Strategies for Forming the Wh-Interrogative in Najdi Arabic

This paper examines the four strategies for forming the wh-interrogative described by Aoun, Benmamoun, and Choeiri (2010): the gap strategy, the resumptive strategy, the class II resumptive strategy, and the in-situ strategy in the Najdi Arabic dialect. Aoun et al. (2010) investigated these strategies in standard Arabic and Lebanese Arabic. Some Arabic dialects use a subset of these strategies, while others use all four, at least in specific contexts. The contribution of this paper is to shed light on how Najdi Arabic employs these strategies in forming wh-interrogatives in terms of their syntactic properties. With respect to the distribution of wh-interrogatives into arguments and adjuncts, all argumental wh-interrogatives can be utilized in the gap, the class II resumptive, and the in-situ strategies, while a subset can be used in the resumptive strategy. On the other hand, all adjunct wh-interrogatives are employed in the gap and in-situ strategies, but only one selective adjunct wh-word can be applied in the resumptive strategy and the class II resumptive strategy.