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Perspectives on Arabic Linguistics XXIX: Papers from the Annual Symposium on Arabic Linguistics, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, 2015
Edited by Hamid Ouali
[Studies in Arabic Linguistics 5] 2017
► pp. 181–204

Chapter 7
Arabic first conjunct agreement and the interaction between constraints on agree & movement

| Stanford University

I argue that Arabic first conjunct agreement (FCA) is the result of interaction between independently motivated constraints on the operation agree and on movement. This analysis compares favorably to recent proposals of FCA that must stipulate that particular syntactic operations may occur late in syntactic derivation. The current proposal renders such assumptions about late operations unnecessary, while also demonstrating that analyses that rely on such operations fail to account for cases in which FCA and full agreement are realized on distinct inflection-bearing elements within the same clause. The analysis presented here is based primarily on data from Lebanese Arabic, although thoughts are also offered on the applicability of the analysis to Standard Arabic.

Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.First conjunct agreement in Lebanese Arabic
    • 2.1Theoretical assumptions
    • 2.2Assumptions about Arabic clause structure and coordination
    • 2.3The general structure of the analysis
    • 2.4Clauses with no auxiliary
    • 2.5Clauses with an auxiliary
  • 3.Late operations analyses
    • 3.1Overview of “Late Operations” analyses
    • 3.2Late operations and mixed agreement
  • 4.Conclusion
    • 4.1First conjunct agreement in standard Arabic
    • 4.2The cross-linguistic perspective
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 14 December 2017
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sal.5.08cro
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