This study examines the morpho-syntax of labile anticausative structures in Jordanian Arabic (JA). Although the transitive counterpart of anticausatives is marked via morphological affixes that reflect structural and lexical components in Classical Arabic and Modern Standard Arabic, a number of verbs involving causative alternation exhibit identical forms in JA (e.g., ġala [+T] ‘to CAUSE boil something’ vs ġala [–T] ‘to BECOME boil’). Such variation poses challenges for mapping between verb morphology and its lexical semantics. To handle such variation, which is also observed cross-linguistically, we argue in favour of Schäfer (2008; 2012), Schäfer & Vivanco (2015), and Ramchand’s (2008) “causer-less” analysis over Koontz-Garboden’s (2009) “reflexive” analysis. This work further assumes the existence of a Voice phrase lacking a specifier (external argument) and assumes that Voice projection is headed by an implied Voice head ( ^v causer) that syntactically assigns the accusative case to its new subject and semantically encodes the internal argument and describes the resultant subevent of the verb. The work also provides an alternative solution for voice projection that lacks an explicit specifier bearing [+agent] or [+causer] feature specification. The work assumes the presence of an inchoative Voice head [ ^v inch] introducing the Spec Voice Phrase, which encodes an inchoative resultant state of an event achieved over its theme. Contrary to Al-Qadi (2015), the present model assumes that such verbs constitute a middle position between transitive and intransitive verbs in JA but do not constitute a separate class of their own. Evidently, the correct characterization of the anticausative subclass distribution is that it surfaces wherever v is transitive as well as in intransitive volitional contexts (a non-natural class). More intriguingly, the presented material suggests that there is an ongoing process of diachronic change in spoken Arabic varieties (including JA) that amounts to the development and expansion of an inchoative class where no external or internal inchoative detransitivizing morphemes are involved. This topic, which incorporates an intriguing diachronic dimension in addition to the syntactic details, is missing from the generative literature on Arabic morpho-syntax and is potentially of sufficient interest to merit investigation.

The current study investigates the persuasive strategies and techniques used by King Abdullah II in his two speeches regarding the covid 19 pandemic. It also aims to critically analyze these persuasive strategies and techniques using critical discourse analysis. Moreover, it aims to explore the most and the least frequently persuasive strategies and techniques employed in these two speeches. The data consists of two speeches delivered virtually at the world economic forum. The first speech is delivered on the 21st of September 2020 and the second speech is delivered on 28 January 2021. The current study adapts Johnstone (2008) as a theoretical framework for data analyses. The findings reveal that King Abdullah II employed three persuasive strategies, namely quasilogical, presentational and analogical in the two speeches respectively. Findings also reveal that the presentational strategy is the most frequently used. The second most frequently used strategy is the quasilogical. The last employed persuasive strategy is analogical. Additionally, as for the persuasive techniques within the presentational strategy, deixes is the most frequently persuasive technique employed and visual metaphor is the least frequently employed persuasive technique in the two speeches. As for the quasilogical, syllogism is the most frequently used persuasive technique employed. Then, it is followed by subordinate clauses and logical connectives. As for the analogical strategy, both reminding the audience of the time-tested values and calling to mind traditional wisdom techniques are the most frequently employed persuasive techniques.

Most approaches to inflectional morphology propose a single-default representation. This research on Jordanian Arabic offers an analysis having more than one default inflection. This is accomplished by showing that unlike previous morphological accounts like the single-mechanism model, dual-mechanism model, and the schema model (cf. Pinker, 1990; Rumelhart & McClelland, 1986; and Bybee, 1985), the current research relies upon the ‘openness’ mechanism to define defaultness. Openness is thus defined as the ability of the inflectional process to accept new forms into a language. The corpus used in this research contains diminutives, verbal nouns, derivatives, and loan words used in JA. Other defining factors are modified in this research, such as regularity (rule-based mechanism) and productivity (type frequency). The findings of this research indicate that there are two possible defaults in Jordanian Arabic ordered in terms of openness: the sound feminine plural and the iambic broken plural. The findings have the implication that a language’s grammar can have a multi-default system.