The Directionality of Agree: A Case from Number and Gender Agreement in Standard Arabic

Abstract

This paper argues for the necessity of a reversed upward Agree. There are three perspectives on the directionality of Agree. Agree conventionally operates downwards with the probe searching for a matching goal that is structurally lower (Chomsky 2000). A reversed upward Agree is also proposed (Zeijlstra 2012). The third perspective involves a parametric variation of Agree whereby Agree can operate either way (Baker 2011). We investigate number and gender agreement in Standard Arabic (SA) because they are independently sensitive to the configuration in which agreement operates. We compare the number and gender agreement patterns of verbal to non-verbal predicates with subjects in different word order alternations. We advocate a unidirectional upward Agree to account for agreement patterns in SA. W argue that while the gender feature of the probe is valued once the goal is structurally higher than the probe; the valuation of the number feature is delayed till the spell-out on the condition that the goal c-commands the probe; otherwise, a default singular value is assigned..