The Syntax of Particle-Based Exclamatives in Gulf Arabic
Abstract
This thesis investigates the syntactic structures and the properties of three particle-based
exclamatives in Gulf Arabic: vocative exclamatives which involve two particles yā and ʔaya,
and non-vocative exclamatives which involve the particle ʔam̄a. It implements Chomsky
(1995)'s Minimalist Program with Rizzi (1997)'s Split CP Hypothesis in the analysis of the
data. Previous researches on the structure of exclamatives in Arabic are limited to Modern
Standard Arabic rather than its varieties. This limitation results in an insufficient data on
exclamatives in Gulf Arabic. For this reason, the purpose of this thesis is to enrich the
syntax of Arabic by providing a minimalist account for three types of particle-based exclamative constructions in Gulf Arabic. I propose that particle-based exclamatives, whether
vocative or non-vocative, are derived from the underlying verb ʔa-taʕaʒab (1-exclaim) and
the preposition min (about). These particle-based exclamatives are derived via the ellipsis
of the tense phrase which dominates the verb phrase and the preposition. The exclamative particle licenses their ellipsis by blocking the Tense Phrase and the preposition from
spelling out to surface. I also propose that exclamative particles are complex by carrying
two features: the exclamative feature and the deictic feature. Due to their complexity,
exclamative particles are decomposable into two heads: an exclamative head and a deictic
head, in accordance to Tsoulas (2015) and (2016)'s approach.