The Relationship between Agreement and Morphological Case: Evidence from Arabic

This paper argues for the dissociation between agreement and structural Case, based on data from Standard Arabic (SA) and the Omani variety of Arabic (OA), and makes two claims in this regard. First, agreement is related to morphological case (m-case) in two ways: 1) agreement deputizes for m-case when m-case is absent (either because m-case is not realized or because the DP is not overt); and 2) the agreement affixes (subject vs. object) reflect the case values (Nom vs. Acc) that DPs surface with. This applies to structural and lexical as well as default case types, thus indicating lack of connection to arguments. Second, using data from OA, whose DPs do not bear m-case and verbs bear full agreement with both arguments, it will be argued that the proposed relationship between agreement and m-case, where agreement deputizes for m-case in the morphological component, helps in theta-role assignment.