Event Building, Selection, and Non-Canonical Case in Tunisian Arabic : fii-Insertion (Empirical Approaches to Linguistic Theory)

The open access publication of this book was funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation. When Tunisians travel east, Levantine speakers are often struck by expressions like “eating in their food” or “whistling in a little tune.” What accounts for this distinctive usage? This book explains why Tunisian Arabic requires the preposition fii (‘in’) before a direct object in specific contexts. Examining three key constructions, it shows how fii-marking arises from the interaction between case licensing and event structure. It further argues that fii serves as a structural repair strategy when accusative case cannot be licensed canonically, offering a clear and insightful syntactic account of a remarkable feature of Tunisian Arabic grammar.