Nominative Case of the Embedded Subjects in Control Structures in Modern Standard Arabic and English within Chomsky’s Minimalism

Case Theory posits that every argument within the syntactic structure is assigned case. According to Theta Theory, each argument receives only one theta role, in light of the visibility condition which demands that only theta-marked constituents be visible to case assignment. While case assignment is universal across languages, arguments receive the nominative case differently in English and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) due to the distinct morphological systems of each language. Case assignment operation sheds light on the interplay between syntax and morphology, all within the framework of Chomsky’s theory (Chomsky, 1995). This paper adopts an explanatory comparative approach to analyze the control structure [ʔarada: want] in both English and MSA. The study explores the operation of case assignment to the embedded subjects and employs a theoretical framework grounded in Chomsky’s theory particularly focusing on the Split-INFL hypothesis (Pollock, 1989; Chomsky, 1989). It conducts a comparative analysis of control structures to examine the interaction between case assignment and agreement. The findings reveal that while subjects in English are assigned the nominative case via the head tense in finite clauses, the embedded subjects in MSA carry the nominative case in non-finite embedded clauses by the head agree. This suggests a close relationship between the nominative case assignment and the valuation of phi-features via Agree operation in MSA, within the Split-INFL hypothesis. However, when the subject structurally precedes the infinitival particle [ʔan: to] in Arabic, it receives case by the closest case assigner.