Case Variation from the Perspective of Syntactic Typology & Universals: Accusative Subjects in Standard Arabic.

I examine in this paper three different contexts in Standard Arabic in which the preverbal subject appears with an accusative Case marker. The first context arises when the preverbal subject is preceded by a complementiser. The second context is when the subject is preceded by sentential negation particles. The third context is when the subject is followed by a tenseless verb in nonfinite clauses. In this paper, I provide a new analysis to account for these instances of preverbal accusative subjects in this language. The new analysis assumes the existence of two different syntactic positions for the preverbal subject: i) spec-TP, which hosts the grammatical subject; and ii) a higher spec-SubjP, a projection between CP and TP that hosts subjects of predication, along lines discussed in Cardinaletti (2004). I argue that the preverbal subject appears in spec-SubjP with an inherent accusative Case. Crucially, I assume that preverbal accusative subjects in this language have not moved from spec-vP, but base-positioned in spec-SubjP. The new analysis of preverbal accusative subjects in Standard Arabic accounts for these instances in terms of availability of syntactic positions, rather than optionality in Case marking. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]