الفهرس 
Introduction and Theoretical BackgroundOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
This study investigates argument structure of verbs in Modern English and Classical Arabic. These two languages belong to two completely different families, the Indi-European and the Semitic. In addition, the verb in English has morphologically concatenative, i.e., the root of the verb cannot be disintegrated into smaller units. The morphological operations allowed in English verbs are prefixation, suffixation and in rare examples infixation. In contrast, the verb form in Arabic has a non-concatenative nature, i.e., the radicals faʔ, ʕayn and lam of the verb are non-adjacent and are intervened with variable phonemes. The derivation of new forms out of the base form is achieved through the variation of these phonemes, which is, in turn, the decisive element regarding the argument structure and the semantic notions indicated by that verb. Hence, analysing the argument structure of verbs in Arabic necessitates an interface between phonology, morphology, semantics and syntax. Through providing evidence, the study proves that argument structure is similar in the two languages under investigation, in spite of the syntactic parametric variations between them.
This study aims, furthermore, to illustrate that the VP-Split analysis can account, in a structurally unified manner, the intricate relations between the argument structure of verbs, which is semantic in nature, and their syntactic realization in English as well as Classical Arabic. It is proposed that the core VP contains the base form of the Arabic verb with its complement(s), if any are required, and the light v hosts the variable phonemes.
The study is divided into five chapters. The first chapter provides an introduction and the theoretical background. The second chapter includes three main sections. The first section explores argument structure of predicates. The second section discusses the main tenets of the VP-Shell hypothesis. The third section overviews each verb type in English (according to their argument structure). The third chapter studies the typology of Arabic triliteral verbs forms and its implications for Linguistic Theory. The fourth chapter aims to find areas of both symmetries and asymmetries between both typologies, the English and the Classical Arabic. Finally, the fifth chapter summarizes findings of the study.