Third Party Funds Group - Sub project
Acronym: GRK 2839 Project 10
Start date : 01.10.2022
End date : 30.09.2027
One of the key challenges of this project is to explore the possibility and benefits of a Construction Grammar approach to Arabic syntax. Indeed, it would seem that the concept of constructional space is apt to capture and formally analyze the form-meaning pairings entailed in the system of argument marking or more generally the use of marked constructions for ambiguity avoidance and/or expectation sensitivity (cf. e.g. Haspelmath 2025).
However, Arabic argument markers are not always recognized as such and research so far usually deals with one marker individually, with no comprehensive study on argument marking available to date to the best of our knowledge. But not only the relatedness of these markers has not yet been researched, but also different forms of argument marking. This includes differential object marking (DOM), which has received the most attention, but only occurs in certain geographical areas, as well as ditransitive theme and recipient marking, either of which occurs in every variety of Arabic, while some varieties even have both, but these have received less attention and theme marking has not been recognized as such. Finally, the use of the copula pronoun in nominal sentences is also conditioned by ambiguity avoidance and/or expectation sensitivity.
Construction grammar with its focus on form-meaning pairings proves useful to capture the relation between (morpho-)syntax, semantics and pragmatics that determine the use of the marked or the unmarked argument structure construction. The main focus of the present project will lie on argument marking in argument structure constructions, more specifically theme and recipient marking in the ditransitive construction, “classical” differential object marking (DOM), as well as morpho-syntactically conditioned DOM in formally verbless, but semantically transitive constructions, such as the pseudo-verb construction, the transitive verbal noun construction, and the transitive active participle construction, and on verbless constructions with a copula pronoun.
While the alternation of the ditransitive vs. the li-dative constructions is conditioned i. a. by the individuation properties of recipient and theme, a constructional blend has emerged whose function in relation to the other two constructions is not yet very clear. It seems to have its origin in the fact that some (syncronically) semantically ditransitive verbs like e.g. Egyptian gāb ‘to bring’ (diachronically from ǧāʿa bi ‘to come with’), ʾaddim ‘to offer, to hand sth.’ (causative of qadama ‘to precede, to arrive first’ > qaddama ‘to put forward, to advance’ > abstract meaning ‘to offer, to provide, to hand sth.’) or raggaʿ ‘to bring back, to return sth.’ (causative of raǧaʿa ‘to go back, to return’) do not occur in the ditransitive construction but rather behave like benefactive verbs, due to diachronic developments. This may be the reason for the emergence of a new construction analogical to the ditransitive but with additional li-marking of the recipient, which now competes with the benefactive construction. The benefactive construction’s formal identity with the li-dative construction may then have motivated the spread of the new blend construction to ditransitive verbs, resulting in three competing constructions for those. The interaction of these constructions with different verbs thus requires investigation.
The project explores the hypothesis that more complex constructions are used to counter hearer-expectation and avoid ambiguity in clauses with non-canonical patterns of two co-occurring arguments’ individuation properties (i.e. agent/patient, recipient/theme, mubtadaʾ/ḫabar), or in the case of “classical” DOM in clauses with atypical objects. However, the marked constructions’ use advances from the least canonical to more canonical patterns and thus different stages can be found across Arabic varieties and across different argument structure constructions. Even within one argument structure construction there are often several non-canonical constellations, e.g. regarding definiteness, nominality or person hierarchy, from which the marked construction starts out, yielding a very complex paradigm. Formal constructional variation across Arabic dialects as well as variation in the presence of argument marking phenomena in different varieties result in further complexity but clearly demonstrate the relevance of expectation sensitivity and ambiguity avoidance in Arabic syntax.
While pairs of a marked and an unmarked construction seem to share the same semantics at first glance, the marked one facilitates and secures information processing in less typical constellations. Over time, it may replace the unmarked construction.
The elaboration of this minimal pair thus addresses CON1 (How do we identify constructions?), especially for those cases, where the only difference between the marked vs. the unmarked construction is the presence or absence of a marker or the copula pronoun, which may easily be regarded as versions of the same construction. The processes of analogy, reanalysis and constructional blending in the dative alternation seem to be conditioned by semantic similarities, especially in case of the few semantically ditransitive verbs mentioned above, that however do not occur in the ditransitive construction, address CON2 (To what extent is constructional knowledge determined by the specific items occurring in them (collo-profiles) and how can we measure and operationalize the degree of lexical specificity vs. productivity of construction slots?).
Concerning USE1 (What factors influence speakers’ choices from a range of competing constructions?) this project investigates the role of the relevant arguments’ individuation properties. Finally, the comparative approach focusing on dialectal variation is of relevance to USE2 (To what extent do the factors determining the choice of construction differ between speakers with respect to their individual backgrounds and personalities?)