Agreement in Najdi Arabic existential sentences

Abstract It has been observed that existential sentences (ES) crosslinguistically display different agreement patterns. For instance, in the dialect of Najdi Arabic (NA) the ES shows interesting asymmetric agreement patterns. When the nominal pivot precedes the copular verb, the verb must fully agree with the pivot NP in all ϕ-features. Conversely, when the nominal pivot follows the copular verb, the verb always shows up with the third-person masculine singular features regardless of the ϕ-features of the nominal pivot. This paper aims to provide an analysis for these asymmetric agreement patterns in the NA ES by using a single mechanism, namely Agree. The analysis suggests that the obligatory full agreement results from Agree between the head v with unvalued ϕ-features and the pivot NP with interpretable ϕ-features. However, the other agreement type results from Agree between the head T with unvalued ϕ-features and the NP fiih that bears third-person masculine singular features. This latter type of agreement explains why the copular verb in some NA ES always shows up with the third-person masculine singular features regardless of the pivot ϕ-features. The proposed analysis in the current work may make useful insight into the ongoing discussion on ES agreements crosslinguistically.