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Variation in Agreement and Clitic Doubling in Arabic

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Variation in Agreement and Clitic Doubling in Arabic Probes and pronouns: Variation in agreement and clitic doubling in Arabic By Meera Sahawneh A Thesis submitted to the Faculty of Graduate Studies of The University of Manitoba in partial fulfillment of the requirements of the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of Linguistics University of Manitoba Winnipeg Copyright © 2017 by Meera Sahawneh Abstract This study develops a new approach to agreement variation in Standard Arabic (SA) and Rural Jordanian Arabic (RJA) based on the Probe-Goal framework of Chomsky (2000, 2001). The key patterns investigated are the variation in fullness of agreement in the SV and VS word orders, the relationship between agreement and clitic doubling, and the patterning of agreement with conjoined subjects. The thesis argues for a connection between agreement, clitic doubling, and word order. Full agreement on T (in person, number, and gender) causes the subject to move to [Spec, TP], deriving SV order. However, partial agreement on T (lacking person) creates only a partial copy of the subject in [Spec, TP]. This partial copy is realized as a pronominal clitic in some contexts (giving CLsVS word order) and as null pro in other contexts (giving VS word order). This approach enables a unified account of various differences in the patterning of agreement in SA and RJA. Turning to the more complex case of agreement with conjoined subjects, both varieties exhibit full resolved agreement with preverbal conjoined subjects. With postverbal conjoined subjects, however, there is variation: SA allows only partial agreement with the first conjunct while RJA allows partial agreement either with the first conjunct or with the entire conjoined phrase, depending on the features and the order of the conjoined nominals. The Probe-Goal framework augmented with Multiple Agree and the Continuity condition (Nevins 2007, 2011) will be employed to account for the choice between these two options in RJA. The more general theoretical conclusion is that the variation in agreement patterns is constrained by the internal hierarchical structure of φ-features on the probe. I propose that the probe has the same hierarchical structure as a pronoun (i.e. a DP). This proposal makes predictions about the range of possible variation in the features that are active in agreement and connects to broader issues such as the Pronominal Argument Hypothesis (Jelinek 1984) and the diachronic relationship between pronouns and agreement markers. ii Acknowledgements It gives me much pleasure to express my deepest gratitude to my supervisor, Dr. Will Oxford for his unwavering support and constructive mentorship throughout this study. Dr. Oxford has always been a fountain of knowledge and encouragement. Without his guidance and insightful comments, this study would have never been in its current form. Will has generously given much of his time and resources as my work has developed, and has taught me so much with the patience of a saint. I owe him a lot and I thank him for his faith in me, kindness and friendship. Will is a great linguist and an incredible person. It was such a great pleasure to conduct this study under his supervision. I would like to thank the members of my examining committee for their specialized and erudite input. Special thanks are due to Dr. Jila Ghomeshi for her meticulous and informative comments that inevitably helped me made this piece of work better. Since that fateful day in September 2010 when I knocked on her door asking for help to do detailed transcription, she has not only become a source of inspiration for me, but also a model for how a human being seeks to support the growth and development of another. I thank her for her willingness to advise me on academic and personal levels, and for being a remarkable professor and an amazing woman. Many thanks also go to Dr. James Chlup for agreeing to serve on my defense committee and for reading the thesis and making interesting useful comments. I am also grateful to Dr. Elizabeth Ritter for kindly accepting to be my external examiner. Her rigorous examination together with the valued comments and questions have greatly enriched my study and experience. It was a pleasure and honor to meet her. I would like to express my thanks to all the professors in the Department of Linguistics at the University of Manitoba for enriching my view of linguistics. Many thanks also go to Dr. Terry Janzen, the Head of the Department, who supported me and supervised my first iii Generals Paper. During my study at the department, I also got to meet wonderful people such as Debbie Spindler and Heather Lee who have provided invaluable help with administrative matters. And also to all my colleagues, friends and relatives who have supported me along the way, thank you. I would like to express special thanks to Zeyad Al-Daher, a Jordanian PhD student in the Department of Linguistic at the University of Manitoba. The several syntactic discussions with Zeyad have made this experience wonderful. Our friendship has always been inspirational. I thank him for his endless encouragement and wonderful laughs. My doctoral degree was funded by Jordan University of Science and technology (JUST), and I am greatly indebted to them for their confidence in me. My professors at JUST were such a source of encouragement and inspiration. Special thanks are due to my MA supervisor Dr. Mohammed Al-Ali who has always encouraged me and never stopped believing in me. I would love to express my heartfelt gratitude to my parents Nariman and Bisharah Sahawneh. Their love, care and dedication are the real reasons behind reaching this level. They have always been a role-model to follow and a great example of sacrifice, tolerance and unconditioned love. To my brothers Rami and Osama and to my sister Yara, thank you all for being there whenever I needed you, and thank you for your continuous love and encouragement. A very special gratitude goes out to my uncle Amjad Sahawneh for his financial and emotional support. Last but not least, I am very grateful to my husband Daifallah Sahawneh for his love, understanding and patience during my MA and PhD studies. His confidence in me has always been inspirational, especially when things got tougher. Without his constant support and encouragement over the years, I would not have been able to finish this journey. iv Dedication This thesis is dedicated to my amazing parents Nariman and Bisharah for all their love, support and sacrifices. I would not have been able to get to this stage without them. v Table of contents Abstract ...................................................................................................................................... ii Acknowledgements .................................................................................................................. iii Dedication .................................................................................................................................. v Table of contents ....................................................................................................................... vi Notes on transcription ............................................................................................................ viii List of abbreviations ................................................................................................................. ix List of tables ............................................................................................................................... x Chapter 1 Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1 1.1 Theoretical overview: Approaches to agreement ............................................................ 3 1.2 The language under investigation .................................................................................... 6 1.3 Some grammatical aspects of SA and RJA...................................................................... 8 1.3.1 Word orders in SA and RJA ..................................................................................... 8 1.3.2 Basic agreement facts in SV and VS orders in Arabic with simple subjects .......... 11 1.3.3 Basic agreement facts in SV and VS orders in Arabic with complex subjects ....... 14 1.4 The problem ................................................................................................................... 20 1.5 My proposal ................................................................................................................... 22 1.6 Outline of thesis ............................................................................................................. 23 Chapter 2 Agreement with simple subjects in SA and RJA .................................................... 26 2.1 Overview of the proposed analysis ................................................................................ 26 2.2 The cross-dialectal variation in agreement in SA and RJA ........................................... 28 2.3 Existing theoretical analyses of the agreement asymmetry in SA ................................. 32 2.3.1 The agreement loss analysis.................................................................................... 33 2.3.2 The incorporation analysis ...................................................................................... 35 2.3.3 The merger analysis ................................................................................................ 37 2.3.4 The topic
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