Agreement in Standard Arabic VSO and SVO Word Orders: A Feature-based Inheritance Approach

Abstract

This study investigates agreement in VSO and SVO word orders in Standard Arabic (henceforth, SA), shows how VSO and SVO are derived in the syntax, and proposes an alternative analysis based on Chomsky' (2005) feature-based-inheritance approach, which seeks to provide a unified account on the subject. The objective is to explore the interaction between the SA data and Chomsky's feature inheritance analysis. It shows that whether the subject (i.e. the goal with which C agrees) in Spec-v*P in VSO order or in Spec-TopP (=Topic Phrase) in SVO order, the Agree relation can apply and all unvalued uninterpretable features are valued and deleted by matching them with their valued interpretable counterparts. Furthermore, I argue that since the edge feature of the head C of the CP phase is inherited by the Top head, the topicalised elements in Standard Arabic are raised from lower positions to Spec-TopP in SVO order, not the specifier of CP, as assumed in Chomsky (2005). Besides, the paper points out that in SA the features of T in VSO order and the features of T and Top in SVO order are inherited from C, the head of the CP phase. It also adopts Rizzi's (1997) Spilt-CP analysis and proposes a modification of Chomsky's (2005) clause structure in order to account for the position of the topicalised subject in SVO in SA.