Nunation in Arabic

Abstract

Traditionally, Nunation is a phenomenon in Arabic that signals the Case of a noun or adjective. It is marked by the inflection of the final letter in a word with a diacritical mark called "tanwin" represented by the letter /n/ in transliteration. The nunation is reminiscent of Semitic constructions, and it is constrained to be strictly attached to the head noun, just like the case in construct state constructions (CSCs) where the embedded genitive NP must be strictly adjacent to the head noun. The fact that they both (nunation-structures and CSCs) are in complementary distribution suggests that they should be treated similarly. Based on observations, Jarrah & Zibin (2016) argue that the nunation suffix, -n, is used to fill the head position in a determiner phrase when the definite article or a personal pronoun does not occupy the latter. This argument raises several questions in both syntax and morphology. In this paper, I suggest a new analysis of the Arabic nunation as a complement attaching to the head and absorbing Case marking. Viewed this way, the nunation affix in Arabic illustrates the complement in the head-complement pattern of grammatical relations.