Morphological case, ɸ-agreement, and overt movement interactions in Arabic grammar
Following Alshamari (2017) and Jarrah (2019), this article offers evidence in favor of systematic interactions of morphological case, ɸ-agreement and overt movement in Arabic grammar. It essentially argues that these three aspects of grammar serve one specific purpose, namely to record (i.e., express) Agree dependencies (of the Agree operation; cf. Chomsky, 2001) at the interface level of Phonetic Form (PF). To this end, constructions that include subject-verb agreement, (non-)agreeing discourse markers, and complementizer agreement in Standard Arabic and Arabic dialects (particularly Jordanian Arabic and Najdi Arabic) are examined. The study proposes that Agree dependencies, which occur in the narrow syntax (before spellout), are recorded at PF through morphological case (assigned by the probe on the goal), and if not, then by ɸ-inflections (of the goal on the probe) or, if not, by overt movement of the goal to (Spec of XP headed by) the probe. Such interactions imply that morphological case bleeds ɸ-agreement which in turn is found to bleed overt movement. Exceptions to this rule are discussed and independently motivated.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Morphological case, ɸ-agreement, and movement interactions
- 2.1Case and ɸ-agreement interactions
- 2.2ɸ-agreement and movement interactions
- 3.Recording syntactic dependencies at the interface
- 4.No A-movement
- 5.Challenging phenomena
- 6.Conclusion
-
Acknowledgements
-
Notes
-
Abbreviations
-
References
References (44)
References
Ahmed, H. (2015). Verbal complementizers in Arabic. Diss. The University of Utah.
Al-Balushi, R. (2018). The Relationship between Agreement and Morphological Case: Evidence from Arabic. Concentric: Studies in Linguistics, 44, 69–109.
Alshamari, M. (2017). Topic particles in the North Hail dialect of Najdi Arabic. Diss. Newcastle University.
Aoun, J., Benmamoun, E., & Choueiri, L. (2010). The syntax of Arabic. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Baker, M. (2008). The syntax of agreement and concord. Cambridge University Press. 

Baker, M. (2012). On the relationship of object agreement and accusative case: evidence from Amharic. Linguistic Inquiry, 43, 255–274. 

Baker, M. (2013). On agreement and its relationship to case: Some generative ideas and results. Lingua, 130, 14–32. 

Béjar, S. (2003). Phi-syntax: A theory of agreement. Diss. University of Toronto.
Benmamoun, E. (2000). The feature structure of functional categories: a comparative study of Arabic dialects. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Berwick, R., & Chomsky, N. (2011). The biolinguistic program: The current state of its development. In D. Sciullo, A. Boeckx, & C. Boeckx. (eds.), The Biolinguistic Enterprise: New Perspectives on the Evolution and Nature of the Human Language Faculty (pp. 19–41). Oxford University Press.
Cecchetto, C., & Oniga, R. (2004). A challenge to null case theory. Linguistic Inquiry, 351, 141–149. 

Chomsky, N. (2001). Derivation by phase. In M. Kenstowicz. (ed.), Ken Hale. A Life in Language (pp. 1–52). Cambridge: MIT Press.
Chomsky, N. (2007). Approaching UG from below. In M. Gärtner, & U. Sauerland. (eds.), Interfaces+ recursion= language? Chomsky’s minimalism and the view from syntax-semantics (pp. 1–29). De Gruyter Mouton.
Coon, J., & Parker, C. (2019). Case interactions in syntax. In Oxford research encyclopedia of linguistics. Oxford University Press. 

Davies, W. (2005). Madurese Prolepsis and Its Implications for a Typology of Raising. Language, 81, 645–665. 

Fassi Fehri, A. (1993). Issues in the Structure of Arabic Clauses and Words. Kluwer, Dordrecht. 

Frascarelli, M., & Hinterhölzl, R. (2007). Types of Topics in German and Italian. In S. Winkler, & K. Schwabe. (eds.), On Information Structure, Meaning and Form. (pp. 87–116). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 

Heck, F., & Müller, M. (2007). Extremely local optimization. In Proceedings of WECOL, 26, 170–183.
Holmberg, A., & Hróarsdóttir, T. (2003). Agreement and movement in Icelandic raising constructions. Lingua, 113, 997–1019. 

Jarrah, M. (2019). Record your Agree: A case study of the Arabic complementizer ʔinn. Journal of Linguistics, 55, 83–122. 

Jarrah, M., & Abusalim, N. (2021). In favour of the low IP area in the Arabic clause structure. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory, 39, 123–156. 

Landau, I. (2006). Severing the distribution of PRO from case. Syntax, 9, 153–170. 

Markman, V. (2005). The syntax of case and agreement: its relationship to morphology and argument structure. Diss. Rutgers University.
Miyagawa, S. (2009). Why agree? Why move?: Unifying agreement-based and discourse-configurational languages. MIT Press. 

Mohammad, M. (1988). Nominative Case, I-subjects and Subject-verb Agreement. In D. Brentari, G. Larson, & L. MacLeod. (eds.), Proceedings of CLS Parasession on Agreement and Grammatical Theory (pp. 223–235). Chicago: CLS.
Mohammad, M. (1999). The syntax of indefinite subjects in equative sentences in Palestinian Arabic. Unpublished ms., University of Florida.
Mukherji, N. (2003). Is C HL linguistically specific? Philosophical Psychology, 16, 289–308. 

Müller, G. (2010). On deriving CED effects from the PIC. Linguistic Inquiry, 41, 35–82. 

Ouhalla, J. (1994). Verb Movement and Word Order in Arabic. In D. Lightfoot, & N. Hornstein. (eds.), Verb Movement (pp. 41–72). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. 

Ouhalla, J. (1997). ‘Remarks on focus in Standard Arabic’. In M. Eid. and R. R. Ratcliffe. (eds.), Perspectives on Arabic linguistics X: papers from the Tenth Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics (pp. 9–45). Amsterdam: John Benjamins. 

Owens, J., & Elgibali, A. (eds.) (2013). Information structure in spoken Arabic. Routledge. 

Parkinson, D. (1981). VSO to SVO in Modern Standard Arabic: A study in diglossia syntax. al-’Arabiyya, 14, 24–37.
Peled, Y. (2008). Sentence types and word-order patterns in written Arabic: Medieval and modern perspectives. Brill.
Polinsky, M., Potsdam, E., (2001). Long distance agreement and topic in Tsez. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory, 19, 583–646. 

Rizzi, L. (1997). ‘The fine structure of the left periphery’. In L. Haegeman. (ed.), Elements of Grammar (pp. 281–337). Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers. 

Rizzi, L. and Shlonsky, U. (2007). ‘Strategies of subject extraction’. In H. Gartner and U. Sauerland. (eds.), Interfaces + recursion = language? Chomsky’s minimalism and the view from syntax-semantics (pp. 115–160). Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter.
Ryding, K. C. (2005). A reference grammar of modern standard Arabic. Cambridge University Press. 

Shlonsky, U. (1997). Clause structure and word order in Hebrew and Arabic: An essay in comparative Semitic syntax. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Sigurðsson, E. (2017). Deriving case, agreement and voice phenomena in syntax. Diss. University of Pennsylvania.
Soltan, U. (2007). On Formal Feature Licensing in Minimalism: Aspects of Standard Arabic Morphosyntax. Diss. University of Maryland.
Tanaka, T. (2005). C, T, and case/agreement: A unified analysis of finite and nonfinite clauses. Journal of the School of Letters, 1, 91–105.
Uriagereka, J. (2006). Complete and partial Infl. In C. Boeckx. (ed.), Agreement systems (pp. 267–298). John Benjamins Publishing. 

Cited by (1)
Cited by one other publication
Alshamari, Murdhy
2023.
Cartographic architecture of DP.
Poznan Studies in Contemporary Linguistics 59:3
► pp. 493 ff.

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 5 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.