EPP-less Clauses and Agreement Asymmetry in Arabic:

A New Analysis

Abstract

I present in this paper a new analysis of the facts of agreement asymmetry in Standard Arabic based on the most recent ramifications of the Minimalist Program. In particular, I argue that the old facts of Standard Arabic agreement asymmetry can be accounted for more elegantly if we assume that Standard Arabic lacks the Extended Projection Principle (EPP). I demonstrate that the other puzzling phenomena concomitant to the asymmetry follow if we adopt this assumption.

Key words: Syntactic Theory, Minimalist Program, EPP, Arabic Syntax, Arabic Word  Order, Agreement, Agreement Asymmetry.