Agreeing postpositions and unexpected agreement in Coastal Marind

Abstract

Abstract Coastal Marind, an Anim language from Southern New Guinea, is particularly rich in interesting agreement phenomena, especially with regard to the exponence of agreement on unusual targets such as adpositions and locative adverbs. Gender agreement is obligatory on agreeing postpositions when they head an adnominally used postpositional phrase. In such cases gender agreement is controlled not by the complement of the postposition, but by the noun that is modified by the PP. While unusual typologically, this agreement is not surprising when seen from the perspective of Coastal Marind morphosyntax in general. Agreement on adjuncts headed by agreeing adpositions follows the pattern of several other expressions, all of which are clear instances of depictive secondary predicates.