Tensed and negative :assessing local dislocation in the context of Arabic verbal morphology -

Abstract

The following is an assessment of Local Dislocation (LD). The empirical side of this assessment focuses on two negative particles in Modern Standard Arabic that carry tense markings. An effort is made to develop a comprehensive derivation for these particles—beginning with syntactic primitives and concluding with the grammatical Phonological Form. Although this derivation is not achieved here, the investigation sheds light on the implementation of LD. From a theoretical standpoint, LD is shown to suffer from inconsistencies, which stem from the representation methodology that is commonly used to depict it. As such, questions arise concerning a possible conflict between Distributed Morphology’s objectives and its current premises.