An LFG Analysis of Gapping Constructions in Taif Arabic

Abstract

We identify and propose an analysis in LFG of Gapping construction in Taif “Hijazi” Arabic (TA). Gapping occurs in a coordination structure where the initial conjunct is syntactically complete and the non-initial conjunct is incomplete. To my knowledge, there is no previous description or analysis of gapping in TA. There have been two competing analyses in the literature on gapping, which view gapping as a result of a trace of movement and non-constituent coordination. In this paper, we show that none of these approaches succeeds to account for Gapping in TA, and hence, they fail to capture the facts of gapping in this Arabic dialect. Instead, we adopts a function-spreading approach within Lexical-Functional Grammar (LFG), and show how it is able to account for the facts of gapping in TA, using mechanisms proposed independently for other construction types.