Minimal Apology in the Hijazi Arabic Clause by Educated Adults*

Abstract

Abstract. The main aim of this paper is to provide a syntactic description of verbal and verbless (also called equative or nominative) clauses and apology expressions evolving around their clauses in Hijazi Arabic (HA) by educated adults within the framework of the Minimalist Program (MP) (Chomsky, 1995, 2000; Ouhalla, 2002; Shlonsky, 1998). This topic has received no previous linguistic attention. The discussion is restricted to the syntax of the HA clause as well as apology expressions to identify projections of the Adverb Phrases where apology in HA is predominated by simple adverbials. Following minimalism, it has been found that the HA verbal and verbless clause structure shares basic feature checking patterns as those in Standard Arabic (SA) and most of the Arabic dialects discussed. Generally, the adverbial phrases inside their clauses are considered lexical elements that have also lexical meaning which give them the freedom of order flexibility at times, a syntactic feature that is congruous with Arabic typology. Specifically, syntactic description has been captured where the MP conceptualization allows us describe grammatical constraints that govern the syntactic behavior of HA apology expressions.