On the morphosyntax of hybrid agreement in Jordanian Arabic

Abstract

This paper investigates the (hybrid) agreement patterns with collective and military rank nouns in Jordanian Arabic, both inside and outside the determiner phrase (DP). It will be argued that the number, unit (group), and feminization features are hosted on functional heads merged in various positions in the course of the syntactic derivation of the DP, and that agreement is determined on the basis of the Merge sites of those functional projections. More particularly, it will be shown that the heads Num(ber) and Unit may be situated higher or lower within the DP, and that each head controls agreement on the adnominals above it via feature sharing prior to movement, consequently producing different patterns of number agreement inside the DP, which in turn feeds DP-external agreement. The feminizing head, by comparison, is optionally merged, but when it is present, mixed gender agreement arises, depending on its Merge position. Finally, it will be shown that the above assumptions are substantiated by empirical data from Jordanian Arabic as well as from other languages.