Agreement with Plural Controllers in Omani Arabic: Preliminary Remarks

In the course of this paper, I examine the factors responsible for variation between singular and plural agreement with plural controllers in Omani Arabic. Particular focus is put on non-human plural controllers, since this is where the most variation is found. Both controller-related and target-related factors are taken into account. Animacy, specificity and morphological structure of the controller are found to be the factors having the greatest impact on the kind of agreement which obtains, along with target type (consistently with the predictions of Corbett’s Agreement Hierarchy) and distance between target and controller.