Prepositional Phrases in Modern Standard Arabic: An Agree-Based Analysis Ahmad Ismail Assiri Faculty of Languages and Translation, King Khalid University, Abha, Saudi Arabia Abstract—Prepositions, in Arabic traditional grammar literature, have been analyzed as Genitive Case assigners (Hasan, 1976; Sibaweihi, n.d.). This paper presents a phase-based analysis for prepositions (Ps) in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). The analysis is built on Chomsky's (2005, 2008) Feature-Inheritance model of Agree. In this proposed analysis, Prepositional Phrases (PPs) in MSA are analyzed as phases, where a Probe-Goal relation is established between the prepositional Probe p-P and the DP in its searching domain (i.e., its complement). The outcome of this relation is valuation of the unvalued Case feature on this DP complement (i.e., Genitive Case), and a similar valuation to the unvalued phi-features (φ-fs) on the Probe p-P. Index Terms—agree, feature-inheritance, Arabic, preposition I. INTRODUCTION Arabic prepositions (Ps) such as ila, fi, min, bi-, and li in the following examples are Case assigners which assign Genitive Cases to their complement Determiner Phrases (DPs), as can be seen from the morphological realization on each of these complements: (1) ðahaba Ali-un ila as-suuq-i went Ali-Nom to Def-market-Gen 'Ali went to the market' (2) yuʒadu kitaab-un fi al-ћaqiibat-i (There) Exists book-Nom in Def-bag-Gen 'There is a book in the bag' (3) ʒaaʔa Ali-un min al-madrasat -i Came Ali-Nom from Def-school-Gen 'Ali came from the school' (4) marartu bi- ar-rajul-ayn Passed(1s) by Def-man-(dual/Gen) ‘I passed by the two men’ (5) Ɂaʕṭaytu li- Ahmad-a ar-risalat-a gave(1s) to Ahmad-Gen Def-letter-Acc ‘I gave the letter to Ahmad’ The morphological realization of the Genitive Case varies depending on the type of the DP complement. That is, - i is the default form for the Genitive Case morpheme. The morpheme -ayn is used with dual nouns as in rajul-ayn (dual form of ‘man’), while -a is used with the name Ahmad, which is diptote (Hasan, 1976; Sibaweihi, n.d.). When the complement of a P is followed by a modifying adjective, the Genitive Case morpheme -i appears on that adjective as well: (6) ʔakala Ali-un min aṭ-ṭaʕaam-i al-laðeeð-i Ate(3m) Ali-Nom from Def-food-Gen Def-delicious-Gen 'Ali ate from the delicious food' Note that Arabic adjectives (generally) show agreement with their modifying nouns in Number, Gender, and Case. The adjective al-laðeeð-i 'Def-delicious' in (6) agrees with aṭ-ṭaʕaam-i 'food' in Case (Genitive), and the only possible source for this Case is the preposition min 'from'. Section II presents a comparison between Arabic and English Prepositional Phrases (PPs) in terms of form, function, usage, meaning, and syntactic function. An overview of some analyses of PPs will be presented in section III. The proposed analysis will be presented in section IV, followed by some concluding remarks in section V. II. OVERVIEW OF ENGLISH AND ARABIC PREPOSITIONAL PHRASES PPs have been classified based on their function, form, and usage. Ps across languages function as connectors of one word in the sentence to another. Specifically, Ps usually connect their complements to other parts in the sentence, such as nouns, verbs, or adjectives (Quirk, Greenbaum, Leech, & Svartvik, 1985; Van Valin, 2004; Wishon & Burks, 1980): (7) There is a book in the bag. ISSN 1798-4769 Journal of Language Teaching and Research, Vol. 12, No. 6, pp. 884-891, November 2021 DOI: https://doi.org/10.17507/jltr.1206.04 © 2021 ACADEMY PUBLICATION