Arabic adjectives and dp structures

The Arabic determiner phrase (DP) has frequently been the target of investigation for many linguists (Al Qahtani 2016; Beina 2013; Fehri 1999; Kremers 2003). While these authors often discuss the functional structures of the Arabic DP and its modifiers, Kremers (2003) proposed that pre-nominal adjectives are heads of noun phrases (NP), and that post-nominal adjectives appear as adjuncts inside of NPs. In this paper, I argue that Kremers’ (2003) argument is implausible, as he proposed an exocentric construction (Al Mahmoud 2014), which violates a central constraint of X-bar syntax (Jackendoff 1977). Moreover, Kremers (2003) treats post-nominal adjectives as adjuncts to the NP, even though they fully agree with the nouns. Using a Minimalist framework (Chomsky 1995, 1998, 1999), I focus on the basic structure of the Arabic DP and the interaction with pre- and post-nominal adjectives. To account for the structure of DP in Arabic, I build on Abney’s (1987) proposal of an AP-over-NP structure. I propose that there is both a DP-over-AP and an AP-over-DP structure. I account for the syntactic structure of predicate adjectives by showing that Arabic has two different structures: one with and one without a copula. Attributive adjectives exhibit concord in a definite marking with the nouns they modify in a DP-over-AP configuration. Lastly, I argue that pre-nominal adjectives are heads that take DP as complements. Lastly, I show that pre-nominal adjectives are assigned Case from the main clause, and the complement noun is assigned genitive case by D.