ABSTRACT
This chapter analyses the agreement systems of Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and English in terms of the discourse-linking theory (DLT). Agreement in MSA is quite complex due to several factors including: the existence of both pronominal and non-pronominal affixes, the sensitivity of agreement targets to animacy and collectivity, the effect of word order, and special agreement patterns associated with quantifier expressions. In addition, the description of agreement phenomena is complicated by differences in patterns of agreement in the individual dialects of Arabic. Agreement morphology in MSA is much richer than in English, yet the range of cognitive dimensions encoded in the two languages is similar. The DLT analyses of Arabic and English in the chapter suggests that a theory of agreement based on linking of discourse referents produced by utterances in a discourse situation offers an understanding of a range of agreement phenomena much wider than that treated in other theories.
