Arabic-L:LING:Arabic and Generative Grammar query

[Dilworth Parkinson]

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Arabic-L: Thu 06 Dec 2007
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1) Subject:Arabic and Generative Grammar query

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1)
Date: 06 Dec 2007
From:taoufiq ben amor <tb46 at columbia.edu>
Subject:Arabic and Generative Grammar query

dear everyone,

a student of mine has the following question, and i'd appreciate any  
answers you might have.
======================
In applying Generative Grammar (Government and Binding theory) to  
Arabic VSO structure, we run into a few problems. In Arabic VSO (jumla  
fi'liya), there are components that are not present in English:

?The verb only agrees with the subject in gender and person, but not  
in number.
?Indefinite subjects cannot precede the verb, thus VSO is necessary.
?Inanimate nouns (especially plural nouns) take the 3rd feminine  
singular verb conjugation.

Generative Grammar does not allow for partial feature/case checking;  
therefore, to account for these syntactic rules, we must come up with  
a way to have directionality in case/feature checking that occurs at T  
(for the verb, in a tree structure). Another approach is to have  
conditional feature/checking, so that depending on whether or not the  
subject is before or after, animate or inanimate, we can adjust the  
verb (ex: in VSO, if DPsubj is inanimate plural noun, V must be in the  
3rd feminine singular).

Is there a theory that explains this phenomenon in Arabic when  
Generative Grammar is applied (about how the feature/case checking is  
accounted for on a Generative Grammar tree structure)?

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