Pronouns, agreement and focus in Egyptian Arabic

Abstract

This paper considers the ‘copula pronouns ’ of a dialect of Arabic in the light of recent proposals regarding the emergence of functional categories, and in particular agreement marking. It is argued that the sometimes contradictory properties of copular pronouns are compatible with an analysis in which they develop from actual subject pronouns which have undergone a process of reanalysis from elements in Specifier position to heads of functional categories. This process is cyclical, and has implications for the development of functional categories in general and agreement marking in particular.