Case in Verbless Sentences: A Feature-inheritance Based Approach

This article argues that the assignment of nominative case to the subject in present tense verbless sentences (VS) in Standard Arabic (SA) is achieved through the mechanism of Feature Inheritance (FI). Contrary to the analysis that posits assignment through default case, we propose that T(ense) inherits its uninterpretable φ-features and case assigning properties from the C(omplementizer), even in the absence of an overt verb. This view, which uses the Minimalist Program (MP) as a framework, maintains theoretical consistency with phase theory and tries to help unify subject case assignment accounts in verbal and verbless sentences. Accordingly, the analysis also explains the subject’s syntactic movements and reinforces the view that verbless sentences instantiate full CP structures with the subject base generated in Spec, PredP, then moving to Spec, TP to satisfy the Extended Projection Principle (EPP) feature and finally ending up in Spec, TopP. Overall, the paper concludes that FI provides a unified and economical explanation for case licensing, which can be applied across all clause types in SA.