Abstract

Numeral phrases in Standard Arabic are known for gender and number mismatches between the numeral and the enumerated noun. This article reduces these mismatches to two morphological deletion rules. The first deletes the feminine morpheme of the numeral when the enumerated noun is feminine, and the second deletes the plural morpheme of the enumerated noun when the numeral carries a plural morpheme. The first rule is further restricted to deleting only feminine morphemes that are underlyingly part of the numeral, and not inherited via agreement with a feminine enumerated noun via a syntactic agreement process. The analysis in this article is consistent with Sadiqi’s (2006) claim that the feminine form in Arabic is the basic one from which the masculine was derived historically by reducing the feminine form. The deletion analysis here also finds support from Chomsky’s approach of deriving the masculine from the feminine as theoretically less costly and more explanatorily adequate. Resume: Il est bien connu que les syntagmes numeraux en arabe standard peuvent attester l’absence de l’accord en genre et en nombre entre le numeral et la tete nominale. Cet article reduit ce non-accord a deux regles morphologiques de suppression. La premiere supprime le morpheme du feminin du numeral quand le nom est feminin. La seconde supprime le morpheme du pluriel du nom quand le numeral porte un morpheme du pluriel. La premiere regle s’applique seulement aux morphemes qui font partie du numeral en une forme sous-jacente; elle ne s’applique pas a des morphemes qui resultent de l’accord syntaxique avec un nom. L’analyse soutenue dans cet article est compatible avec la proposition de Sadiqi (2006), qui voudrait que la forme feminine en arabe soit la forme de base et que la forme masculine soit derivee diachroniquement par la reduction de la forme feminine. L’analyse presentee ici est egalement appuyee par l’approche de Chomsky, selon laquelle la forme masculine est derivee de la forme feminine, dans la mesure ou cette analyse est plus simple de point de vue theorique et qu’elle atteint un niveau superieur d’adequation explicative.

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