VSO Word Order, Primarily in Arabic Languages
Arabic varieties, such as Classical Arabic, allow the verb to precede the subject and object. As in other verb-initial languages, a number of issues arise that concern the proper configuration for the VSO order, the surface position of the subject and the verb, how agreement between the verb and the subject obtains, how to account for the agreement asymmetries that arise in the SVO and VSO orders, how Case gets assigned/checked, and whether the verb and the object form a unit at some point in the syntactic derivation or in some position in the syntactic representation. Naturally these issues have been part of the debate about language universals and language variation, the nature and motivations behind movement operations such as verb movement, and the interplay between syntax and its interfaces, particularly the PF interface.
