Case Theory and Arabic Prepositions

In linguistics, the study of the structure of two languages that are not genetically related is termed contrastive linguistics. English belongs to the Indo-European language family; while, Arabic pertains to Semitic languages. Studies of contrastive linguistics of Arabic and English syntax are very rare, with this one addressing the case theory and Arabic prepositions being a distinguished effort, perhaps less taken by researchers of contrastive linguistics. The book has its purpose as proffering an introduction of case theory and its principles as applied to Arabic syntax within the framework of Government and Binding Theory initiated by Chomsky in (1981). This theory accounts for the assignment of case to every phonetically realized NP by case assignor in the sentence.For instance, the nominative case is assigned by Finite INFL/T, the accusative by a verb, dative by a verb and a preposition and oblique cases (that is instrumental, commetative, and locative)are assigned by prepositions.