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Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XXXIV: Papers from the Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics, Tucson, Arizona, 2020
Edited by Mahmoud Azaz
[Studies in Arabic Linguistics 12] 2023
► pp. 105–124

Morphological case, ɸ-agreement, and overt movement interactions in Arabic grammar

ORCID logo | The University of Jordan
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.
Keywords: agree, case, interface conditions, overt movement
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
Published online: 6 January 2023
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sal.12.05jar
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