awej 5 no.4 full issue 2014

AWEJ Volume.5 Number.4, 2014The Null pro Subject in Early Modern English and Standard ArabicFakihFakihspecifier position of IP). In the Spec-head configuration, agreement relations are highly local,where there has to be a feature match between the morphological features encoded in thefunctional Mike Orr head I(NFL) and those features of the subject encoded in the specifier of IP so that thederivation can show convergence. If not, the derivation will crash. In other words, the Spec-headagreement relationship involves checking the nominative Case features and the agreementfeatures of the pro subject as well as the tense feature of the verb. This can be illustrated on thetree-representation of the Arabic clause structure in (37).Following Fakih's (2003, 2006, 2007a, and 2007b) minimalist analysis 7 of the verb featurelicensing in Standard Arabic, I argue that the V-feature of I(NFL) is invariably strong inStandard Arabic. The strong features of the tense motivate the verb to move overtly to check offits morphological features against those features encoded in the head I(NFL) position of IP. If theverb features match the morphological features of the functional head (i.e. the head I(NFL)position) it adjoins to, the features of the verb will be licensed, as shown in the grammaticalrepresentations in (37a and b), thus ensuring that feature checking takes place between adjoinedelements in a head. In (37a and b) the verb undergoes overt raising/movement to check its tensefeatures against those abstract morphological features encoded in the functional head I(NFL)position. Once features are checked, they get erased in the syntax.Arab World English JournalISSN: 2229-9327www.awej.org50