Aspects of Noun Phrase Structure in Arabic

This project deals with the way Arabic and related languages talk about quantity. It does so through a detailed study of the way quantity words are used, the Arabic counterparts of words like much, many, little, few, very, a little, a lot, and so on, as well as comparative and superlative words (more, most, less, least, etc.). In better studied languages like English, these words must occur next to the word they measure out. You say Sammy left more food on his plate than Sarah, where more measures out food. But in Arabic it is possible to say Sammy left food on his plate more than Sarah with the same interpretation, where more is linearly separated from food. The striking thing about this is that it aligns with prior claims about English that say that the interpretation of comparative sentence requires a factorization of the sentence into the pieces that more relates. In the case at hand, these are Sammy (the target of comparison), Sarah (the standard) and the description left so-and-so much food on their plate. The word more says that the target exceeds the standard in terms of the description. This factorization separates both the comparative phrase more than Sarah and the target Sammy from the description, but none of this happens overtly in English. In Arabic, though, at least part of this factorization happens overtly , namely the separation of the degree phrase more than Sarah from the description. This gives us the opportunity to study the relation between form and (factorized) meanings in a language that doesnt keep its semantic processes fully hidden. The first part of this project deals with the question of which quantity words in Arabic have this propertythat they can be separated from what they measure outand under what circumstances. Differences in which words can undergo suface separation from what they measure out is expected to provide insights into the nature of the phenomenon. The other part of the project seeks to find out where this property comes from historically. It is rare in human languages but seems to be shared by many if not all dialects of Arabic. The project will survey the behavior of quantity words in Arabic dialects and related languages to determine how far back in history the p roperty goes and whether it can perhaps be attributed to Arabics parent language Proto -Semitic.