Unusual agreement targets in unexpected domains

Abstract

Abstract Agreement targets beyond the verb include practically every part of speech, yet the likelihood that members of any given category will agree are starkly asymmetrical. This typological overview of unusual agreement targets surveys the domains of agreement associated with adpositions, adverbs, converbs, nouns, pronouns, particles, complementizers, coordinators, and other conjunctions. The notion of external agreement is introduced to characterize agreement between a target heading a clause-level adjunct or argument, and a controller that is not an argument or a complement of the target. Evidence for treating instances of agreement on unusual targets as verbal or sentential concord is explored, and a range of syntactic constraints on non-verbal agreement targets are considered, including those imposed in biabsolutive constructions, backward control constructions, and constructions allowing long-distance agreement.