Question Formation in Iraqi Arabic: A GenerativeApproach A Dissertation

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate the construction of question formation mainly in Iraqi Arabic (IA) dialect with reference to English adopting the Minimalist Program (MP). This study falls into two parts. The first part investigates the wh- movements in English and IA in the light of Chomsky‟s Minimalist Program. The second part of the study analyzes the strategies of wh-questions in IA which are the wh-in-situ, the intermediate Comp, and the wh-movement strategy with respect to Bounding Theory, the Split vP analysis, and Phase movement. A new set of data concerning the behavior of wh-operators in Iraqi Arabic is represented. This data study that the Logical Form movement in IA must observe locality constraints. The wh-operator must move to the closest specifier (Spec) position of a [+WH] complementizer (Comp). The study diagnoses a unique property of the wh-operator in IA. Unlike English where the wh-operator may occur in the Spec of the matrix Comp, or in-situ as in Chinese, in IA wh-operator may occur in any Spec of an intermediate Comp between the matrix Comp and the in-situ position. Whether the hosting Comp is [+WH] or [-WH], the wh-operator in IA exercises wide scope over the entire question having a main question reading. IA as a dialect has proven to be one which is rich in its analysis of question formation. The researcher empirically tries to prove this optionality of the wh-phrase in the light of MP analysis) Chomsky‟s Minimalist Program captures a number of unrelated phenomena that pertain to the behavior of wh-questions in IA. Mostly, the behavior of the wh-operator that occurs in a [-wh] Comp in a main question. An enriched tree can smoothly capture the behavior of whquestions in IA. The minimalist