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Agreement

Agreement in language occurs when grammatical informa-tion appears on a word which is not the source of thatinformation. In simple examples like she runs, the formruns is singular, agreeing in number with she. This isinformation about the number of runners (just one), and itmatches that expressed in its source she. Patterns of agree-ment vary dramatically cross-linguistically, with great diver-sity in expression and types of variation found. This clearintroduction offers an insight into how agreement works,and how linguists have tried to account for it. Compar-ing examples from a range of languages, with radicallydifferent agreement systems, it demonstrates agreement atwork in a variety of constructions. It shows how agree-ment is influenced by the conflicting effects of sentencestructure and meaning, and highlights the oddities of agree-ment in English. Agreement will be essential reading forall those studying the structure and mechanisms of naturallanguages.

greville g . corbett is Distinguished Professor ofLinguistics at the University of Surrey. His previous booksinclude Gender (1991), Number (2000) and The Syntax-Morphology Interface (with Matthew Baerman and DunstanBrown, 2005), all published by Cambridge University Press.

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r . m . kempson Semantic Theoryt. bynon Historical Linguisticsj . allwood, l . -g . anderson and o . dahl Logic in Linguisticsd. b. fry The Physics of Speechr . a . hudson Sociolinguistics Second editiona. j . ell iot Child Languagep. h . matthews Syntaxa. radford Transformational Syntaxl . bauer English Word-Formations . c . lev inson Pragmaticsg. brown and g. yule Discourse Analysisr . huddleston Introduction to the Grammar of Englishr . lass Phonologya. comrie Tensew. kle in Second Language Acquisitiona. j . woods , p. fletcher and a. hughes Statistics in Language Studiesd. a . cruse Lexical Semanticsa. radford Transformational Grammarm. garman Psycholinguisticsg. g . corbett Genderh. j . g ieger ich English Phonologyr . cann Formal Semanticsj . laver Principles of Phoneticsf. r . palmer Grammatical Roles and Relationsm. a . jones Foundations of French Syntaxa. radford Syntactic Theory and the Structure of English: A Minimalist Approachr . d. van valin, jr and r . j . lapolla Syntax: Structure, Meaning and Functiona. duranti Linguistic Anthropologya. cruttenden Intonation Second editionj . k . chambers and p. trudgill Dialectology Second editionc . lyons Definitenessr . kager Optimality Theoryj . a . holm An Introduction to Pidgins and Creolesg. g . corbett Numberc . j . ewen and h. van der hulst The Phonological Structure of Wordsf. r . palmer Mood and Modality Second editionb. j . blake Case Second editione . gussman Phonology: Analysis and Theorym. y ip Tonew. croft Typology and Universals Second editionf. coulmas Writing Systems: An Introduction to their Linguistic Analysisp. j . hopper and e . c . traugott Grammaticalization Second editionl . white Second Language Acquisition and Universal Grammari . plag Word-Formation in Englishw. croft and a. cruse Cognitive Linguisticsa. s iewierska Persona. radford Minimalist Syntax: Exploring the Structure of Englishd. b ur ing Binding Theoryn. hornstr in, j . nunes and k. grohmann Understanding Minimalismb. c . lust Child Language: Acquisition and Growthm. butt Theories of Caseg. g . corbett Agreement






Agreement

GREVILLE G. CORBETTUniversity of Surrey






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C© Greville G. Corbett 2006

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exceptionand to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,no reproduction of any part may take place withoutthe written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2006

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

ISBN-13 978-0-521-80708-1 hardbackISBN-10 0-521-80708-5 hardback

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For Judith, David, Ian and Peter






Contents

List of figures page xiiList of tables xiiiPreface xvList of abbreviations xvi

1 Introduction: canonical agreement 11.1 The special interest of agreement 11.2 The place of agreement 21.3 Defining terms 41.4 Canonical agreement 81.5 Scope and structure of the book 271.6 Helpful background for the reader 321.7 Conclusion 34

2 Controllers, targets and domains 352.1 Controllers 352.2 Targets 402.3 Domains 542.4 A schema for non-canonical domains 592.5 Further domains 692.6 Conclusion 70

3 The morphology of agreement 713.1 Models of morphology 713.2 Means of exponence 723.3 Morphological prerequisites for agreement 783.4 Special morphological phenomena 853.5 Alliterative agreement 873.6 Additional syntactic effects on agreement morphology 913.7 Rich agreement and strong agreement 983.8 Pronominal affixes 993.9 Conclusion 112

4 Features 1144.1 Copying of features or unification 1144.2 Feature types and their relevance for agreement 1164.3 Main agreement features (‘phi features’) 125

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x Contents

4.4 Less clear agreement features 1334.5 Unusual agreement features 1374.6 Interaction with the domain 1414.7 Conclusion 142

5 Mismatches 1435.1 Unproblematic mismatches 1445.2 Defaults and extended use of defaults 1475.3 Partial agreement 1515.4 Syntactic and semantic agreement 1555.5 Sources of mismatches 1605.6 Occurrence and non-occurrence of agreement choices 1655.7 A predictable mismatch: conjoined noun phrases 1685.8 Informative mismatches 1705.9 Target features 1725.10 Conclusion 175

6 Conditions 1766.1 Examples of conditions 1766.2 Characteristics of conditions 1816.3 Typology 1836.4 Factors which overlap with agreement conditions 1856.5 Thematic role and animacy 1886.6 Grammatical relations and case 1946.7 Communicative function and precedence 1976.8 Morphological consequences 2046.9 Conclusion 204

7 The Agreement Hierarchy 2067.1 The Agreement Hierarchy as a constraint on agreement

patterns 2067.2 Representative data 2077.3 Overview of evidence: lexical hybrids 2137.4 Overview of evidence: constructional mismatches 2197.5 Roles of the Agreement Hierarchy 2247.6 Implications of the Agreement Hierarchy 2277.7 Further constraints 2307.8 Interactions 2367.9 Conclusion 237

8 Resolution 2388.1 Person 2408.2 Number 2428.3 Gender 2438.4 Further gender resolution systems 2518.5 Characteristics of resolution systems 2538.6 Motivation 2588.7 Conclusion 263






Contents xi

9 Other perspectives 2649.1 Diachrony 2649.2 The functions of agreement 2749.3 Child language acquisition 2759.4 Psycholinguistic research 2779.5 Conclusion 284

References 285Author index 318Language index 324Subject index 327






Figures

1.1 Framework of terms page 55.1 Syntactic and semantic agreement 1565.2 Mapping for pronoun controllers in Bayso 1735.3 Mapping for masculine nouns in Bayso 1745.4 Mapping for feminine nouns in Bayso 1748.1 The relation between resolution and assignment 2599.1 Conjoined noun phrases in Russian: diachronic and

stylistic variation 272

xii






Tables

7.1 The Agreement Hierarchy: additional evidence fromgender page 218

7.2 The Agreement Hierarchy: additional evidence fromnumber 219

9.1 Predicate agreement with quantified subjects in Russian:18th–20th centuries 273

xiii






Preface

Agreement is a fascinating phenomenon. In many languages it is evident in almostevery sentence and involves several different linguistic components. Yet it is notsomething we would include in the design of an artificial language. It thereforetells us a good deal about human languages. This book is intended for all who areinterested in how languages really work, from final-year undergraduates to seasonedtheoreticians and fieldworkers. It has been in the making for some time: reachinga consistent typology has involved many rounds of reanalysing, restructuring andrewriting.

I want to thank several colleagues and friends who have contributed substantially.Bernard Comrie and Edith Moravcsik have worked on agreement for at least as longas I have. Both have generously shared their knowledge and interest as the book hasprogressed. All of the following have also read a draft of the whole book, and givenhelpful comments from their different perspectives: Jenny Audring, Matthew Baer-man, Marina Chumakina, Greg Stump and Claudia Wegener. Others have sharedtheir expertise on substantial areas of the topic or on some of the chapters, namelyJonathan Bobaljik, Dunstan Brown, Nicholas Evans, Anna Kibort, Aleksandr Kib-rik, Gabriella Vigliocco and Stephen Wechsler. I am most grateful to you all. TheSurrey Morphology Group Agreement Project (1999–2002) produced a database,bibliography and edited volume (see §1.6.1), which readers may wish to use. Thoseinvolved, Carole Tiberius, Julia Barron, Dunstan Brown, Nicholas Evans, AndrewHippisley, Elena Kalinina and Marianne Mithun, deserve special thanks, as do LisaMack and Alison Long, for careful help with preparing the typescript.

I am most grateful to the Cambridge team for their expertise and support, especiallyto Andrew Winnard, Helen Barton and Jackie Warren, to Steve Barganski for finecopyediting, and to Prachi Joshi for typesetting a complex script.

I have presented material from the book in various lectures and seminars, and amgrateful for all the comments and discussion which resulted, especially to the enthu-siastic audiences at the Third Winter Typological School, Moscow District (February2002), the Vilem Mathesius Lecture Series, Prague (March 2002), the Association forLinguistic Typology Summer School at Cagliari (September 2003), the NetherlandsGraduate School in Linguistics Winter School in Amsterdam (January 2004), andthe Morphology and Typology Seminar, Vilnius (May 2005). And more generally,thank you to everyone who provided an example, a reference or an objection.

The research was supported by the ESRC (grants R000238228 andRES051270122) and by the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology,Leipzig, through visits kindly hosted by Bernard Comrie. The support of both bodiesis gratefully acknowledged.

xv






Abbreviations

The abbreviations follow the Leipzig Glossing Rules(http://www.eva.mpg.de/lingua/files/morpheme.html)with additions for items not in that list.

A OBL associating obliqueABL ablative (‘from’)ABS absolutiveACC accusativeACT activeAD adessive (‘on’, ‘about’)ADJ adjectiveADV adverb(ial)AFF affectiveAGR agreementALL allative (‘onto’, ‘to’)ANIM animateAOR aoristART articleATTRIB attributiveAUX auxiliaryCLF classifierCOM comitativeCOMN common genderCONN connectiveCONT contessive (‘contact’ localization)COP copulaCVB converbD SBJ different subjectDAT dativeDECL declarativeDEF definiteDIMIN diminutiveDIST distalDU dualERG ergative

xvi






List of abbreviations xvii

ESM epistemic status markerEXCL exclusiveF feminineFOC focusFUT futureGEN genitiveHAB habitualHON honorificHUM humanILL illative (‘into’)IMP imperativeIN ‘in’ localizationINAN inanimateINCL inclusiveIND indicativeINDF indefiniteINESS inessive (‘in’)INF infinitiveINS instrumentalINTENS intensifierINTER ‘inter’ localization (‘in’, ‘within’)INTR intransitiveIPFV imperfectiveIRR irrealisLOC locativeM masculineM.PERS masculine personalMOD ABL modal ablative (case)MOD PROP modal proprietive (case)N neuterNEG negation, negativeNMLZ nominalizer/nominalizationNOM nominativeNON OBJ non-objectOBL obliqueOPT optativePASS passivePERS personalPFV perfectivePL pluralPOSS possessivePOT potentialisPRF perfectPROG progressive






xviii List of abbreviations

PRS presentPRV preverbPST pastPTCL particlePTCP participleQ question particle/markerRED AGR reduced agreementREFL reflexiveREL relativeRES resultativeRLS realisS SBJ same subjectSBJ subjectSG singularSUB ‘sub’ localizationTR transitiveV DAT verbalizing dative (case)VOC vocative1 first person2 second person3 third personI–IV genders I, II, III, IV






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