Gender polarity is an intriguing morphological phenomenon in Arabic. The numerals 3–10 take the gender opposite to that of their count nouns; that is, when the count noun is feminine, the numerals 3–10 appear in the masculine form, and vice versa. Earlier analyses (see, e.g., Alqassas 2013, 2017, Alqarni 2015) proposed that the numerals 3–10 bear an inherent feminine feature, which is deleted by an impoverishment rule in the presence of a feminine feature on the count noun, yielding gender polarity. This article provides empirical counterevidence to these analyses and the concept of gender polarity on the whole. It shows that the numerals 3–10 do not interact with the gender of the count noun; rather, they interact with the count noun’s morphology—that is, whether the count noun bears the morpheme /at/ or /a:tu/-/a:ti/ in its structure. These findings suggest that gender polarity in Arabic is a misnomer; the phenomenon should instead be termed morpheme polarity. Rather than implementing the impoverishment rules proposed in earlier analyses, this article uses readjustment rules to account for the morpheme polarity at hand.
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Summer 2021
June 25 2021
No Gender Polarity in Arabic Numeral Phrases
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Muteb Alqarni
Muteb Alqarni
King Khalid University, Abha, Saudi Arabia, College of Science and Arts, Tanuma, [email protected]
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Muteb Alqarni
King Khalid University, Abha, Saudi Arabia, College of Science and Arts, Tanuma, [email protected]
Online ISSN: 1530-9150
Print ISSN: 0024-3892
© 2020 by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology
2020
Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Linguistic Inquiry (2021) 52 (3): 441–472.
Citation
Muteb Alqarni; No Gender Polarity in Arabic Numeral Phrases. Linguistic Inquiry 2021; 52 (3): 441–472. doi: https://doi.org/10.1162/ling_a_00385
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