Modal Ellipsis in Najdi Arabic

Abstract

This paper discusses modal ellipsis in Najdi Arabic (NA) as a case of VP ellipsis. One of the goals of this paper is to show whether or not modal ellipsis exists in NA. It has been argued that modal ellipsis should be considered as a type of VP ellipsis. In VP ellipsis, the main predicate and its arguments are deleted. However, modal ellipsis is obligatorily licensed by a modal, and the complement is deleted. The properties of modal ellipsis show that modal ellipsis allows a sloppy and strict reading, backward anaphora, the antecedent and the ellipsis site to be embedded, and it can appear within an island domain. These facts indicate that this type of ellipsis exhibits the same properties as VP ellipsis. Studies on Arabic dialects have shown that some allow modal ellipsis as a type of VP ellipsis (e.g., Libyan Arabic), while others do not (e.g., Jordanian Arabic). This paper provides evidence that modal ellipsis is analyzed as VP ellipsis in NA. Thus, VP ellipsis where modals are the licensing verbs, as has been found in Libyan Arabic (see Algryani, 2012), can also be found in NA, such as with the modal gedər ‘could / was able to’. Arabic only allows V-to-T movement in past tense; therefore, the said modal must be in the past tense so that the modal can raise to T and VP gets deleted.