The syntax of wh-agreement in Yemeni Ibbi Arabic
2026-07-06 • Computation and Language
Computation and Language
AI summaryⓘ
The authors study a special kind of grammar pattern found in Yemeni Ibbi Arabic called wh-agreement, where question words affect verb forms. They explain this using a new approach called Agree across phases (AAP), which separates how features are matched from how they are valued in sentence structure. They show that certain suffixes come from old pronouns and now mark this type of agreement. Their findings improve understanding of how universal grammar works, especially in languages with long-distance question word effects, and suggest Yemeni Ibbi Arabic has a stronger wh-agreement system compared to some other languages.
wh-agreementYemeni Ibbi ArabicAgree across phases (AAP)Feature Inheritance (FI)functional heads (C, T, v)morphological markinggrammaticalizationUniversal Grammar (UG)long-distance dependenciessyntactic agreement
Authors
Ashraf Naji, Mohammed Q. Shormani
Abstract
This article tackles an important phenomenon in the syntax of Yemeni Ibbi Arabic (YIA), viz., wh-agreement, a phenomenon common to several languages including Greek, Indonesian, Lubukusu, Irish, etc. In YIA, wh-agreement manifests itself via agreement inflections on the Wh-Op, C, T/V, v. To account for this phenomenon, we propose an Agree across phases (AAP) approach anchored in the mechanism of Feature Inheritance (FI) in which Agree as MATCHING (AM) is a bit separated from feature valuation (FV). AM concerns Cs/vs, but FV Ts/Vs. Analyzing the agreement patterns observed between Wh-Op(erators), functional heads (precisely C, (T), v), and verbal complexes, we argue that the suffixes -eh, -uh, -nen, -um, having undergone grammaticalization process from Stannard Arabic (SA) third person pronouns, function as morphological marking of wh-agreement. Findings indicate that YIA data offer a unique empirical contribution to generative syntax, specifically concerning wh-agreement in this dialect operating via MATCHING mechanism. Our proposal straightforwardly accounts for wh-agreement cross-linguistically. This study provides further evidence that incorporating under-investigated typology provides further support for the universality of Universal Grammar (UG) by revealing how specific I-language operations reflect deeper, invariant principles of human language architecture. It concludes that the wh-agreement mechanism in YIA is more morphosyntactically robust than in languages such as Greek, Indonesian, Palauan, and Irish, providing compelling evidence for AAP as a UG approach to long-distance dependencies.