Probes and pronouns: variation in agreement and clitic doubling in Arabic
Bibliographic record
Abstract
This study develops a new approach to agreement variation in Standard Arabic (SA) and Rural Jordanian Arabic (RJA) based on the Probe-Goal framework of Chomsky (2000, 2001). The key patterns investigated are the variation in fullness of agreement in the SV and VS word orders, the relationship between agreement and clitic doubling, and the patterning of agreement with conjoined subjects. The thesis argues for a connection between agreement, clitic doubling, and word order. Full agreement on T (in person, number, and gender) causes the subject to move to [Spec, TP], deriving SV order. However, partial agreement on T (lacking person) creates only a partial copy of the subject in [Spec, TP]. This partial copy is realized as a pronominal clitic in some contexts (giving CLsVS word order) and as null pro in other contexts (giving VS word order). This approach enables a unified account of various differences in the patterning of agreement in SA and RJA. Turning to the more complex case of agreement with conjoined subjects, both varieties exhibit full resolved agreement with preverbal conjoined subjects. With postverbal conjoined subjects, however, there is variation: SA allows only partial agreement with the first conjunct while RJA allows partial agreement either with the first conjunct or with the entire conjoined phrase, depending on the features and the order of the conjoined nominals. The Probe-Goal framework augmented with Multiple Agree and the Continuity condition (Nevins 2007, 2011) will be employed to account for the choice between these two options in RJA. The more general theoretical conclusion is that the variation in agreement patterns is constrained by the internal hierarchical structure of φ-features on the probe. I propose that the probe has the same hierarchical structure as a pronoun (i.e. a DP). This proposal makes predictions about the range of possible variation in the features that are active in agreement and connects to broader issues such as the Pronominal Argument Hypothesis (Jelinek 1984) and the diachronic relationship between pronouns and agreement markers.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.009 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.002 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.004 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.003 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".