@article{jbp:/content/journals/10.1075/lali.00002.ald, author = "Al-Dobaian, Abdullah S.", title = "Arabic synthetic compounds", journal= "Language and Linguistics", year = "2018", volume = "19", number = "1", pages = "32-60", doi = "https://doi.org/10.1075/lali.00002.ald", url = "https://www.jbe-platform.com/content/journals/10.1075/lali.00002.ald", publisher = "John Benjamins", issn = "1606-822X", type = "Journal Article", keywords = "theta-role", keywords = "regular inflections in compounds", keywords = "lexical morphology", keywords = "English compounds", keywords = "Arabic synthetic compounds", abstract = "Abstract This paper discusses some data of Arabic synthetic compounds in which regular plural inflection is included inside compounds. These data pose problems to Kiparsky’s (1982) level-ordering lexical morphology model and Li’s (1990) generalization on verb incorporation. I argue that such compounds are lexically formed based on some pieces of evidence. To support the analysis, I compare the compounds and the construct state constructions in Arabic and Hebrew. Then I show that the lexical analysis explains the morphological, syntactic properties, and the semantics of Arabic synthetic compounds. More specifically, I explain how the lexical analysis applies to theta-role assignment inside the compound and then discuss the number specification of the non-head in the compound of Arabic and English.", }