Abstract
This paper discusses the possible scenarios of lexicalizing masculine gender in Arabic, which are made available by the nanosyntactic apparatus: the Superset Principle and Phrasal Spellout mechanism. In the paper, I show that gender is a separate functional projection like any other functional projections in the extended projection of the noun. In Arabic. Nouns are morphologically marked for gender distinctions. The feminine gender is marked either by –t and/or –aat on the noun, whereas masculine gender does not have a separate morphological marker. Thus, the paper provides two possible scenarios for the lexicalization of masculine gender, which follow from the nanosyntactic machinery. I show, in one of these possible scenarios, that the noun stem lexicalizes masculine gender along with the root, a scenario is made possible by the Phrasal spellout mechanism. The second possible scenario is by allowing the morpheme that lexicalizes number lexicalizes gender as well, a scenario follows from the Superset Principle which assumes that a given morpheme can lexicalize a syntactic structure as long as its lexical entry has a constituent identical to that syntactic structure (Caha 2009) .
Keywords: Arabic, lexicalization, Masculine gender, Superset principle, Phrasal spellout.
[1] Ph.D. Research Scholar, The English and Foreign Languages University (EFL-U), Hyderabad, India
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