (1983). “Having” in Arabic. Zeitschrift für Arabische Linguistik 11:24–47.
Shormani, Q., & Mohammed Q. (2018). Vocatives: correlating the syntax and discourse at the interface. Cogent Arts & Humanities 5. doi:10.1080/23311983.2018.1469388.
Sibawayh, ʔ. (1970). Al-Kitab. (Ed.) H Derenbourg. Reprint Hildesheim and New York: Georg Olms.
Soltan, U. (2016). The syntax of vocatives in Egyptian Arabic. Middlebury College.
Speas, P., & Carol, T. (2003). Configurational properties of point of view roles. Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, ed. by Anna Maria Di Sciullo, 57:315–344. Amsterdam: John Benjamins Publishing Company. doi:10.1075/la.57.15spe. https://benjamins.com/catalog/la.57.15spe.
Taima, S. (2020). https://www.taima20.com/2020/10/7orof. Retrieved on the 15, December, 2019.
Zwicky, A. (1974). “Hey, Whatsyourname”. The Tenth Regional Meeting, Chicago Linguistic Society. April 19-21, 1974, Michael La Galy, Robert A. Fox, and Anthony Bruck (eds.), 787–801. Chicago: Chicago Linguistic Society.
