Various grammatical phenomena have been analyzed so far as essentially formal, or interfacing with PF syntax. Verb subject agreement asymmetries, subject pronoun deficiency (or ‘Pro drop‘), and morpho-syntactic variation in reciprocal expressions in Arabic have been treated as such. The article… read more
This paper investigates the properties of generic, mass, quantificational, and definite reference, in relation to the overt/covert expression of determiners, and shows that Arabic bare nouns are typically indefinite, while generic and mass interpretations require the overt expression of articles. I… read more
DPs and BNs are used parametrically in Arabic (as well as in other languages) to express generic/existential contrasts, and mass/count oppositions. Unlike English and Romance, Arabic BNs behave like overt indefinites, give rise to bare singulars, and to numeral BNs, obviating scope or opacity… read more