R E M A R K S A N D R E P L I E S

551

Head and Dependent Marking in Clausal Possession

Peter Hallman

This article presents a new perspective on the derivational source for
transitive verbs of possession. These are commonly postulated to be
derived from a preposition expressing possession by incorporation
of the preposition into an auxiliary. I reframe the contrast between
prepositional and verbal expression of possession as an opposition
between dependent and head marking of the possession relation, imple-
mented syntactically as marking of either the specifier or the head of
the projection encoding the possession relation. This conclusion is
inferred from an investigation of Syrian Arabic showing that mor-
phemes expressing possession alternate between a prepositional and
a verbal use, but the verbal use does not involve incorporation of
functional material. Evidence is presented that languages that show
such incorporation, that is, where possession is expressed by a term
of the form Aux(cid:2)P, have passed through a diachronic stage similar
to contemporary Syrian, where P functions as a verb in its own right.
These considerations support the conclusion that transitive verbs of
possession are derived not by preposition incorporation but by reanaly-
sis of dependent marking as head marking, which may or may not
feed incorporation.

Keywords: possession, preposition incorporation, head marking, de-
pendent marking, argument structure, Arabic

1 Introduction

This article treats the typological relationship between languages with a transitive verb of posses-
sion, such as English, and languages that express possession through a preposition, such as Arabic.
The relation is commonly cast in terms of preposition incorporation: the verb is derived by
incorporation of a preposition expressing possession into an auxiliary, deriving a verb that has the
distribution of its component auxiliary but the possessive meaning of its component preposition. In
section 2, I investigate evidence from Syrian Arabic that indicates that the prepositions that mark
possession in the syntactic format in (1a) may also be used as verbs in the syntactic format in
(1b). The suffix -u in (1b) comes from a paradigm of genitive clitic pronouns, so that (1b) looks
at first glance like (1a) with clitic left-dislocation of the object of the preposition. However, I
endeavor to show that it is in fact a transitive verbal use of the preposition with agreement
inflection. This use is not contingent on incorporation into an auxiliary. Taking Boneh and Sichel’s
(2010) analysis of the prepositional construction in (1a) as a starting point, I analyze these formats

I am grateful to two anonymous reviewers and to Eric Reuland for helpful criticism and guidance. I also thank
Mohammad Al-Kadamani, H. Al-Khaled, Samah Alouch, Bushra Al-Shalabi, and Talal Al-Shlash for their contribution
of empirical data on Syrian Arabic to this project, as well as the Austrian Science Fund (grant P27384), without whose
support this research would not have been possible.

Linguistic Inquiry, Volume 53, Number 3, Summer 2022
551–570
(cid:3) 2020 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Published under
a Creative Commons Attributions 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0) license.
https://doi.org/10.1162/ling_a_00416

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as alternative marking strategies: in (1a), the prominent dependent of the possession relation (the
possessor) is marked as such; in (1b), the head of the possession relation is marked.

(1) a. »and karı¯m Çsa¯b

b-El-bank.

Karim account in-the-bank

at
‘Karim has a bank account.’

b. Karı¯m »and-u

Çsa¯b

b-El-bank.

Karim at-GEN.3MS ((cid:4) has) account in-the-bank
‘Karim has a bank account.’

In section 3, I compare the situation in Syrian with the situation in Maltese Arabic. In Maltese,
possession may be expressed by a transitive verb consisting morphologically of an auxiliary and
an incorporated preposition. But recent research on Maltese has shown that diachronically, the
preposition already functioned as a verb before the incorporation structure arose (Camilleri 2019).
This means that Maltese went through a diachronic stage identical to contemporary Syrian Arabic.
These considerations point to the conclusion that preposition incorporation is not the pathway
through which prepositions acquire a transitive verbal use. Rather, as dependent markers of the
possession relation, they are subject to reanalysis as head markers. This reanalysis sets the stage
for incorporation of the derived verb into higher functional material, rather than being a result
of it.

2 Possession in Syrian Arabic

In Syrian Arabic, possession is primarily expressed by the preposition »and, as in (2a) ((cid:4) (1a)),
the same preposition that expresses the locative relation ‘at’, illustrated in (2b). Several other
prepositions I turn to later express possession as well. Arabic is a null copula language; the copula
only appears in nonpresent tenses.

(2) a. »and karı¯m Çsa¯b

b-El-bank.

Karim account in-the-bank

at
‘Karim has a bank account.’

b. l-»asa¯kir

»and karı¯m min sa¯»a¯t.
Karim from hours
the-soldiers at
‘The soldiers have been at Karim’s place for hours.’

The similarity between (2a) and (2b) seems to recommend an analysis of possessive construc-
tions that makes them derivatives of locative constructions. Freeze (1992), for example, claims
that the syntax of locative constructions underlies the prepositional schema for the expression of
possession, which is derived by raising the locative PP to a left-peripheral position, contingent
on the animacy of the object of the preposition. Transitive verbs of possession like English have,
he claims, are derived from the prepositional possessive schema by incorporation of the preposition
into the functional node I[nfl]. The I(cid:2)P complex is then spelled out as a transitive verb. Versions
of this idea are pursued by Den Dikken (1995, 2006) and Harley (1995, 2002), among others,
and by Ouhalla (2000) for (Moroccan) Arabic specifically.

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However, Boneh and Sichel (2010) observe an asymmetry between locative and possessive
constructions in the availability of PP-initial word order in Palestinian Arabic, which is like Syrian
in the relevant respects. For locative constructions, this word order is marginal (3a) except in the
presence of the existential particle fı¯ (cognate with the preposition fı¯ ‘in’ in Classical/Standard
Arabic), as shown in (3b), while in possessive constructions this word order is natural without
fı¯, though fı¯ is available here, too, as (3c) shows.

(3) a. ??»and karı¯m tlet

»asa¯kir.
Karim three soldiers

at
‘Three soldiers are at Karim’s house.’
»asa¯kir.
fı¯ »and karı¯m tlet
Karim three soldiers
FI at
‘Three soldiers are at Karim’s house.’
(fı¯) »and karı¯m Çsa¯b
(FI) at
‘Karim has a bank account.’

Karim account in-the-bank

b-El-bank.

Boneh and Sichel claim for this and other reasons that, contra Freeze, possessive and locative
constructions have distinct base structures. In the base structure of the locative construction in
(3b), the subject DP and predicate PP are syntactic relata of a “relator” head R, schematized in
(4b) on the model of Den Dikken’s (2006) analysis of locative constructions. Spec,IP is subject
to an EPP requirement that in principle a PP may fulfill, as we will see in possessive constructions
below. However, a PP may not undergo A-movement out of the domain of R, precluding movement
of PP to Spec,IP in locative constructions, as (4a) illustrates.1 In this case, fı¯ is inserted to fill the
otherwise vacant subject position, making fı¯ analogous to English existential there. The structure in
(4b), which itself represents a natural word order for locative constructions, also admits inversion
of PP with the subject DP, deriving (3b), but only in the presence of fı¯. Therefore, this inversion
procedure likely involves A¯ -movement of PP to adjunct-of-RP.2 The fact that (3a)/(4a) is not

1 Boneh and Sichel (2010) claim, again following Den Dikken (2006), that movement of R to I extends the domain
of R, permitting PP-movement to Spec,IP after all. The R(cid:2)I complex, though, is spelled out as the auxiliary ka¯n ‘was’,
licensing (i) in the Palestinian dialect they treat (after further movement of ka¯n to C; see their discussion on pp. 22–23).

(i) ka¯n Çanb muna tlet

u¯la¯d.

was beside Muna three children
‘There were three children next to Muna.’ [grammatical in Palestinian; marginal in Syrian]

However, Syrian speakers consistently judge (i) to be as marginal as the counterpart without ka¯n in (3a) and insist on
inserting fı¯ after ka¯n in (i). This means that ka¯n has no licensing effect on PP-raising in Syrian and so there is no evidence
that the domain of R can ever be extended in that dialect. I present a different analysis of the origin of ka¯n and fı¯ below
for Syrian, but follow Boneh and Sichel in their claim that the locative PP complement of R cannot undergo A-movement
all other things being equal.

2 Boneh and Sichel (2010) point out that A¯ -movement is not restricted in the way A-movement is. A locative PP
may be A¯ -moved to the left clause edge in both Palestinian and Syrian, but still only in the presence of fı¯, as shown in
(i) (see Boneh and Sichel 2010:21–22).
(i) Çanb muna (ka¯n) fı¯ tlet

u¯la¯d.

beside Muna (was) FI three children
‘Next to Muna there were/are three children.’

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completely ungrammatical means that the prohibition on A-movement of PP to Spec,IP is margin-
ally violable.

(4) a. ??[IP [PP »and karı¯m ]i [RP [DP tlet

»asa¯kir ] R

]]

[IP

Karim
fı¯
FI

three soldiers

[RP [DP tlet

»asa¯kir] R [PP »and karı¯m ]]]
at

Karim

three soldiers

Since the PP(cid:2)DP order is fully grammatical in the expression of possession even without
fı¯, as seen in (3c), Boneh and Sichel propose that possessive constructions have a different base
structure from locative constructions, one in which the possessor PP is generated in Spec,ApplP,
as schematized in (5) for (3c). Although it is not crucial for what follows, I assume that the
possessee is generated in the specifier of a big-VP complement of Appl, the position of themes
both in transitive constructions in general per Chomsky (1995) and in the syntax of change-of-
possession (double object) constructions in particular per Bowers (1993), Bruening (2001, 2010),
Georgala, Paul, and Whitman (2008), Boneh and Nash (2011), and others.3 Possession is an
unaccusative double object construction on this view. As an argument, the possessor PP may
undergo A-movement to Spec,IP and check the subject position’s EPP feature, as (5) illustrates.
As a result, fı¯ is not required in possessive constructions, though it is obligatory in locative
constructions.

(5) [IP [PP »and karim ]i [ApplP ti [VP Çsa¯b
Karim

account in-the-bank

b-El-bank ]]]

Boneh and Sichel’s analysis captures the asymmetry seen in the extent to which possessive
and locative constructions require fı¯. I claim, furthermore, that it presents an avenue for analyzing
the relation of the prepositional possession construction to another, “pseudoverbal” possession
construction. Discussion of the construction in question requires some preliminary remarks about
negation that will also lead me to deviate from Boneh and Sichel’s conclusion about the syntactic
locus of fı¯.

Clausal negation in Syrian Arabic is expressed by the negative particle ma ‘not’. However,
the prepositional possessive construction can only be negated in the presence of fı¯ or an auxiliary
verb marking the past or future tense, all of which follow ma, as illustrated in (6a). The fact that
negation may directly precede a temporal auxiliary is a subcase of the fact that negation may

3 These studies are not terminologically uniform but all argue that the possessee/theme is in a distinct projection
from the possessor/recipient in double object constructions, contra Harley (1995, 2002) and Pylkka¨nen (2008). Supporting
this conclusion is the fact that themes may be modified by secondary predicates such as purpose clauses (ia). These are
typically analyzed as adjuncts of the X′ whose specifier they are predicated of (Whelpton 1995), which puts the theme
in (ia) in Spec,VP, as sketched in (ib).

(i) a. She gave the student a pencil to write with.

b. [vP she [ApplP the student [VP a pencil [V′ [V′ gaveV] [CP Opi PRO to write with ti]]]]]

Although Wood and Marantz (2017) follow Pylkka¨nen in making possessors and themes arguments of a single head, I
take the analysis presented here to be compatible with their overall syntactic program, which maintains that there is only
one argument-introducing category label i*, whose meaning and selectional properties vary according to its syntactic
context.

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directly precede a finite verb, as shown in (6b), where the definite subject may precede or follow
NEG(cid:2)V, but may not intervene between the two morphemes.

(6) a. ma *(ka¯n / raÇ yiku¯n / fı¯) »and karı¯m Çsa¯b

b-El-bank.

Karim account in-the-bank

b. (cid:2)l-≈a¯rib(cid:3) ma wasg al

/ FI) at
not *(was / will be
‘Karim didn’t / won’t / doesn’t have a bank account.’
(cid:2)l-≈a¯rib(cid:3)
El-Wuru¯b.
(cid:2)the-boat(cid:3) not arrived (cid:2)the-boat(cid:3) before the-sunset
‘The boat didn’t arrive before sunset.’

≈abl

The examples in (6) show that fı¯ has the same licensing effect on negation as verbs do,
including auxiliaries. This puts fı¯ in the class of verbs as far as negation is concerned. One
explanation, then, for the necessity to insert fı¯ after ma in lieu of an auxiliary in possessive
constructions like (6a) is that ma bears a syntactic selectional feature that triggers head movement
of the next lower verb up to ma, forming a complex head [Neg [V]]. In Minimalist terms, ma
probes for the feature [(cid:2)V]. The verbal element in this complex must be overt, arguably to provide
ma with a morphological host.4 Benmamoun (2000) makes a similar claim about ma: namely,
that it carries the feature [(cid:2)D] that must be checked by a D-feature-bearing head, which includes
verbs by virtue of the agreement suffix they bear. This feature attracts V to Neg in Benmamoun’s
system. It may be relevant in this connection that Mohammad (2000) claims that the long vowel
in fı¯ is a relic of a third person enclitic -h, which bled a historical vowel-shortening process before
being lost. If fı¯ retains the D-feature of its former pronominal suffix, the claims I make here are
compatible with Benmamoun’s system.

The crucial thing for present purposes is that fı¯’s interaction with negation is typical of verbs.
As (7) reiterates, fı¯ occurs between an auxiliary verb—which, as a marker of tense, arguably occurs
in T—and the possessor PP, which I claim following Boneh and Sichel occurs in Spec,ApplP. In
the standard clause structure [T [vP [ApplP [VP]]]], a verbal position occurs between T and
ApplP, namely little-v, which—if the possessor is generated in ApplP and the theme in VP—is
itself semantically vacuous. I propose that fı¯ heads this semantically vacuous vP both in possessive
constructions and in locative constructions (where, however, RP occurs instead of ApplP-VP, as
described above). This makes fı¯ verbal, and rhymes together with the fact that fı¯ never precedes
an auxiliary in Syrian Arabic.

(7) ka¯n / raÇ yiku¯n fı¯ »and karı¯m Çsa¯b

b-El-bank.

was / will be
FI at
‘Karim had / will have a bank account.’

Karim account in-the-bank

4 Aside from the fact that the sequence ma(cid:2)V may not be split up by other material, additional circumstantial
evidence supports the idea that ma requires a morphological host: when Syrian speakers write negative sentences in the
Syrian dialect, they commonly write ma together with the following word without a space between them, as if ma were
a prefix of the following word. This is not Standard Arabic orthography and so presumably reflects an intuition about
word boundaries in the dialect. Mohammad (2000) and Benmamoun (2000) also consistently transcribe ma as a morphologi-
cal unit with the following verb in Palestinian and Moroccan, respectively, and Benmamoun refers to ma explicitly as a
“proclitic” on p. 71. I know of no phonological studies corroborating these intuitions.

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This analysis is supported by indications that fı¯ blocks the occurrence of a lexical verb, as
expected if lexical verbs “span” both big-V and little-v. In Syrian Arabic, if a verbal sentence,
for example on the model of (6b), has an indefinite subject, that subject may follow the verb, as
in (8a). It may also precede it, but only when in turn preceded by fı¯, as in (8b). But fı¯ may not
precede the verb when the indefinite subject follows the verb, as (8c) shows. Note that agreement
on unaccusative wasg al ‘arrive’ is contingent on its linear order with respect to its subject (8a–b),
but (8c) is ungrammatical with or without agreement. This pattern is consistent with the claim
that fı¯ is not compatible with a verbal predicate and that the apparent verb phrase wasg l-u ba»d
Ul-Wuru¯b ‘arrived after sunset’ in (8b) is a relative clause modifying the subject »awa¯rib ktı¯re
‘many boats’, which in turn is predicated on a null existence predicate (no relative pronoun
appears in relative clauses in Arabic when the head of the relative clause is indefinite, as in (8b)).
This proposal predicts the ungrammaticality of the word order in (8c), since the relative clause
is not a continuous constituent there.5

(8) a. wasg al »awa¯rib ktı¯re ba»d El-Wuru¯b.
arrived boats many after the-sunset
‘Many boats arrived after sunset.’
fı¯ »awa¯rib ktı¯re wasg l-u
ba»d El-Wuru¯b.
FI boats many arrived-PL after the-sunset
‘There are many boats that arrived after sunset.’

c. *fı¯ wasg al »awa¯rib ktı¯re ba»d El-Wuru¯b.
FI arrived boats many after the-sunset
(‘There were many boats that arrived after sunset.’)

Alexiadou and Anagnostopoulou (1998) propose that the EPP requirement associated with
a projection HP may be fulfilled either by insertion of a phrasal constituent in Spec,HP or by
insertion of a head in H0. I have argued that fı¯ is a head in Syrian Arabic, contrary to Boneh and

5 The verbhood of fı¯ is also supported circumstantially by data from the neighboring Palestinian dialect, where the
negative particle ma triggers a secondary negative suffix -+ on the following verb, as in (ia) (Mohammad 2000; Benmamoun
(2000) and Brustad (2000) report similar facts for Moroccan and Egyptian Arabic). The term fı¯ functions as a verb in
this respect, as (ib) shows.
(i) Palestinian
a. ma dÇa¯-+

≈eÇmad.
not came-NEG Ahmad
‘Ahmad did not come.’
(Mohammad 2000:37, (120b))
be-d-da¯r
not-FI-NEG in-the-house man
‘There is not a man in the house.’
(Mohammad 2000:40, (129))

zalame.

b. ma-fı¯-+

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Sichel, and accordingly reformulate the complementarity of fı¯ and PP-raising in Alexiadou and
Anagnostopoulou’s terms: vP bears an EPP feature in Syrian Arabic, which may be fulfilled either
by movement of a phrasal constituent to Spec,vP or by insertion of fı¯ in v0, as illustrated in (10).
As before, in locative constructions PP cannot undergo A-movement to Spec,vP and so fı¯ must
be inserted. In verbal sentences, as described above, this requirement is met systematically by
V-to-v movement of the verb itself, blocking fı¯.6

(9) a.

Çsab¯

ʕand kar(cid:3)m¯
at
‘Karim has a bank account.’

Karim account in-the-bank

b-Ul-bank.

PPi

ʕand kar(cid:3)m
‘at Karim’

[e]

v(cid:2)

ApplP

Appl(cid:2)

Appl

Çsab
¯
‘account’

V(cid:2)

6 The particle fı¯ is also incompatible with definite subjects, illustrated in (ia) for locative constructions. I assume
this is because a definite subject moves through Spec,vP on its way out of the predicate—a region reserved for weak
quantifiers (Diesing 1992)—obviating fı¯ in passing, as illustrated in (ib). In Syrian Arabic, such constructions are negated
by a distinct negative particle mu, which is used exclusively for constituent negation—here of PP, shown in (ic) (Cowell
1964:383–388, Brustad 2000:301–306).

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(i) a. (cid:2)*fı¯(cid:3) +-+amsiyye

(cid:2)*fı¯(cid:3) Çanb l-ba¯b.

(cid:2)*FI(cid:3) the-umbrella (cid:2)*FI(cid:3) beside the-door
‘The umbrella is next to the door.’

b. [vP +-+amsiyyei v0 [RP ti R0 [PP Çanb l-ba¯b

]]]

the-umbrella

c. +-+amsiyye mu Çanb l-ba¯b.

beside the-door

the-umbrella not beside the-door
‘The umbrella is not next to the door.’

558

(10) a.

R E M A R K S A N D R E P L I E S

Çsab¯

ʕand kar(cid:3)m¯

f(cid:3)¯
FI at
‘Karim has a bank account.’

Karim account in-the-bank

b-Ul-bank.

[e]

f(cid:3)¯

v(cid:2)

ApplP

Appl(cid:2)

ʕand kar(cid:3)m
‘at Karim’

Appl

Çsab
¯
‘account’

V(cid:2)

Now note that the possessive construction in (9a), shown again in (11a), alternates freely
with the syntactic format illustrated in (11b), in which the possessor appears clause-initially as
a bare DP, followed by the preposition »and with a suffixal inflection indexing the possessor,
followed in turn by the possessee.

(11) a. »and karı¯m Çsa¯b

b-El-bank.

Karim account in-the-bank

at
‘Karim has a bank account.’

b. karı¯m »and-u

Çsa¯b

b-El-bank.

Karim at-GEN.3MS account in-the-bank
‘Karim has a bank account.’

The inflection that appears on the preposition in (11b) is identical to the clitic paradigm
representing objects of prepositions in general. This paradigm occurs in what in Classical Arabic
are genitive case positions, for which reason I refer to this as the genitive clitic paradigm, though
it is the only vestige of genitive case in modern Arabic.7 Since Arabic makes heavy use of clitic

7 The full paradigm is 1S -i, 1PL -na, 2MS -ak, 2FS -ik, 2PL -kun, 3MS -hu, 3FS -ha, 3PL -hun. The 3FS clitic -ha
reduces to -a after a consonant. The 3MS clitic -hu reduces to -u after a consonant and to -h after a vowel. The reduced
form -h typically deletes altogether. However, these clitics cause the main word stress to shift to the syllable preceding
the clitic, which in turn bleeds shortening of word-final long vowels (Cowell 1964:19, 27). The form [wa(cid:2)ra(cid:3)] ‘behind
it’ (with unpronounced -h) is distinguishable from the unaffixed counterpart [(cid:2)wara] ‘behind’ by the placement of stress
and the accompanying vowel length contrast. I write the 3MS clitic after a vowel as -h, but emphasize here that this
morpheme is typically only audible as a stress alternation that may affect vowel length.

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559

left-dislocation in general (see especially Brustad 2000:chap. 10 and Aoun, Benmamoun, and
Choueiri 2010:chaps. 8–9), it stands to reason that it is possible to parse (11b) as the prepositional
construction in (11a) with clitic left-dislocation of the possessor to a left-peripheral position. Some
evidence discussed below indicates that (11b) can indeed be parsed in this way. But I argue below
that an additional parse is available for (11b) in which the term »and-u ‘at-GEN.3MS’ functions
syntactically like a transitive verb. Most revealingly, the negation of the construction in (11b)
does not require insertion of fı¯, as illustrated in (12b). This is unlike the prepositional possessive
construction seen in (11a), where the preposition takes a full object complement rather than a
clitic, and negation requires insertion of fı¯ (or an auxiliary), as illustrated in (12a) (and (6a)). But
(12b) is like the verbal construction in (6b), where ma directly precedes the verb without an
intervening fı¯. The term »and-u in (11b) is like a verb in this respect.8

(12) a. ma *(fı¯) »and karı¯m Çsa¯b

b-El-bank.

not *(FI) at
‘Karim doesn’t have a bank account.’

Karim account in-the-bank

b. karı¯m ma »and-u

Çsa¯b

b-El-bank.

Karim not at-GEN.3MS account in-the-bank
‘Karim doesn’t have a bank account.’

In addition to the differing behavior under negation, (11a) and (11b) differ in whether they
allow the possessee to be definite. The prepositional construction in (11a) does not, as (13a)
shows. It is unclear why, if (13b) is merely (13a) with left-dislocation of the possessor, they
should place different definiteness requirements on the theme.

(13) a. *»and karı¯m ha-ll-Ekta¯b

kama¯n.

at
Karim that-the-book too
(‘Karim has that book, too.’)
ha-ll-Ekta¯b

b. karı¯m »and-u

kama¯n.

Karim at-GEN.3MS that-the-book too
‘Karim has that book, too.’

The definite object in (13b) may also be pronominal, in which case it is pronominalized in
the accusative clitic paradigm reserved for object pronouns. A head may not bear more than one
clitic suffix in Arabic, and since the head »and already bears an inflection agreeing with the
possessor in (11b) in the genitive clitic paradigm, it may not also host an accusative object clitic.
In this case, the object clitic appears on the dummy host ya¯, seen in (14aii), which also occurs
in certain verbal constructions, such as double object constructions when both objects are pronom-

8 In Palestinian Arabic, the phrase »and(cid:2)AGR takes the secondary negative suffix -+, as (i) shows; in this respect, it
behaves like fı¯, which in turn behaves like a verb (see footnote 5). Benmamoun (2000) and Brustad (2000) report similar
facts in Moroccan and Egyptian.

(i) ma-»end-u-+

kta¯b.
not-at-him-NEG book
‘He doesn’t have a book.’
(Mohammad, n.d.:18, (58a))

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inalized, illustrated in (14b) (see Cowell’s (1964:413, 545) remark that »and(cid:2)AGR is like a verb
in this respect).9

(14) a.

i. we¯n

qa¯mu¯s-ak

l-inklı¯zi?

where dictionary-GEN.2MS the-English
‘Where’s your English dictionary?’

ii. muna »and-a

ya¯-h.

Muna at-GEN.3FS YA-ACC.3MS
‘Muna has it.’

b. muna »atg i-t-ni

ya¯-h.

Muna gave-3FS-ACC.1S YA-ACC.3MS
‘Muna gave me it.’

The pronominal possessee in (14aii) is not possible in the prepositional configuration with
»and (where the possessor occurs as object of the preposition), as (15) shows. This suggests that
the grammatical (14aii) contains a verbal element that assigns accusative case to the object.
Accusative case correlates with the possibility of definiteness seen in (13b), perhaps because case
facilitates covert movement of the possessee to a predicate-external position for strong quantifiers,
while in the absence of case the possessee cannot escape the predicate and therefore must remain
indefinite (Diesing 1992).

(15) *»and muna ya¯-h.

at Muna YA-ACC.3MS
(‘Muna has it.’)

It seems unlikely that the differences between the prepositional construction in (11a) and
the alternant in (11b) could reduce to a purely information-structural contrast accompanying clitic
left-dislocation. If anything, the derivation of a topic-comment structure accompanying clitic left-
dislocation might be expected to place an indefiniteness requirement on the possessee, since it is
part of the comment on the given information represented by the topic. There is no particular
reason to expect that the possessee can be definite just when the possessor is left-dislocated. Nor
is it clear how accusative case as reflected in the object clitic agreement paradigm in (14aii) could
arise by virtue of clitic left-dislocation of the possessor alone. On the other hand, treating »and(cid:2)AGR
in (11b) as a transitive verb explains why its object may be definite (transitive verbs generally
do not place an indefiniteness restriction on their object) and why the object is accusative (transitive
verbs assign accusative case).

We have also seen that the negation of the prepositional structure in (11a) demands fı¯, as
(12a) shows, because, as I have argued, negation requires a morphological host. If (12b) is simply

9 The accusative clitic paradigm is the same as the genitive clitic paradigm cited in footnote 7, except in the first

person singular, where the genitive is -i and the accusative -ni. Compare »and-i ‘at me’ with +a¯f-ni ‘[he] saw me’.

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(12a) with clitic left-dislocation of the possessor, it is unclear why fı¯ is not required in (12b).
There is no particular reason to expect the derivation of a topic-comment structure to suspend a
requirement associated with negation. On the other hand, the idea that »and(cid:2)AGR can be construed
as a head in (11b)/(12b) predicts that fı¯ will not be found in this environment, since »and(cid:2)AGR
itself can function as a morphological host for negation in that case.

I therefore propose that (11b) may be parsed into a syntactic structure in which »and(cid:2)AGR
has the syntactic status of a verb and may therefore function as a host for negative ma. Following
the typological literature on Arabic, I refer to »and(cid:2)AGR as a pseudoverb, since it is syntactically
but not morphologically verbal.10 Specifically, I propose that »and in (11b) is base-generated in
the head of ApplP, rather than as a preposition in the specifier of ApplP. The preposition »and
that occurs as a marker of the specifier of ApplP in the prepositional construction in (11a) is
construed in (11b) as a marker of the head of ApplP, that is, as occurring in Appl0 itself. The
possessor, which is base-generated as a complement of »and in the prepositional structure, is base-
generated as a bare DP in Spec,ApplP in the pseudoverbal structure and controls the agreement
suffix on the head in Appl0. On this view, the underlying structure of the prepositional possessive
sentence in (11a) is as shown in (16) (the same structure illustrated in (10b), based on Boneh
and Sichel’s (2010) proposal), while the underlying structure of the pseudoverbal possessive
sentence in (11b) is as shown in (17). As the head of Appl0, »and(cid:2)AGR in (17) may raise to Neg
(via v0, not shown) to provide negation with a syntactic host.

(16)

Prepositional possession

ApplP

Appl(cid:2)

ʕand kar(cid:3)m
‘at Karim’

Appl

Çsab
¯
‘account’

V(cid:2)

10 See also Cowell 1964:412–416, Comrie 1991, 2008, and Brustad 2000:151–161, among others. Among other
terms that have been described as pseudoverbs in the Arabic literature are bidd(cid:2)AGR ‘want’ (etymologically bi-wudd-i-
AGR ‘by-wish-GEN-AGR’; i.e., ‘by so-and-so’s wish’), la¯zim(cid:2)AGR ‘need’ (morphologically an active participle), fı¯(cid:2)AGR
‘can, be able’ (from the preposition fı¯ ‘in’ but with a different distribution from the existential fı¯ above, which does not
accept an agreement suffix). Although the class of pseudoverbs is larger than the class of markers of possession, only
»and and other markers of possession described later alternate between a pseudoverbal and a prepositional use.

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(17)

Pseudoverbal possession

ApplP

Appl(cid:2)

kar(cid:3)m
¯
‘Karim’

Appl

ʕand-u
‘at-3MS’

Çsab
¯
‘account’

V(cid:2)

This analysis raises the question of whether example (11b), which I claim can be parsed as
a pseudoverbal construction, may optionally be parsed as a prepositional construction in which
the possessor is clitic-left-dislocated. At least one observation indicates that this is so: fı¯ may
occur in (11b), but then the possessee may not be definite, as (18) shows (cf. (13)). This indicates
that (18) is a prepositional possessive construction, but that this construction admits clitic left-
dislocation of the possessor, deriving a string identical in word order to but different in structure
from the pseudoverbal construction.

(18) karı¯m fı¯ »and-u

kta¯b / *ha-ll-Ekta¯b

/ *ya¯-h.

Karim FI at-GEN.3MS book / *that-the-book / *YA-ACC.3MS
‘Karim has a book / *that book / *it.’

In light of this conclusion, we might also expect the possessor itself to display different
properties depending on whether fı¯ is present in the context in (18). With fı¯, the possessor is
clitic-left-dislocated; without fı¯, it is itself the external argument. It so happens that clitic-left-
dislocated DPs largely display argument properties in Arabic and for that reason are commonly
referred to as “broad subjects” rather than “topics” (Doron and Heycock 1999, 2010, Alexopoulou,
Doron, and Heycock 2004, Aoun, Benmamoun, and Choueiri 2010). Unlike in Romance languages
(see, e.g., Cinque 1990), quantificational DPs may be clitic-left-dislocated in Arabic, as shown
in (19), where an object is dislocated (Alexopoulou, Doron, and Heycock’s example (32b) from
Lebanese Arabic, here slightly Syrianized; Aoun, Benmamoun, and Choueiri (2010:197) make
this same point about Lebanese).

(19) wala wa¯Çidi b-i-fawwt-u

l-muwazg zg ifı¯n illi b-i-+tiWl-u
IND-3-let.in-PL the-employees that IND-3-work-PL with-him

no
‘No onei is such that they let in the employees who work with himi.’

ma»-ui.

one

As expected, then, there is no difference in the range of quantifiers that can occur as possessors
with and without fı¯, where fı¯ disambiguates in favor of the clitic-left-dislocation parse of the

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prepositional construction. The negative quantifier wala wa¯Çid ‘no one’, for example, may occur
as possessor in (20b) with or without fı¯. As a result, the clitic-left-dislocation parse of (11b) is
not distinguishable from the pseudoverbal parse in terms of properties of the (broad) subject; the
two construals are distinguished only in the way they interact with fı¯, negation, and the (in)definite-
ness of the object.11

(20) a. This game is so hard, that . . .
b. wala wa¯Çid (fı¯) »and-u

fı¯-ha.
(FI) at-GEN.3MS chance to-3MS-win in-it

la-yi-fu¯z

fursg a

one

no
‘No one has a chance to win it.’

Several other prepositions expressing possessive relations in Syrian Arabic also enter into the
head- vs. dependent-marking alternation I have described above. That is, there is some generality to
the alternation between head and dependent marking of possession. The other prepositions that
enter into the alternation express subcases of possession. As Naı¨m (2003), Boneh and Sichel
(2010), and others discuss (see Shboul 1983 on Standard Arabic), the allative preposition la- ‘to’
also expresses inalienable (21a) or part-whole (21b) possession, and the comitative preposition
ma» ‘with’ carries a connotation of relatively direct physical contact between the possessor and
the possessee (21c). That these are prepositional constructions is clear from the fact that they
cannot be negated without fı¯ (or an auxiliary verb, not shown).

(21) a. ma *(fı¯) la-muna »yu¯n Çilwı¯n.
not *(FI) to-Muna eyes pretty
‘Muna doesn’t have pretty eyes.’

b. ma *(fı¯) la-ll-Exza¯ne

not *(FI) to-the-cupboard four
‘The cupboard doesn’t have four doors.’

≈arba» bwa¯b.
doors

c. ma *(fı¯) ma» muna mu¯ba¯yl.

not *(FI) with Muna cell.phone
‘Muna doesn’t have a cell phone with her.’

These prepositions may also be used pseudoverbally, as illustrated in (22), where negation
does not require fı¯; the preposition-clitic complex may itself function as host for negation. Note
that la- is resyllabified as il- when it bears an inflectional suffix.

11 For the record, quantifiers like wala wa¯Çid ‘no one’ may also occur in the prepositional phrase in the prepositional
possessive construction, as (i) shows, an alternative way of expressing (20b), though when the negative quantifier is a
nonsubject the sentence must also bear clausal negation, which in turn requires fı¯ (or an auxiliary).

(i) ma fı¯ »and wala wa¯Çid fursg a
no

not FI at
‘No one has a chance to win it.’

one

la-yi-fu¯z
fı¯-ha.
chance to-3MS-win in-it

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(22) a. muna ma il-a

»yu¯n Çilwı¯n.
Muna not to-GEN.3FS eyes pretty
‘Muna doesn’t have pretty eyes.’
ma il-a
the-cupboard not to-GEN.3FS four
‘The cupboard doesn’t have four doors.’

≈arba» bwa¯b.
doors

b. l-Exza¯ne

c. muna ma ma»-a

mu¯ba¯yl.

Muna not with-GEN.3FS cell.phone
‘Muna doesn’t have a cell phone with her.’

The restrictions on the subtype of possession marked by these morphemes hold regardless
of their use as prepositions or pseudoverbs. Examples (23a–b) show that ma» ‘with’ is incompatible
with an abstract property possessee in both its prepositional and pseudoverbal uses, respectively,
and (24a–b) show that la-/il- is incompatible with alienable possession in both uses.

(23) a. *ma fı¯ ma» muna mawhibe mu¯sı¯qiyye kbı¯re.
great
not FI with Muna talent
(‘Muna doesn’t have great musical talent.’)

musical

b. *muna ma ma»-a

Muna not with-GEN.3FS talent
(‘Muna doesn’t have great musical talent.’)

mawhibe mu¯sı¯qiyye kbı¯re.
great
musical

(24) a. *ma fı¯ la-muna Çsa¯b

b-El-bank.

not FI to-Muna account in-the-bank
(‘Muna doesn’t have a bank account.’)
b-El-bank.

Çsa¯b

b. *muna ma il-a

Muna not to-GEN.3FS account in-the-bank
(‘Muna doesn’t have a bank account.’)

These observations show that there is some generality to the alternation between the preposi-
tional and pseudoverbal use of the prepositions that express possession. In each case, the preposi-
tion can be used to mark the possessor directly or to mark the head of the possessive relation.
They differ only in restrictions they place on the possession relation: la- requires inalienability,
ma» requires direct contact. »and is the least restrictive. In terms of the present proposal, this
situation suggests that the different prepositions reflect different “flavors” of possession relation.
We might represent these different flavors as features of Appl0—[(cid:2)inalienable] for la, [(cid:2)contact]
for ma». This idea represents a fine-grain extension of the notion that different thematic roles of
indirect objects are assigned by different Appl heads (Pylkka¨nen 2002, 2008, Cuervo 2003, 2010).
The crucial thing for present purposes is that as restrictions on the possessive relation that Appl0
denotes, these features are equally capable of selecting the form of the preposition in Spec,ApplP
as the head Appl0 itself, since the specifier is within the selectional domain of the head. These
formatives—»and, la-, and ma»—carry the same features in the prepositional and pseudoverbal
formats. In some dialects of Arabic, though, the prepositional variant has fallen out of usage. I
describe the significance of this in the following section.

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3 Head Marking Is prior to Incorporation

The analysis of the syntax of possession in Syrian Arabic outlined above bears a resemblance to
certain proposals in diachronic syntax. Roberge and Troberg (2009), for example, claim that
noncore dative clitics in Romance languages are Appl0 heads along the lines of Sportiche’s (1996)
analysis of clitic constructions; further, they claim that these constructions arose as reanalyses of
full pronouns that occurred in the specifiers of those heads, as schematized in (25) and (26)
(Roberge and Troberg 2009:287, (59a–b)). These clitics occur above vP.

(25)

Late Latin

ApplP

Appl(cid:2)

pronounDAT

Appl
(cid:2)

(26) Modern Romance

ApplP

(cid:2)

Appl(cid:2)

Appl
cliticDAT

Similarly, citing Horrocks (1997), Roberts and Roussou (2003) consider the development
of the modern Greek negative marker dhen ‘not’ to be a reanalysis of the quantifier oudhen
‘nothing’ in Spec,NegP as the head Neg itself; this is illustrated in (27) and (28) (after Roberts
and Roussou 2003:159, (53b); (MP (cid:4) Modal Phrase)). Roberts and Roussou regard this process
as one main type of grammaticalization, the other main type being reanalysis of a head H adjoined
(i.e., raised) to a head X as X itself.

(27)

Koine Greek

NegP

Neg(cid:2)

oudhen
‘nothing’

Neg
(cid:2)

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(28) Modern Greek

NegP

(cid:2)

Neg(cid:2)

Neg
dhen
‘not’

The analysis of Syrian Arabic described above bears a resemblance to these diachronic
events. There, the expression P(cid:2)AGR can be construed either as a PP (containing an object clitic
pronoun) in Spec,ApplP or as an inflected head in Appl0. A conventional analysis of transitive
verbs of possession going back to Benveniste 1966 treats them as derived by incorporation of an
abstract preposition into an auxiliary or functional head. Possessive verbs in some languages
transparently display the internal composition Aux(cid:2)P, seemingly proving Benveniste’s point.
Evidence reviewed below, however, suggests that that state of affairs is preceded by a diachronic
step in which the preposition is reanalyzed as a transitive verb in its own right, along the lines
of what I have argued for Syrian Arabic. It is not incorporation of P into an auxiliary that derives
a transitive verb, but reanalysis of P as a head marker, which may in turn feed incorporation.

For example, Heine (1997:77–78) describes the development of the Coptic verb w[nta-f
‘have-3MS’ from Late Egyptian wn mdj-f ‘be with-3MS’ as fusion of the preposition with the
auxiliary in the latter form, resulting in a morpheme that is inflected in the same paradigm as the
clitic suffix of the erstwhile preposition, parallel to Arabic. Stassen (2009:chap. 6) describes
similar diachronic developments in a variety of other languages. The beginnings of this process
can be observed in Syrian Arabic. In Syrian Arabic, the pseudoverb il(cid:2)AGR, but not the preposition
la-, may be encliticized to a preceding auxiliary ka¯n, as (29) shows. The encliticization is evident
in the shortening of the stem vowel of the auxiliary ka¯n in (29a) in the environment of the complex
coda created by cliticization. Some but not all speakers also admit assimilation of /n/ to [l] in
this environment. The bona fide preposition la- (preceding a full DP), however, cannot be encliti-
cized to preceding ka¯n, as (29b) shows; only pseudoverbal il(cid:2)AGR may.

(29) a. muna kan-l-a

»yu¯n Çilwı¯n.
/ %kal-l-a
Muna was-to-GEN.3FS / was-to-GEN.3FS eyes pretty
‘Muna had pretty eyes.’
b. *kan-la-muna »yu¯n Çilwı¯n.
was-to-Muna eyes pretty
(‘Muna had pretty eyes.’)

Although this optional encliticization is a potential launching point for future reanalysis of
kall(cid:2)AGR into a verbal word form of the kind seen in Coptic and other languages, the synchronic
evidence in Syrian presented in this article indicates that il(cid:2)AGR is already functioning as a verb
in this language, even when it does not cliticize to an auxiliary. The verbal use feeds encliticization

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567

(29a); the prepositional use does not (29b). Reanalysis of the preposition as a verb makes enclitici-
zation possible; lexicalization of the encliticized form may follow.

Just this diachronic development is postulated for the Maltese dialect of Arabic by Camilleri
(2019). As Comrie (1981), Peterson (2009), Spagnol (2009), and others describe, possession in
the present tense is expressed in Maltese by gÇand(cid:2)AGR, cognate with Syrian »and(cid:2)AGR (30a).
If gÇand is followed by a full DP, it may only express location at the DP referent. The possessive
use is only found for the inflected form whose subject functions as possessor. But to express
possession in the nonpresent tense, the transitive verb kell(cid:2)AGR is used (30b) (the citation form
is the past tense form; for the future, the predictable imperfect form ikoll(cid:2)AGR is used). AGR
represents the genitive clitic paradigm in Maltese as in Syrian. Comrie and others analyze the
nonpresent form as fusion of the string kien il(cid:2)AGR, cognate with Syrian ka¯n il(cid:2)AGR. What in
Syrian is still an optional encliticization of the pseudoverb il(cid:2)AGR to an auxiliary has been reana-
lyzed as a word form in Maltese.

(30) a. Pawlu gÇand-u

ktieb.
Pawlu at-GEN.3MS book
‘Pawlu has a book.’

b. Pawlu kel-l-u

ktieb.
Pawlu was-to-GEN.3MS book
‘Pawlu had a book.’

The incorporated form kell(cid:2)AGR ((cid:2) kien il(cid:2)AGR) is now in an allomorphic relationship
with the nonincorporated form gÇand(cid:2)AGR, conditioned by tense. Both gÇand(cid:2)AGR and kell(cid:2)AGR
display diagnostics of transitivity (see Comrie 1981, 1991, Borg and Azzopardi-Alexander 1997,
Stassen 2009, Camilleri 2019). However, Camilleri (2019) points out that il(cid:2)AGR is still used in
contemporary Maltese as an auxiliary in its own right, marking the continuous perfect construction,
shown in (31a). She reports this use in Syrian as well, as shown in (31b). But in Maltese, il(cid:2)AGR
in its perfect usage may not cliticize to an auxiliary as it does obligatorily in its possessive use.
In Syrian, on the other hand, enclisis of il(cid:2)AGR to ka¯n is optional in both its perfect use, shown
in (31b), and its possessive use, shown in (29a).

(31) a. Maltese
Kien-et
be.PFV-3FS have-GEN.3FS / *be.PFV-have-GEN.3FS years long 3FS-live there
‘She had lived there for many years.’
(Camilleri 2019:702, (51))

snin twal t-gÇix

/ *kel-l-ha

il-ha

hemm.

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il-u

/ kan-l-u

b. Syrian
Ka¯n
be.PFV have-GEN.3FS / be.PFV-have-GEN.3FS /
musa¯fir.
traveling
‘He had been traveling for a month.’
(Camilleri 2019:701, (50))

/ %kal-l-u

+ahr

be.PFV-have-GEN.3FS month

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In Maltese, il(cid:2)AGR incorporates into the auxiliary only when it expresses possession, not
when it expresses the continuous perfect (Camilleri glosses both as ‘have’ and draws parallels to
the English use of have to mark the perfect). Camilleri concludes that the perfect use of il(cid:2)AGR
developed before the possessive use became obligatorily subject to incorporation into the auxiliary
kien. If it had developed later, the perfect use would also obligatorily encliticize to kien in the
nonpresent. Yet the perfect use has in common with the possessive use that neither admits an
uninflected prepositional use. In both cases, il is obligatorily inflected and the DP indexed by the
inflection occurs as syntactic subject. This means that the prepositional possessive use of la- had
developed into the pseudoverb il(cid:2)AGR before its use as a marker of the continuous perfect devel-
oped, which in turn preceded the development of the incorporation structure for expressing posses-
sion in the nonpresent. If this diachronic trajectory is representative, then transitive verbs of
possession of the form Aux(cid:2)P are not in the first instance derived by preposition incorporation;
rather, they are derived by reanalysis of a preposition as a verb, that is, of dependent marking as
head marking. Incorporation of this new head into a higher functional head might follow, but is
not essential to the derivation of a transitive verb of possession.

Then, the Maltese verb kell(cid:2)AGR does not strictly speaking contain the preposition l-; rather,
it contains the verb l-, together with the morpheme kel ((cid:2) kien) that expresses tense. In light of
this, such languages do not offer any particular impetus to analyze a verb like English have as
consisting of abstract Aux and P. An analysis of have as a nonalternating head marker of the
possession relation in Appl0 is compatible with the analysis of the syntax and morphological
marking of possession fleshed out above. Have differs from Syrian »and(cid:2)AGR in being morphologi-
cally compatible with tense, and so does not require auxiliary support. This difference is fundamen-
tally morphological, not syntactic. The idea that have is a spell-out of Aux(cid:2)P is not supported
by mere analogy to Coptic or Maltese.

4 Conclusion

This article has presented an extension of Boneh and Sichel’s (2010) analysis of prepositions in
the expression of possession in Levantine Arabic that captures the pseudoverbal use of the same
prepositions. It characterizes the syntactic relationship between the two constructions as dependent
vs. head marking of possession. Concretely, Syrian Arabic marks either the possessor in Spec,-
ApplP or the possession relation in Appl0. What is revealing about Arabic is that the marker is
the same: a class of prepositions mark possession in Arabic, and the peculiarities of their use
(that la- marks inalienable possession, ma» possession under close physical contact, etc.) apply
to their use both as dependent and as head markers. According to this analysis, head vs. dependent
marking is a crosslinguistic parameter for the expression of possession, whose value is not fixed
in Syrian Arabic (both are equally possible).

The parametric point of variation at issue here is usually framed in terms of preposition
incorporation. I have claimed that to the extent that preposition incorporation is found in the
syntax of possession, as in for example Coptic and Maltese Arabic, it is preceded by a reanalysis
of the preposition as a verb, as I have described here for Syrian Arabic. This reanalysis step
exemplifies a major type of diachronic change as described by Roberts and Rousson (2003). This

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569

“pseudo” verb may incorporate into a higher functional head, but incorporation is not essential
to its construal as a verb.

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