Author:
Yuan Michelle,Tyler Matthew
Abstract
AbstractAgreement is a grammatical phenomenon whereby the form of a morpheme or word co‐varies with the morphosyntactic properties of another word or phrase, typically a noun. Although agreement is, by definition, conditioned by the ϕ‐features (e.g. person, number, gender features) of a noun, a broader survey of cross‐linguistic patterns reveals that thesurface realizationof a noun may similarly have an effect on agreement, even when its ϕ‐features are kept constant. Focusing on noun–verb agreement dependencies, we provide several case studies that illustrate this idea and we show that the relevant factors range from a noun's morphological case to its structural position. Although in many cases these effects may be analysed in purely syntactic terms – that is, they are derivable from conditions on the syntactic process that underlies agreement – we also highlight cross‐linguistic patterns that seem to involve non‐structural factors.
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