Feature-mismatches on prenominal adjectives in Standard Arabic

In this paper, I propose a new analysis that accounts for the obligatory movement of the noun in the Arabic noun phrase. The analysis is based on the assumption that adjectives in this language can absorb DP-external case and block case assignment on the following noun. To preempt this restriction, the noun must move across the adjective. Crucially though, if the noun's case is assigned in-situ by a DP-internal head, it becomes inactive for movement. I also introduce a new analysis of adjectival agreement in Standard Arabic which can account for full agreement on postnominal adjectives and the absence of agreement on prenominal ones. It also accounts for the unexpected pattern of agreement on adjectives that appear in between two nouns. The new analysis adopts the Upward Agree mechanism proposed in Zeijlstra (2012) and Bjorkman & Zeijlstra (2019).