The focus function and derivation of object displacement in Standard Arabic

The aim of this paper is to provide a minimalist account of object displacement in terms of its trigger and its landing site in the syntactic tree structure of Standard Arabic (SA) clauses. The account utilizes Chomsky's concept of edge feature (EF) within the Minimalist Program and Rizzi's Split-CP analysis. In terms of its data scope, the paper is limited to a class of data identified as displaying the Verb – Object – Subject (VOS) order wherein the object is a full DP (not a pronominal clitic), and appears in a position preceding the subject. It will be argued that this order is the result of focus displacement of the object from its canonical position inside VP across the subject DP to the outer periphery of vP. The result of this operation is a marked order VOS driven by the vP edge feature (EF) to achieve the pragmatic function of focus.