Nominal clauses in Arabic (jumal ismiyya) are clauses in which the first constituent is a nominal expression (mubtadaʾ ‘that which is begun with, inchoative’; ibtidāʾ), of which the remaining subconstituent of the clause (xabar ‘news, announcement’) is predicated. Mubtadaʾ and xabar are translated here as ‘initial Noun Phrase (NP)’ and ‘report’, respectively. The report constituent has two basic types. The first is a complete ‘verbal clause’ containin…