The Syntax of Verbless Sentences in Bisha Najdi Arabic

This study investigates the syntactic structure of verbless sentences in Bisha Najdi Arabic (henceforth BNA). It explores the different types of BNA verbless constructions, i.e., verbless constructions with nominal predicate, adjectival predicates and adverbial predicate. It argues for the nonverbal predicate analysis, as proposed by Benmamoun (2000, 2008), and extends the analysis to BNA verbless constructions within Chomsky's (1995) Minimalist Framework. In addition, the study argues that hnaak in similar constructions is a verb-like element, and accordingly, a syntactic analysis is provided for both BNA affirmative and negative hnaak-constructions. By investigating the syntactic structure of BNA verbless sentences, the study contributes to the literature of Najdi dialect linguistics in particular and the literature of Arabic linguistics in general.