Arabic verbs are traditionally considered to be inflected for number when they follow the subject, but not when they precede the subject. The resultant ‘nominal’ sentences of the former case can be related to the ‘verbal’ sentences of the latter case by a focus transformation which duplicates a noun before the verb and leaves the initial instance of the noun after the verb to be pronominalized. This pronominalization, in the case of subject nouns, is realized as the so-called number inflection of the verb. Such a treatment also simplifies the analysis of relative clauses, ostensibly subjectless sentences, and sentences containing copula pronouns.