Agree-Based Analysis of Arabic Adjectival Agreement and Case

This paper aims at investigating the structural positions occupied by the predicative and attributive adjectives in Modern Standard Arabic. Arabic adjectives are represented as post-nominal DP constituents which exhibit interesting syntactic properties in terms of agreement and Case. The study adopts the feature-based Agree model developed within the Minimalist Program. It introduces an analysis that accounts for how Case feature is valued on adjectives and the modified nouns and why the attributive and the predicative adjectives display different levels of agreement with the modified nouns. The paper argues that there are three sources of agreement on adjectives. The first source is the numeration where agreement in φ-feature between the noun and the modifying adjective, be it predicative or attributive, is determined. The second source of agreement results from the indefiniteness override which takes place upon Merge when the definiteness of the modified noun overrides the indefiniteness of the attributive adjective. Predicative adjectives are not subject to this override that is why they do not agree in definiteness with the modified nouns. The third source of agreement is the operation Agree which is responsible for the valuation of Case feature. During the derivation, two different Agree operations apply. The attributive adjective is internal to the DP that contains the modified noun. The whole DP is probed by an external c-commanding head. Conversely, the predicative adjective is a DP complement to a copular head with which it enters in an Agree relation.