The subject position in standard Arabic has been the focus of discussion and analysis over the last three decades by the Arab and non-Arab linguists. Among those who tried to discuss this area are Thompson and Werfelli (2002), they investigated the derivation and processing of the two subject positions (SVO and VSO order) in Saudi Arabic, they examined which structure of the two orders is the basic one, and which one is the alternative one. They conclude that VSO takes less time than SVO by processing times when speaking the two structures.
Mohammad (1990) who proposes the Null Expletive Hypothesis, argues that in SVO order in SA the verb and the subject are in a Spec-head relation, he argues that this is resulted from the movement of the subject from the VP to Spec-TP, and then the full structure of SVO is derived. Fassi Fehri argues that the nominative pronominal bound forms can be taken to be real subjects, this happens when a sentence in SA has a null subject, the pronominal is viewed as an incorporated pronoun, such as:
Syntactically, the position of the subject determines the types of word order in Arabic. If the subject occurs pre-verbally, it gives SVO order, and if it is positioned post-verbally, it gives VSO order. This variation in subject position in Arabic is considered to be a result of syntactic movement in which the subjects are moved according to the spelled out word order.
For the preverbal subjects, two different views are proposed for their derivation. The first one is structure subject view, which suggests: subjects that are placed in ( Spec : TP) are initially generated in the subject thematic position (Spec : VP), then they move higher up into (Spec : TP). This means that preverbal DP’s that occupy (Spec :TP) are grammatical subjects.
In the previous example, the subject at-telmith-u moves from (Spec : VP) to (Spec :TP). This view is in parallel line with the view of Kufa school. But it contradicts with the view of Basra school which argues that DP that occupies (Spec.TP) in SVO order is not a real subject, but it is Mubta-da as they call it.
Basra school argues that there are no preverbal subjects in Arabic, they argue that there is only one subject position namely. ( Spec :VP). They argue that the real subjects are those which appear post-verbally, and classify Arabic among VSO languages that do not have an SVO order.
There are many views that consider the distribution of subjects in VSO ( postverbal) order in Arabic. These views argue that there are syntactic movements and agreements of subjects and verbs to higher or lower positions.
Among the ones who have discussed subject positions in Arabic are Koopman and Sportich (1991). They conclude that the Arabic clause have two positions of the subject. These two positions are the thematic subject position (Spec :VP) and the grammatical subject position (Spec :TP).
They claim that when the subject is positioned in (Spec: VP) it results in VSO order and here there is movement of V to T. Also they claim that the subject is placed originally in (Spec: VP).
