Linguistic Optimality in Selected Morphological and Syntactic Issues

Abstract

This study investigates the phenomenon of certain morphological and syntactic structures deviating from the established rules of analogy in the Arabic language. This phenomenon has long represented one of the major challenges faced by Arab grammarians in formulating the rules of Arabic grammar. Numerous morphological and syntactic patterns were found to violate regular grammatical principles, leading grammarians to classify them as irregular, treat them as exceptional forms, and regard them as structures that should be memorized rather than generalized by analogy.

The present study reexamines a selection of these non-conforming morphological and syntactic structures through the framework of Optimality Theory (OT), a theory of constraint violation. Optimality Theory seeks to account for such residual linguistic phenomena through the principle of optimization, which involves the ranking and reordering of linguistic constraints in language performance according to two main criteria: grammatical optimality and usage-based optimality.