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Fronting ( taqdīm) is “an informal term to denote a movement operation by which a word or phrase is moved to the front of some phrase or clause” (Radford 1997:261). The fronting process has been given several terms in the literature, such as ‘topicalization’ and ‘focus’. This entry investigates the syntactic notion ‘fronting’ in Arabic syntax within two frameworks: the Arabic grammatical tradition, represented partly by al-Jurjānī (d. 471/1078), and Chomsky's Minimalist Program. Section 1 deals wi…

1. Definition Tanāzuʿ lit. ‘conflict’ is a syntactic phenomenon that deals with two coordinated verbs competing for assigning case to a shared constituent, as in (1). (1) [1 ḍaraba-nī] wa-[2 ḍarab-tu zayd-an] hit-me and-hit-I Zayd-Acc ‘Zaydi hit me and I hit himi’ The shared constituent (in bold) in (1) serves two distinct grammatical functions: it serves as a subject for the first verb (henceforth clause 1) and as an object for the second verb (henceforth clause 2). However, zayd-an belongs to clause 2, as it carries the accusative case, assigned under adjacency by the i…