A Prosodic Account of Arabic Construct State: Evidence from Active Participles

Authors

  • Ayman Yasin

    Coordination Unit for Service Courses, Princess Sumaya University for Technology, Al-Jubeiha, P.O. Box 1438, Amman 11941, Jordan
  • Ibtisam Hussein

    Department of Arabic, Yarmouk University, P.O. Box 566, Irbid 21163, Jordan
  • Nahla AlShalabi

    Arabic Language and Literature, College of Education, Humanities and Social Sciences, Al Ain University, Al Ain P.O. Box 64141, United Arab Emirates
  • Henene Lahiana

    English Language and Translation Program, College of Education, Humanities and Social Sciences, Al Ain

    University, Abu Dhabi P.O. Box 112612, United Arab Emirates

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.30564/fls.v7i5.9324
Received: 2 April 2025 | Revised: 25 April 2025 | Accepted: 27 April 2025 | Published Online: 29 April 2025

Abstract

There are well-known approaches to the analysis of Construct State (CS) such as N-to-D movement, remnant movement and N-to-Spec movement. Although these approaches have accounted for the properties of CSs, they have been criticized by a considerable number of linguists for several problematic issues. This paper attempts to find out a prosodic account of the construct state in Arabic. It brings about new evidence for a prosodic account from Active Participles which assign accusative case when they appear with the absolute indefinite markers -un, -an, -in. In such a case, they take a subject and an object, assign a case to them, and refer to the present or future (i.e., complex event nominal). However, in a construct state, Active Participles are inflected with a non-absolute indefinite marker -u, -a, -i, and assign genitive case to N2. The paper briefly reviews some of the Active Participle accounts, revisits the evidence of the prosodic nature of the construct state, goes through the previous prosodic accounts, and investigates the Active participle to support the prosodic account of the construct state. The paper argues that in such cases Active Participle nominals denote the person rather than the event and thus lack argument structure. It also contends that construct Active Participles have prosodic case checking which accounts for their genitive, rather than accusative, case. Thus, the paper contributes to Arabic studies by refining and challenging previous syntactic-based analyses of CSs.

Keywords:

Active Participles; Arabic Construct State; Case Assignment; (In)definite Markers; Prosodic Account

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How to Cite

Yasin, A., Hussein, I., AlShalabi, N., & Lahiana, H. (2025). A Prosodic Account of Arabic Construct State: Evidence from Active Participles. Forum for Linguistic Studies, 7(5), 1054–1066. https://doi.org/10.30564/fls.v7i5.9324

Issue

Vol. 7 , Iss. 5 (May 2025)

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Article

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Copyright © 2025 Ayman Yasin, Ibtisam Hussein, Nahla AlShalabi, Henene Lahiana

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