The Syntax of Pronominal Clitics in Standard Arabic : A Minimalist Analysis

Pronominal clitics in Standard Arabic, and also in other languages, pose challenging problems for syntactic theory. This is due to the fact that pronominal clitics exhibit conflicting properties; which makes it difficult to provide answers to a number of issues. This book provides an investigation into the syntax of pronominal clitics in Standard Arabic within the framework of the minimalist theory developed by Chomsky. It particularly addresses a range of issues, such as: the syntactic status of pronominal clitics, the syntactic position in which they are generated, the syntactic movement they undergo, the derivation of their enclitic form, and the kind of similarities and differences that Standard Arabic pronominal clitics may display with respect to their counterparts in other languages. The book will be of interest to linguists, teachers, researchers and to anyone interested in language study and syntactic theory.