Query: Equational Sentences

[Tasneem Jennifer Crooker]

Dear Netters:

I just joined this list.  I am interested in Arabic morphology and would
appreciate if any one who can guide me to any works related to treatment
of unification of agreement features of equational (verbless) sentences
or any answers to my question below.

Equational (verbless/nominal) sentences are structres where the copular
verb in the present is absent as in (1) and (2):

(1) al-madrasatu                            kabiiratun.
    the-school-Sg-feminine-Nominative       big-Sg-fem-Nominative
    "The school is big."

(2) haadhihi     madrasatun.
    this-Sgfem   school-Sgfem-Nominative
    "This is a school."


Note that if the predicate constituent is definite, then the structure
is no longer a sentence.  It is then rather an NP phrase as in (1)b and
(2)b respectively:

(1)b al-madrasatu                  al-kabiiratu ...
     the-school-Sgfem-Nominative   the-big-Sgfem-Nominative
     "The big school ..."

(2)b haadhihi    al-madrasatu ...
     this-Sgfem  the-school-Sgfem-Nominative
     "This school ..."

My question is: is the unification of agreement features in (1) and (2)
considered sentential (across constituent phrases) or phrasal as in (1)a
and (2)b and how would then be the formal annotations of (1) and
(2)within LFG ?

Please respond to me and I will post a summary/bibliography of
responses.

J. Crooker
taqwaa at hotmail.com

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