Extraction and Deletion in Palestinian Arabic Comparatives

Yaron McNabb and Christopher Kennedy

In Broselow, Ellen & Hamid Ouali (eds.), Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XXII-XXIII, Selected papers from the Annual Symposia on Arabic Linguistics. John Benjamins.

The focus of this study is the structure of comparative constructions in Palestinian Arabic. In this dialect, comparative clauses that are headed by the complementizer ma 'that' exhibit a difference in the distribution of quality and quantity adjectives. We explain these distributional differences by proposing distinct internal structures for the constituents that include quantity and quality adjectives, and in terms of the interaction of (un)interpretable features, movement, and PF-deletion.