Negation in Modern Standard Arabic: An LFG approach

Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) uses five different particles to express sentential negation: the invariant particle maa, the particle laa and its tensed counterparts lam (PAST) and lan (FUT), and laysa which is marked only for SUBJ agreement. Partial analyses of these elements are offered in other frameworks, notably Minimalism (Shlonsky, 1997; Benmamoun, 2000), but have not to date received an analysis within LFG. We propose an approach to four of these particles: the fifth one, namely maa, raises a number of additional issues and we leave it to one side for reasons of space. laa, lam, lan show distinctions of TENSE, occur only with imperfective forms of the verb (excluding the perfective) and must immediately precede the verb itself. They are limited to occurrence in verbal sentences. We propose that the adjacency requirement follows from the fact that these negative particles are non-projecting words adjoined to the (imperfective) V. On the other hand, laysa is a fully verbal element, and is thus a negative verb, occurring only with present tense interpretation

The Adjectival construct in Arabic

We propose an analysis of the adjectival construct in Arabic in LFG, building on previous work in LFG on a Welsh construction which shows several similarities to the Arabic (Mittendorf and Sadler, 2008) and work on the MSA and cognate Hebrew constructions by Hazout (2000); Kremers (2005); Siloni (2002); Heller (2002); Kim (2002). The construction involves an adjective occurring with an immediately following definite nominal, which denotes a property, part or quality of the noun that the adjectivemodifies (in attributive use) or is predicated of (in predicative constructions). The major characteristics of this construction are that the post-adjectival nominal serves to delimit the respect in which the adjective denotes a property of the external nominal, and the adjectival head and the GEN complement are subject to a very strict adjacency requirement. We present a syntactic analysis, showing that the construction is formed in the syntax rather than the morphology, and sketch out a proposal as to how the semantics of the construction might be captured

FollowMe: A Bigraphical Approach

In this paper we illustrate the use of modelling techniques using bigraphs to specify and refine elementary aspects of the FollowMe framework. This framework provides the seamless migration of bi-directional user interfaces for users as they navigate between zones within an intelligent environment