Agreement asymmetries in Arabic varieties dissolved: A feature inheritance-based account

Abstract

The paper revisits the issue of the structural representation of subject-verb agreement in Arabic varieties with a particular reference to Standard Arabic and seven Arabic dialects, i.e., Saudi Arabic, Yemeni Arabic, Iraqi Arabic, Jordanian Arabic, Tunisian Arabic, Moroccan Arabic, and Lebanese Arabic. The paper recasts agreement asymmetries proposed in the literature of Arabic syntax: partial agreement in VSO but full agreement in SVO. Empirical evidence shows that such proposed asymmetries should be dissolved as all language varieties display agreement between the verb and the subject in all features except the number feature in the VS order of standard variety. Even in the VS order of this variety, the verb fully agrees with the subject when the latter is a pronoun. Based on empirical observations, the puzzling phenomenon of agreement can receive a straightforwardly unified account based on the Feature Inheritance model of syntax (FI). Irrespective of the possible order used in Arabic, full agreement morphology is always predicted as a result of an Agree relation, via FI, between the probe T and the subject generated at Spec; vP. However, the number feature alternation in the VS order of Standard Arabic is attributed to the PF interface rather than the narrow syntax, i.e., the possibility to spell out the number feature periphrastically rather than affixially.