Ordinal numerals in Jordanian Arabic: A morphosyntactic investigation

The purpose of this study is to discuss the morphosyntax of ordinal numerals in Jordanian Arabic (JA). I show that ordinal numerals in JA do not belong to a uniform category and argue that they show different syntactic and morphological behaviours depending on their structural position inside the ex...

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: Alhailawani Mohammad
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra 2023-06-01
Series:Topics in Linguistics
Subjects:
Online Access:https://doi.org/10.2478/topling-2023-0006
Description
Summary:The purpose of this study is to discuss the morphosyntax of ordinal numerals in Jordanian Arabic (JA). I show that ordinal numerals in JA do not belong to a uniform category and argue that they show different syntactic and morphological behaviours depending on their structural position inside the extended nominal projection. In particular, I argue that pre-nominal ordinals are QPs that can merge inside or outside the DP, similar to the quantifier kull (Shlonsky, 1991; Benmamoun, 1999). On the other hand, I show that post-nominal ordinals are adjectives that merge inside the extended nominal projection (Corbett, 2004; Fassi-Fehri, 2018), similar to adnominal adjectives in JA. The findings of this study show that ordinals might belong to distinct syntactic categories within the same language depending on their structural position.
ISSN:2199-6504