Definiteness of adjectives in Arabic DPs

The internal structure of the DP has long been a topic of debate in the study of Modern Standard Arabic. This is due not only to the comprehensive agreement in 4)-features, Case, and definiteness between the adjective and its head noun, but also to the difference in meaning depending on the relative placement of the adjective in relation to the noun within the DP. Previous studies have proposed two distinct basic structures for Arabic DPs, employing the notions of Agree or Feature Checking. However, these operations do not necessarily trigger the displacement of syntactic objects in the derivation, nor do they adequately capture the correlation of semantic patterns with their relevant syntactic derivations. This paper argues instead that both patterns of the Arabic DP can be derived from a unified syntactic structure and treats the agreement in definiteness differently from that of 4)-features and Case. The presence or absence of agreement in definiteness, considering two possible positions of the adjective and their interpretations of the DP, are accounted for in terms of the parametric variations of the feature on the head D within the framework of the Minimalist Program. (Gulf University for Science and Technology center dot Kuwait University)