Agreement Mismatches in Arabic Existential Constructions

This paper provides a syntactic analysis of agreement mismatches in Classical Arabic existential constructions. Such constructions display notable mismatches in agreement among the expletive, associate and T. The agreement mismatches raise significant challenges for standard assumptions regarding Case and ф-features checking and valuation. The paper proposes that these agreement issues can be resolved by assuming that the associate is assigned Partitive Case by the verb, and that the associate bears interpretable ф-features which do not require checking. Furthermore, it is argued that T lacks a Case feature, but carries default third person singular masculine ф-features. These features are checked, though not valued, by the expletives, which themselves bear uninterpretable valued ф-features. The present proposal is not directly applicable to agreement mismatches in non-existential constructions due to differences in the ф-features realized on the verb, although future research may extend the analysis to account for both construction types within a unified framework.