An LFG Analysis of Gapping Constructions in Taif Arabic

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.


INTRODUCTION
This paper is concerned with gapping constructions in Taif "Hijazi" Arabic (TA) (a Hijazi Arabic variety spoken in Taif) in which the initial conjunct is syntactically complete and the non-initial conjunct is missing the verb(s).This is exemplified in English in the following example (missing materials appear in strike-thu).
The verb of the non-initial conjunct (e.g., g) is deleted under identity with that of the initial-conjunct (e.g., a).Therefore, the non-initial conjunct shares the missed elements that are overtly spelt-out in the initial conjunct.Following usual terminology, we call the missing material the Gap, the initial conjunct (e.g., a) the antecedent clause, the non-initial conjunct (e.g., g) the gapped clause, and the remaining elements in the gapped clause remnants.
Gapping has distinctive features that make it different from other syntactic constructions.For example, Gapping differs from Verb Phrase Ellipsis (VPE) and Pseudo-gapping.In VPE constructions, the main predicate with its argument are missing as in (2) below (Sag, 1976).Therefore, VPE differs from gapping as illustrated in (1) above.
(2) John drinks coffee, and Peter does drink coffee too.
Moreover, Gapping differs from Pseudogapping constructions, as illustrated in (3) below (Levin, 1986).In pseudogapping construction as in (3), the auxiliary is not removed whereas the main verb is removed.
(3) John has drunk coffee and Peter has tea.
To our knowledge, there is no previous description or analysis of gapping in TA.However, there are many approaches proposed to account for gapping in other languages including English and Russian.One of the approaches within a derivation approach (i.e., in Minimalism framework) is proposed by Johnson (2004) who claims that Gapping in English (e.g. as in Some people speak to Sal and others to Henry) is a result of A(cross)-T(he)-B(oard) movement of the verbs from each member of a coordinate structure.In non-derivational approach as in LFG framework, Maxwell and Manning (1996) propose the use of F(inite)-S(tate)-A(utomata) in a surface based approach to non-constituent coordination, suggesting that such an account might afford an analysis of gapping as a case of non-constituent coordination. 1However, such approaches cannot be extended to cover TA data presented in this structure.In other words, they cannot account for the facts of gapping in TA presented in the current paper.
Therefore, this paper has three aims.First, it aims to identify the gapping constructions in TA and its properties.Second, it aims to show how previous approaches including Johnson (2004) and Maxwell and Manning (1996) fail to account for TA gapping.Finally, it will provide analysis of TA gapping within LFG; framework adopting a function spreading approach and show how it is able to account for the facts of gapping in TA, using mechanisms proposed independently for other construction types.
This paper is structured as follows.Section 2 outlines the basic characteristics of TA including word order, simple and compound morphosyntactic tenses.Section 3 presents the issue and the properties of gapping in TA.Section 4 presents first a brief overview of two previous approaches (i.e., Johnson's (2004) transformational approach, and Maxwell and Manning's (1996) LFG approach) proposed to account for gapping in languages including English.Then, it shows how they fail to account for the gapping in TA.Section 5 introduces the LFG approach to constituent coordination through discussion of sentential coordination patterns in TA.Then, it will present our function spreading approach to gapping in TA and show how it is able to account for the facts presented in Section 3. Section 6 concludes the paper.

TAIF ARABIC (TA)
Taif Arabic is a variety of Hijazi Arabic spoken in Taif city, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia as shown in Figure 1.The syntax of this dialect receives little attention in the literature (Alotaibi, 2014).TA, likes Arabic in general, is a head-initial language, albeit has a free pattern of word order.
In TA, the following word patterns are possible (VO), (VSO), (SVO), (VOS), (OVS), (OSV), as in (4) below (the last two with an optional pronominal affix doubling the object).Irrespective of its position, the verb displays full agreement with the subject.continuous.The interpretation of 6a) can be either past progressive or habitual progressive, yuku: n with an imperfective form of the lexical verb yields a present progressive interpretation, as in (6b), and yuku: n with a perfective form of the lexical verb yields a present perfect interpretation, as in (6d).
( Ahmad be.pfv.3smwrite.pfv.3smpoem 'Ahmad has written a poem.'In this section, we presented the permissible word orders, and the simple and compound morphosyntactic tenses in TA.We noticed that verbs in TA agree with its subject in gender, number and person.In the following section, we will present the issue and properties of gapping in TA.

THE ISSUE AND PROPERTIES OF GAPPING IN TA
The properties of gapping in many languages including English (Johnson, 2004), Russian (McShane, 2005), Chinese (Paul, 1999), Korean (Kang, 1996), German (Repp, 2009) and Jordanian Arabic (Albulkhari, 2016) have been discussed in the literature.Based on these studies, the properties of gapping in TA will be identified in this section.
Second, gapping is restricted to symmetrical coordination as in (8a) and may occur in (symmetrical) comparative structure as in (8b).In subordinating conjunctions and asymmetric coordination, gapping is not possible as in (8c).( 8) a. John likes bananas, and Sally pears.(Wyngaerd, 2007:  'The boys will study Chemistry, and the girls (will study) Physics.' b. ˤali ka: n yuktub risa: lah w xa: lid q asˤidah.Ali be.pfv.3sgmwrite.ipfv.3smletter and Khaled poem 'Ali was writing/used to write a letter, and Khaled a poem.'In (22a), the verb ħa-yu-drus-un 'will-study' is inflected with future tense marker (ha-), present tense (yu-) (i.e., imperfective), and indicative mood (-un).This information spelt out in the first conjunct is as same as the information missed in the second conjunct.That is, tense and mood cannot be different in both conjuncts (i.e., two events).In (22b), the auxiliary ka: n is used with another verb yuktub (i.e., must be in imperfective form) to express a various types of tense and mode (i.e., ambiguous between past progressive and habitual progressive).The auxiliary ka: n with the verb yuktub spelt out in the first conjunct is gapped in the second conjunct.If the gapped clause in (22b) is completed, the structure should be as in (23) below.(23) ˤali ka: n yuktub risa: lah w xa: lid ka: n Ali be.pfv.3sgmwrite.ipfv.3smletter and Khaled be.pfv.3sgmyuktub qasˤidah.write.ipfv.3smpoem 'Ali was writing/used to write a letter, and Khaled was writing/used to write a poem.' TA example corresponding to English pseudo-gapping (as in sentence 3 above) is ungrammatical.This is illustrated in the example below.(24) *ˤali ka: n y u k t u b risa: lah w xa: lid ka: n Ali be.pfv.3sgmwrite.ipfv.3smletter and Khaled be.pfv.3sgmqasˤidah.write.ipfv.3smpoem Intended: 'Ali was writing/used to write a letter, and Khaled was writing/used to write a poem.' In ( 24), the verb yuktub 'write' preceding the auxiliary ka: n is gapped in the non-initial conjunct, and hence, it results in being ungrammatical.
As for agreement properties, members of the coordinate structure do not necessarily share them.The examples below illustrate.In (25a), the verbally incorporated subject in the first conjunct is not shared into the gapped clause.If the verbally incorporated subject in the gapped clause is spelt out, it should be as in (25b).Bing so, the morphological agreement displayed in the initial conjunct is not as same as the one in the non-initial conjunct.( 25 26), the complement of the missed verb ˀal-laħam 'the-meat' is syntactically realized before the subject Khaled.This indicates that the word order exhibited in the non-initial conjunct(s) in TA gapping constructions is not necessarily required to be as same as the word order exhibited in the initial conjunct.
In this section, we demonstrate that some properties of gapping in TA are similar to the properties of gapping in English, and hence gapping as a syntactic construction exists in TA.In addition, we discussed the properties and the issue of the TA gapping.In the following section, we will discuss previous approaches proposed to account for gapping in languages including English and Jordanian Arabic.In this section, we will show that none of these approaches is about to account for the facts of TA gapping presented in this section.

EXISTING APPROACHES TO GAPPING
To account for gapping constructions in languages including English, approaches are proposed in the literature.One of the approaches within derivational framework is that gapping is interpreted as a trace of ATB movement (Johnson, 2004).This approach is adopted by Albulkhari (2016) to account for gapping constructions in Jordanian Arabic.
Following Johnson (2004), Albulkhari (2016) interprets gapping in Jordanian Arabic as a result of a low-coordination vP.He claims that the verb is moving Across the Board (ATB) from both conjuncts into T thereabouts, as in (34b ]] It is not clear how this movement approach could account for the range of attested TA cases presented in Section 3, including agreement and word order mismatches.
Within non-derivational approach (i.e., LFG framework), Maxwell and Manning (1996) propose the use of FSA-based rule factorization as an approach to non-constituent coordination, and suggest that such an account might afford and analysis of gapping as a case of non-constituent coordination.They apply their 'rule-splitting' approach to non-constituent coordination such as ( 28). ( 28 dinator.Therefore, this approach suggests that gapping is possible regardless of the coordinator chosen.Moreover, the spreading equations are single level, accounting for the lack of embedding under gapping.This rules out the possibility for the gapping to operate out of or into embedded conjuncts.Also, this approach accounts for the recursive property of gapping.This is because it proposes an account based on spreading equations and the interaction of distributive features with coordination accounts.
Finally, this approach predicts the observed interaction of ATB extraction with gapping; this is because the account suggested is based on spreading equations, together with the LFG analysis of coordination and unbounded dependency constructions.

CONCLUSION
This paper has proposed analysis of gapping constructions in TA, in which the verb is expressed only in the initial conjunct.Working in LFG as a constraint-based framework, and in particular using a spreading-function approach, we show how this approach allows us straightforwardly and accurately to distribute the overtly spelt out element(s) in the initial conjunct over the members of the coordinate structure, yielding a well-formed and well-explained structure.We show how the current approach avoids the problems of the previous analyses proposed in approaches treating gapping as a result of a trace of movement, and as a non-constituent coordination.

END NOTE
1. Approaches to gapping proposed in other languages (e.g., English, Russian) exist such as gapping as a result of deletion and linearization theory in HPSG.For space limit, we cannot review all these previous approaches.

Figure 1 .
Figure 1.Map: Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (Taif city) ) a. John gambled in Sydney on Monday and in Monaco on Thursday.b. c-structure c. f-structure (Vicente, 2010:does not operate out of, or into, embedded conjuncts.An example from English is in (9) below.(9)*Amandawent to Santa Cruz, and Bill thinks that Claire to Monterrey.(Vicente,2010:209)Fourth,gapping is subject to a parallelism constraint, excluding, for example, active/passive mismatches (unlike VPE).The examples in (10) below illustrate.(10)a.*Thatshouldbeexplained to individual students by the TA, but the professor to the class in general.(GappingConstruction)b.That can all be explained, and the professor.(VPEConstruction)Fifth,gappingisrecursivein that the initial conjunct can be followed by any number of conjuncts which lack materials present in the initial conjunct as in (11) below (McShane, 2005).(11)Jane'sbirthday is in May, John's in June, and Rex's in July.(McShane,2005:138)Thefinalproperty of gapping is that across-the-board extractive (ATB) from coordinate structure is possible, as exemplified in (12) below.(12)WhatdidMarytellJonand Peter Susan?Similar effects can be shown for Taif Arabic.In the following, we identify eleven properties of Gapping in this Arabic vernacular.First, TA gapping requires an overt syntactic antecedent.That is, there is no backward anaphora as in VPE.An example is in (13) below.Ali went to Jeddah, and Khaled thinks that Faisal went to Riyadh.'Inaddition,TAgapping from a conjunct embedded position is impossible as exemplified in (17) below (see alsoAlbukhari (2016: 56-57)for Jordanian Arabic).