Abstract

A Standard Arabic (SA) complementizer known as ʔinna poses a restriction on word orders in the clause it introduces and induces accusative Case-marking on the otherwise nominative preverbal NPs (Note1). Following Chomsky’s (2001) account of the morphosyntax of Case, this paper argues that ʔinna is a Case assigner and thus it carries an uninterpretable Case feature that determines the value which it assigns to an unvalued Case feature concerning accessible goal within A-bar projection. The paper shows that this argument captures the asymmetrical word order between clauses introduced by ʔinna and those headed by null CPs. 

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