Abstract :

The study shows that previous accounts of Negative Concord (NC) as syntactic agreement in Arabic have conceptual and empirical problems. We propose that the syntactic agreement approach of NC in Arabic can still be maintained under some crucial modifications. In particular, we propose that the negative marker carries semantic negation in both Strict and Non-strict NC languages. We further assume that syntactic agreement can take place under Spec-head relation as well as c-command. For this assumption to work, we propose an Accord relation which allows feature checking to take place under Spec-head relation or c-command. The modified syntactic agreement approach can account for the distributional differences between preverbal n-words in Strict NC languages like Moroccan Arabic and preverbal n-words in Non-strict NC languages like Jordanian Arabic. Preverbal n-words in Strict NC languages are interpreted in the specifier domain of the negative marker where they can properly be licensed. In contrast, preverbal n-words in Non-strict NC languages are neither in Spec-head relation with the negative marker nor are they in its c-command domain.