Feature deletion by head movement – A new solution to agreement asymmetries in Modern Standard Arabic

Abstract

In this paper, I present a new approach to agreement asymmetries in Modern Standard Arabic. In Arabic, the verb agrees with the subject in number whenever the word order is SV, but not if the word order is VS. I argue against previous approaches that suggest that this lack of number agreement is due to the absence of syntactic Agree in these configurations. I propose a new account that is based on the assumption that the lack of number agreement in VS orders is the result of head movement of the verb to the T head. I suggest that head movement has two effects: First, head movement of the verb can satisfy the EPP property and, second, the head movement operation that I propose leads to the deletion of the number feature in Modern Standard Arabic. I show that this approach overcomes the problems of previous approaches and I discuss some implications that the theory has for EPP movement.