Complementizer Agreement in Najdi Arabic

Abstract

This thesis proposes an analysis to account for complementizer agreement in Najdi Arabic. I motivate the clause structure of the left periphery following a cartographical approach initiated by Rizzi (1997, 1999), by which the placement of complementizers is considered with respect to topics and foci. I conclude that there are two distinct positions for the complementizers in, illi, and itha, with the complementizers in and illi, surfacing in Force0. Only the complementizer in allows agreement to surface. I then turn to an investigation of the effects of topicalization, wh-extraction, and focus on complementizer agreement. I also investigate how tense and aspect interact with complementizer agreement, and discuss what coordinated subjects tell us about the nature of complementizer agreement. Given the facts that I find for complementizer agreement and A' movements, as well as the interaction between tense and aspect and complementizer agreement, I propose a probe-for-closest-goal analysis for complementizer agreement in Najdi along the line of present analyses for complementizer agreement in West Germanic dialects: Carstens (2003) and Haegeman and van Koppen (2012). Specifically, the complementizer has an uninterpretable finiteness feature that must be licensed by either a subject with an interpretable finiteness feature or by an auxiliary/verb moving to Fin0, following Pesetsky and Torrego (2001). Furthermore, in this thesis, I expand a typology of complementizer agreement to include Najdi Arabic (Semitic), making direct comparison to complementizer agreement in West Germanic languages (Germanic).

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