The paper presents an analysis of prepositional phrases (PPs) in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) using Chomsky's Feature-Inheritance model of Agree. The author proposes that PPs in MSA are phases, with a functional p head that transfers its features to the lexical P head to form a p-P probe. This probe enters into an Agree relation with the DP complement of P, resulting in Genitive case assignment.
The paper begins by providing an overview of prepositions in Arabic, noting that they assign Genitive case to their complements. It then reviews previous analyses of PPs cross-linguistically, including approaches that treat prepositions as functional or lexical categories.
The author's proposal treats PPs as phasal, similar to vPs. The functional p head bears unvalued φ-features and a valued Genitive case feature. These features are inherited by the lexical P head, forming a p-P probe that agrees with the complement DP. This results in valuation of φ-features on p-P and Genitive case on the DP.
The analysis is extended to show how PPs can host DPs in their specifier position, allowing them to receive case from higher probes. The author provides derivations demonstrating how the proposed structure accounts for case assignment patterns in MSA sentences containing PPs.
The paper concludes that analyzing PPs as phases with a p-P probe formed through feature inheritance can account for Genitive case assignment in MSA PPs in a principled way within the Minimalist framework. This analysis aligns PPs more closely with other phasal categories like vP and CP.
The study uses theoretical argumentation and syntactic analysis to support its claims, drawing on data from MSA to illustrate the proposed mechanisms of case assignment and agreement within PPs. The findings contribute to understanding the internal structure of PPs in Arabic and how they interact with other elements in the syntax.