Strict Agreement with Non-Human Plurals in Premodern Western Manuscripts

Abstract

Strict agreement with non-human plurals is a well attested phenomenon in many contemporary dialects of Arabic and, also, in some written varieties such as pre-Islamic poetry and Quranic Arabic. This type of agreement, i.e., feminine plural agreement, has been associated with the individuation status of the referent in question: the more individuated a noun is perceived to be by the speaker, the more likely it will receive strict agreement. Low individuated nouns, on the other hand, tend to be marked with feminine singular agreement, also known as deflected agreement. In this study, I examine agreement choices with non-human plurals in a corpus of fourteen manuscripts composed in the Islamic West. The documents are premodern copies of the Western ḥisba manuals, originally composed between the 10th and the14th c., and the commentary Nukat al-ʾIršād fī l-ʾiʿtiqād “Anecdotes on The Guidance of Faith” by the 13th c. Andalusi author, Ibn Al-Marʾa. A close examination of the data reveals that certain adjectives appear to attract strict agreement in this Western manuscript corpus. More specifically, the writer’s perception of an adjective as semantically prominent and contextually relevant emerges as a decisive factor in the assignment of strict agreement with non-human plural nouns. Thus, the feminine plural suffix -āt appears in adjectives denoting: (1) significant Islamic legal concepts in the ḥisba texts, and (2) existence and perception in Ibn Al-Marʾa’s documents: al-ʾašyāʾ al-muḥarramāt / vs. al-ʾašyāʾ al-hindiyya the-thing-PL the-forbidden-F.PL / he-thing-PL the-indian-F.SG ‘The forbidden things’ / ‘The Indian things’ al-maʿlūmāt al-maūǧūdāt / vs. al-maʿlūmāt al-mutanāhiyya the-knowledge-PL the-existing-F.PL / the-knowledge-PL the-limited-F.SG ‘The existing knowledge’ / ‘The limited knowledge’ In Arabic agreement patterns are typically discussed in terms of the head noun, or controller, as the key element that seems to determine the choice of strict or deflected agreement. However, my analysis suggests that adjectives can also play an active role in marking the individuation and salience of a noun phrase in some written varieties.