Abstract
This research investigates the syntax of the particle fikil in Jordanian Arabic (JA). It argues that this particle expresses indirect evidentiality, i.e. the speaker relies on indirect evidence (e.g. inference, third-party reports, etc.) as the information source for his proposition. The study also argues that fikil heads Moodevidential Phrase (cf. Cinque 1999) and is endowed with a set of unvalued, uninterpretable F-features. The valuation of such features is morphologically realized as an inflectional suffix on fikil, expressing the same F-content of the element that fikil agrees with. Additionally, the current research shows that T-0 (and fikil) in JA can agree with the object in active voice as long as the object is a topic situated in the low IP area (cf. Belletti 2004), c-commanding the thematic subject. Evidence coming from the case-sensitive personal pronouns demonstrates that the object in such cases is assigned nominative case (by T degrees), which, we suggest, overrides the object's accusative case, already assigned by little v(0) prior to its movement to the low IP area.