Agreement
- LAST REVIEWED: 26 August 2013
- LAST MODIFIED: 26 August 2013
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199772810-0118
- LAST REVIEWED: 26 August 2013
- LAST MODIFIED: 26 August 2013
- DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199772810-0118
Introduction
Agreement is a phenomenon in natural language in which the form of one word or morpheme covaries with the form of another word or phrase in the sentence. For example, in the English sentence John walks Fido every morning, the form of “walks” is conditioned by features of the subject, “John.” This can be seen by replacing “John” with an element whose relevant features are different, as in We walk Fido every morning, which results in a change in the form of “walks” to “walk” (or alternatively, a change of “-s” to an empty morpheme, Ø). Agreement is perhaps the quintessential morphosyntactic phenomenon, since it involves the morphological expression of a relation that most researchers take to be a syntactic one (though not entirely without dissent; see Morphologically Oriented Approaches). In contemporary linguistic literature, the term agreement is (somewhat unfortunately) used to refer alternately to the phenomenon itself, and to the hypothesized grammatical mechanism that gives rise to it. Unless otherwise noted, the term will be used here in the theory-neutral, descriptive sense only. Another point of terminological variability concerns the identity of the grammatical elements that enter into agreement. Canonically, the term is used to describe morphological covariance between some verbal element in a clause (typically, the bearer of tense/mood/aspect morphology) and a nominal argument in the same clause; but the term has also been used to describe many other pairings of covarying elements (e.g., nominals and their adjectival modifiers, nouns and their possessors, pre-/postpositions and their complements, etc.; and more recently, sequence-of-tense effects, pronouns and their antecedents, and even the relationship between multiple negative elements in a single clause; see Recruiting Agreement as an Explanation of Other Phenomena). Agreement is cross-linguistically very common; at the same time, languages of the world can differ quite dramatically in the amount of agreement morphology they exhibit. On one end of the scale, a language like Mandarin has nary any canonical agreement to speak of; while languages like Abkhaz, Basque, Icelandic, and others exhibit robust patterns of agreement between verbs and their arguments, nouns and their modifiers, and so forth.
Foundational Works and Case Studies
Isolating the list of works that should be considered “foundational” in any given field or sub-field is obviously a highly subjective matter, where consensus can be difficult (if not impossible) to find; nevertheless, these works hopefully represent some, if not all, of the works on agreement that would deserve such designation (see also Chomsky 2000 and Chomsky 2001, both cited under Probe-Goal). Moravcsik 1978 is a pioneering typological examination of agreement across a large typological sample. George and Kornfilt 1981, Fassi Fehri 1988, Bobaljik 1995, Chung 1998, and Rackowski and Richards 2005 are ostensibly case studies on agreement in particular languages (or language families), but have proven quite influential and important to the development of the theory of agreement in general. Schütze 1997 brings together research on agreement in the adult language with the study of language acquisition. Anagnostopoulou 2003 is an innovative case study on how agreement (as well as Clitic Doubling) can inform one’s understanding of the syntax of a particular construction, in this case the ditransitive verb phrase. Wechsler and Zlatić 2003 presents a theory of agreement situated within the head-driven phrase structure grammar (HPSG) and lexical-functional grammar (LFG) frameworks, paying particular attention to discourse phenomena, as well as Agreement Resolution in Coordinations.
Anagnostopoulou, Elena. 2003. The syntax of ditransitives: Evidence from clitics. Berlin: de Gruyter.
This detailed exploration of the interaction of clitics and agreement in the domain of ditransitives (and their interaction with passivization/raising), based primarily on data from Greek and Romance languages, has also paved the way for a considerable amount of research at the juncture of agreement and clitic doubling.
Bobaljik, Jonathan David. 1995. Morphosyntax: The syntax of verbal inflection. PhD diss., Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
A comprehensive treatment of the morphosyntax of Germanic inflectional systems, couched in distributed morphology (DM; see Noyer 1997, cited under Morphologically Oriented Approaches; and Morris Halle and Alex Marantz, 1963, “Distributed Morphology and the Pieces of Inflection,” in The View from Building 20: Essays in Linguistics in Honor of Sylvain Bromberger, edited by Kenneth L. Hale, Samuel Jay Keyser, and Sylvain Bromberger, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, pp. 111–176). While not exclusively about agreement (but rather, inflection more generally), this work is quite seminal in establishing the division of labor between morphology and syntax when it comes to formal treatments of agreement within a minimalist/DM framework.
Chung, Sandra. 1998. The design of agreement: Evidence from Chamorro. Chicago: Chicago Univ. Press.
In this thorough investigation of agreement in Chamorro (Malayo-Polynesian), Chung challenges and refines certain aspects of the standard minimalist treatment of agreement, suggesting that what we conceive of as agreement should in fact be broken down into two separate relations: one responsible for entering two syntactic elements into a formal relation with one another, and a second that is responsible for the actual morphological covariance (where observed).
Fassi Fehri, Abdelkader. 1988. Agreement in Arabic, binding and coherence. In Agreement in natural language: Approaches, theories, descriptions. Edited by Michael Barlow and Charles A. Ferguson, 107–158. Stanford, CA: Center for the Study of Language and Information.
A study in the agreement patterns found in Arabic, particularly relevant for agreement asymmetries in SV versus VS word orders (see also Agreement Resolution in Coordinations).
George, Leland, and Jaklin Kornfilt. 1981. Finiteness and boundedness in Turkish. In Binding and filtering. Edited by Frank Heny, 105–129. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.
A groundbreaking work on Turkic syntax in general, this paper includes some of the first detailed formal analysis of agreement within the nominal domain.
Moravcsik, Edith A. 1978. Agreement. In Universals of human language. Vol. 4, Syntax. Edited by Joseph H. Greenberg, 331–374. Stanford, CA: Stanford Univ. Press.
One of the earliest large-scale typological surveys on universals, tendencies, and markedness hierarchies in the behavior of agreement cross-linguistically. Advances the thesis that the processes that create agreement markers and those that create pronouns are intrinsically similar (a thesis that is resumed in much of the more recent work on clitic doubling).
Rackowski, Andrea, and Norvin Richards. 2005. Phase edge and extraction: A Tagalog case study. Linguistic Inquiry 36:565–599.
DOI: 10.1162/002438905774464368
Though its name does not immediately reveal it, this paper is a case study on the interaction of verbal agreement in Tagalog with the syntax of long-distance extraction, providing an intriguing perspective on the oft expressed intuition that certain kinds of agreement are necessary precursors to certain kinds of syntactic movement.
Schütze, Carson T. 1997. INFL in child and adult language: Agreement, case, and licensing. PhD diss., Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
A proposal regarding the interaction of case, agreement, tense, and the licensing of subjects, based on data both from adult language and from language acquisition.
Wechsler, Steven, and Larisa Zlatić. 2003. The many faces of agreement. Stanford, CA: Center for the Study of Language and Information.
A comprehensive theory of agreement couched within a hybrid HPSG/LFG framework. One of the central empirical issues brought to bear is how agreement with gender-mismatched conjuncts is resolved (see also Agreement Resolution in Coordinations).
Users without a subscription are not able to see the full content on this page. Please subscribe or login.
How to Subscribe
Oxford Bibliographies Online is available by subscription and perpetual access to institutions. For more information or to contact an Oxford Sales Representative click here.
Article
- Acceptability Judgments
- Accessibility Theory in Linguistics
- Acquisition, Second Language, and Bilingualism, Psycholin...
- Adjectives
- Adpositions
- Affixation
- African Linguistics
- Afroasiatic Languages
- Agreement
- Algonquian Linguistics
- Altaic Languages
- Ambiguity, Lexical
- Analogy in Language and Linguistics
- Anaphora
- Animal Communication
- Aphasia
- Applicatives
- Applied Linguistics, Critical
- Arawak Languages
- Argument Structure
- Artificial Languages
- Attention and Salience
- Australian Languages
- Austronesian Linguistics
- Auxiliaries
- Balkans, The Languages of the
- Baudouin de Courtenay, Jan
- Berber Languages and Linguistics
- Bilingualism and Multilingualism
- Biology of Language
- Blocking
- Borrowing, Structural
- Caddoan Languages
- Caucasian Languages
- Causatives
- Celtic Languages
- Celtic Mutations
- Chomsky, Noam
- Chumashan Languages
- Classifiers
- Clauses, Relative
- Clinical Linguistics
- Cognitive Linguistics
- Colonial Place Names
- Comparative Reconstruction in Linguistics
- Comparative-Historical Linguistics
- Complementation
- Complexity, Linguistic
- Compositionality
- Compounding
- Comprehension, Sentence
- Computational Linguistics
- Conditionals
- Conjunctions
- Connectionism
- Consonant Epenthesis
- Constructions, Verb-Particle
- Contrastive Analysis in Linguistics
- Conversation Analysis
- Conversation, Maxims of
- Conversational Implicature
- Cooperative Principle
- Coordination
- Copula
- Creoles
- Creoles, Grammatical Categories in
- Critical Periods
- Cross-Language Speech Perception and Production
- Cyberpragmatics
- Default Semantics
- Definiteness
- Dementia and Language
- Dene (Athabaskan) Languages
- Dené-Yeniseian Hypothesis, The
- Dependencies
- Dependencies, Long Distance
- Derivational Morphology
- Determiners
- Dialectology
- Dialogue
- Diglossia
- Disfluency
- Distinctive Features
- Dravidian Languages
- Ellipsis
- Endangered Languages
- English as a Lingua Franca
- English, Early Modern
- English, Old
- Ergativity
- Eskimo-Aleut
- Euphemisms and Dysphemisms
- Evidentials
- Exemplar-Based Models in Linguistics
- Existential
- Existential Wh-Constructions
- Experimental Linguistics
- Fieldwork
- Fieldwork, Sociolinguistic
- Finite State Languages
- First Language Attrition
- Formulaic Language
- Francoprovençal
- French Grammars
- Frisian
- Gabelentz, Georg von der
- Gender
- Genealogical Classification
- Generative Syntax
- Genetics and Language
- Gestures
- Grammar, Categorial
- Grammar, Cognitive
- Grammar, Construction
- Grammar, Descriptive
- Grammar, Functional Discourse
- Grammars, Phrase Structure
- Grammaticalization
- Harris, Zellig
- Heritage Languages
- History of Linguistics
- History of the English Language
- Hmong-Mien Languages
- Hokan Languages
- Honorifics
- Humor in Language
- Hungarian Vowel Harmony
- Iconicity
- Ideophones
- Idiolect
- Idiom and Phraseology
- Imperatives
- Indefiniteness
- Indo-European Etymology
- Inflected Infinitives
- Information Structure
- Innateness
- Interface Between Phonology and Phonetics
- Interjections
- Intonation
- IPA
- Irony
- Iroquoian Languages
- Islands
- Isolates, Language
- Jakobson, Roman
- Japanese Word Accent
- Jones, Daniel
- Juncture and Boundary
- Khoisan Languages
- Kiowa-Tanoan Languages
- Kra-Dai Languages
- Labov, William
- Language Acquisition
- Language and Law
- Language Contact
- Language Documentation
- Language, Embodiment and
- Language for Specific Purposes/Specialized Communication
- Language, Gender, and Sexuality
- Language Geography
- Language Ideologies and Language Attitudes
- Language in Autism Spectrum Disorders
- Language Nests
- Language Revitalization
- Language Shift
- Language Standardization
- Language, Synesthesia and
- Languages of Africa
- Languages of the Americas, Indigenous
- Languages of the World
- Learnability
- Lexemes
- Lexical Access, Cognitive Mechanisms for
- Lexical Semantics
- Lexical-Functional Grammar
- Lexicography
- Lexicography, Bilingual
- Lexicon
- Linguistic Accommodation
- Linguistic Anthropology
- Linguistic Areas
- Linguistic Landscapes
- Linguistic Prescriptivism
- Linguistic Profiling and Language-Based Discrimination
- Linguistic Relativity
- Linguistics, Educational
- Listening, Second Language
- Literature and Linguistics
- Loanwords
- Machine Translation
- Maintenance, Language
- Mande Languages
- Markedness
- Mass-Count Distinction
- Mathematical Linguistics
- Mayan Languages
- Mental Health Disorders, Language in
- Mental Lexicon, The
- Mesoamerican Languages
- Metaphor
- Metathesis
- Metonymy
- Minority Languages
- Mixed Languages
- Mixe-Zoquean Languages
- Modification
- Mon-Khmer Languages
- Morphological Change
- Morphology
- Morphology, Blending in
- Morphology, Subtractive
- Movement
- Munda Languages
- Muskogean Languages
- Nasals and Nasalization
- Negation
- Niger-Congo Languages
- Non-Pama-Nyungan Languages
- Northeast Caucasian Languages
- Nostratic
- Number
- Numerals
- Oceanic Languages
- Papuan Languages
- Penutian Languages
- Philosophy of Language
- Phonetics
- Phonetics, Acoustic
- Phonetics, Articulatory
- Phonological Research, Psycholinguistic Methodology in
- Phonology
- Phonology, Computational
- Phonology, Early Child
- Pidgins
- Polarity
- Policy and Planning, Language
- Politeness in Language
- Polysemy
- Positive Discourse Analysis
- Possessives, Acquisition of
- Pragmatics, Acquisition of
- Pragmatics, Cognitive
- Pragmatics, Computational
- Pragmatics, Cross-Cultural
- Pragmatics, Developmental
- Pragmatics, Experimental
- Pragmatics, Game Theory in
- Pragmatics, Historical
- Pragmatics, Institutional
- Pragmatics, Second Language
- Pragmatics, Teaching
- Prague Linguistic Circle, The
- Presupposition
- Pronouns
- Psycholinguistics
- Quechuan and Aymaran Languages
- Questions
- Reading, Second-Language
- Reciprocals
- Reduplication
- Reflexives and Reflexivity
- Register and Register Variation
- Relevance Theory
- Representation and Processing of Multi-Word Expressions in...
- Salish Languages
- Sapir, Edward
- Saussure, Ferdinand de
- Second Language Acquisition, Anaphora Resolution in
- Semantic Maps
- Semantic Roles
- Semantic-Pragmatic Change
- Semantics, Cognitive
- Sentence Processing in Monolingual and Bilingual Speakers
- Sign Language Linguistics
- Slang
- Sociolinguistics
- Sociolinguistics, Variationist
- Sociopragmatics
- Sonority
- Sound Change
- South American Indian Languages
- Specific Language Impairment
- Speech, Deceptive
- Speech Perception
- Speech Production
- Speech Synthesis
- Suppletion
- Switch-Reference
- Syllables
- Syncretism
- Synonymy
- Syntactic Change
- Syntactic Knowledge, Children’s Acquisition of
- Tense, Aspect, and Mood
- Text Mining
- Tone
- Tone Sandhi
- Topic
- Transcription
- Transitivity and Voice
- Translanguaging
- Translation
- Trubetzkoy, Nikolai
- Tucanoan Languages
- Tupian Languages
- Typology
- Usage-Based Linguistics
- Uto-Aztecan Languages
- Valency Theory
- Verbs, Serial
- Vocabulary, Second Language
- Voice and Voice Quality
- Vowel Harmony
- Whitney, William Dwight
- Word Classes
- Word Formation in Japanese
- Word Recognition, Spoken
- Word Recognition, Visual
- Word Stress
- Writing, Second Language
- Writing Systems
- Yiddish
- Zapotecan Languages