Abstract

This research explores one less-investigated though significant manifestation of verb movement in North Hail Arabic, namely verb topicalization alongside its internal argument and any accompanying adjunct. In adequate dialogical and pragmatic contexts, the lexical verb (L-verb), the direct object (DO), and VP and vP adjoining adjuncts appear to move to the Specifier position (Spec) of a dedicated Topic Phrase in the left periphery in the sense of Rizzi (1997). This quasi-holistic movement is labelled as Defective Predicate Topicalization (DPT), where all predicate elements, apart from Tense, move overtly to Topic Phrase. Linear order between the L-verb, the DO, and any accompanying adjuncts is assumed, among others, to be evidence supporting this contention. Furthermore, the study argues that DPT is syntactically licensed for its phrasal-movement fashion. Hence, no violation of (head-related) locality principles is involved.

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