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Gender and number polarity in Modern Standard Arabic numeral phrases

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  22 July 2016

Ahmad Alqassas
Ahmad Alqassas*
Affiliation:
Georgetown University
*
aa1453@georgetown.edu
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Abstract

Numeral phrases in Standard Arabic are known for gender and number mismatches1 between the numeral and the enumerated noun. This article reduces these mismatches to two morphological deletion rules. The first deletes the feminine morpheme of the numeral when the enumerated noun is feminine, and the second deletes the plural morpheme of the enumerated noun when the numeral carries a plural morpheme. The first rule is further restricted to deleting only feminine morphemes that are underlyingly part of the numeral, and not inherited via agreement with a feminine enumerated noun via a syntactic agreement process. The analysis in this article is consistent with Sadiqi's (2006) claim that the feminine form in Arabic is the basic one from which the masculine was derived historically by reducing the feminine form. The deletion analysis here also finds support from Chomsky's approach of deriving the masculine from the feminine as theoretically less costly and more explanatorily adequate.

Résumé

Il est bien connu que les syntagmes numéraux en arabe standard peuvent attester l'absence de l'accord en genre et en nombre entre le numéral et la tête nominale. Cet article réduit ce non-accord à deux règles morphologiques de suppression. La première supprime le morphème du féminin du numéral quand le nom est féminin. La seconde supprime le morphème du pluriel du nom quand le numéral porte un morphème du pluriel. La première règle s'applique seulement aux morphèmes qui font partie du numéral en une forme sous-jacente; elle ne s'applique pas à des morphèmes qui résultent de l'accord syntaxique avec un nom. L'analyse soutenue dans cet article est compatible avec la proposition de Sadiqi (2006), qui voudrait que la forme féminine en arabe soit la forme de base et que la forme masculine soit dérivée diachroniquement par la réduction de la forme féminine. L'analyse présentée ici est également appuyée par l'approche de Chomsky, selon laquelle la forme masculine est dérivée de la forme féminine, dans la mesure où cette analyse est plus simple de point de vue théorique et qu'elle atteint un niveau supérieur d'adéquation explicative.

Keywords

morpho-syntaxnumeralsgendernumberpolarityStandard ArabicDistributed Morphologymorphosyntaxenuméralgenrenombrepolaritéarabe standardMorphologie distribuée
Type
Articles
Information
Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique , Volume 62 , Issue 1 , March 2017 , pp. 1 - 17
Copyright
© Canadian Linguistic Association/Association canadienne de linguistique 2016 

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