PRO vs pro in Arabic Syntax: Theoretical Analysis
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.17507/tpls.1207.04Keywords:
PRO, pro, nominative case, theta role, interpretationAbstract
The objective of this work is to investigate the syntactic and semantic properties of the empty categories PRO and pro in Modern Standard Arabic syntax. The problem: both of them are always syntactically covert at PF; semantically, though PRO bears same / or different theta roles from its anaphor at spell out, it leads to correct interpretation at LF; however, pro bears different theta roles that determine correct c-selection at spell out and lead to correct interpretations at LF. Conclusions: Syntactically PRO occupies, merely, the subject position of non- finite phrases; it does not check the nominative case since the phrases lack [Agrs, T]. However, pro occupies the subject position of finite clauses in (i) independent clause, (ii) embedding, (iii) subordinate and (iv) independent clauses related to weather (expletive) verbs; it checks the nominative case by [Agrs, T]. Semantically, PRO checks, merely, the theta roles of agent and experiencer; however, pro checks the theta roles of agent, patient, experiencer, theme, instrument and location.
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