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This study investigates agreement in VSO and SVO word orders in Standard Arabic (henceforth, SA), shows how VSO and SVO are derived in the syntax, and proposes an alternative analysis based on Chomsky' (2005) feature-based-inheritance approach, which seeks to provide a unified account on the subject. The objective is to explore the interaction between the SA data and Chomsky's feature inheritance analysis. It shows that whether the subject (i.e. the goal with which C agrees) in Spec-v*P in VSO order or in Spec-TopP (=Topic Phrase) in SVO order, the Agree relation can apply and all unvalued uninterpretable features are valued and deleted by matching them with their valued interpretable counterparts. Furthermore, I argue that since the edge feature of the head C of the CP phase is inherited by the Top head, the topicalised elements in Standard Arabic are raised from lower positions to Spec-TopP in SVO order, not the specifier of CP, as assumed in Chomsky (2005). Besides, the paper points out that in SA the features of T in VSO order and the features of T and Top in SVO order are inherited from C, the head of the CP phase. It also adopts Rizzi's (1997) Spilt-CP analysis and proposes a modification of Chomsky's (2005) clause structure in order to account for the position of the topicalised subject in SVO in SA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the syntax of the null pro subject in Early Modern English, Standard Arabic and Modern Standard English and points out how the pro-drop parameter works in these languages. The objective is to show how in languages with rich agreement inflection like Early Modern English and Standard Arabic, the null pro is allowed in the structural subject position of finite clauses, whereas in languages with poor agreement morphology like Modern Standard English it is not permitted. It further illustrates that the rich AGR inflections in Early Modern English and Standard Arabic serve to identify the null pro subject, since the feature-content of the latter (i.e. the pro) can be recovered from the AGR morpheme on the verb morphology. Following Chomsky's (1995) minimalist analysis, I show how the nominative Case and agreement features of the (pro) subject are licensed and how the tense features of the verb are checked in Early Modern English and Standard Arabic. Furthermore, I present an alternative analysis which accounts for the occurrence of the null pro in finite clauses of Standard Arabic. I assume that the D-feature of I(NFL) is strong in the VSO and SVO structures with null pro subjects in Standard Arabic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]