Abstract
An Arabic sentence is dealt with in this article as SVO at
spell-out and VSO at the logical form (LF). Thus, the objective of this study is to check
the grammaticality of the mandative subjunctive structure in the absence of a case
assignor for the nominative case. It also checks the relevant syntactic and semantic
formal and informal features that support the grammaticality of mandative subjunctive at
LF. To achieve the objectives, the researcher refers to Chomsky’ s (1981, 1986a, 1986b
and 1995) Minimalist Views and Radford’ s (1988) Empty Tense Theory. The problem is
to find out the actual nominative case assignor for the subjunctive subject in the absence
of an overt tense. The study illustrates that the only case assignor for the nominative case
in these types of structures in Arabic is the empty tense [e]. The formal features ([T],[D-],
[P-] and [’an]) are proved to be parts of numeration, and they have [+interpretable]
features at LF; however, informal features, namely, (nominative case, theta-marking and
Agrs”) are not. The study concludes that the complementizer ’ an ‘that’ and the
subjunctive marker [a] are necessary to be overt for the grammaticality of the subjunctive
sentence. It is proved that a mandative subjunctive sentence occupies an argument
position and must be theta marked at spell-out to render a well-formed sentence at the
logical form. The study is significant because the researcher found syntactic solutions to
the grammaticality of these types of structures in Arabic syntax.