To agree or not to agree
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Julio Villa-García
Abstract
Non-Caribbean Spanish is a prototypical null-subject language. Yet, verbs normally enter into an agreement relationship with the (overt/null) subject. In some cases, however, certain acceptable sentences contain an anomalously-agreeing subject in terms of one of the three agreement/ƒó-features, namely person, number, and gender. Assuming that the nominals in question establish an Agree relationship with the verb à la Chomsky (2000, 2001, 2004, 2008), I submit that in Spanish there is an operative condition on the output of Agree, which posits that if full/optimal agreement between the verb and the subject does not obtain, at most one feature can be left unchecked/ unvalued syntactically. The remaining unvalued feature of T0 is deleted/valued for convergence through alternative agreement mechanisms available in the grammar, including default agreement and possibly semantic/pragmatic agreement. From this, it follows that agreement in Spanish may not be a quintessentially syntactic phenomenon handled exclusively by a probe-goal system like Chomsky’s Agree. Keywords: Agree; subjects; disagreement; extra-grammatical agreement; Spanish
Abstract
Non-Caribbean Spanish is a prototypical null-subject language. Yet, verbs normally enter into an agreement relationship with the (overt/null) subject. In some cases, however, certain acceptable sentences contain an anomalously-agreeing subject in terms of one of the three agreement/ƒó-features, namely person, number, and gender. Assuming that the nominals in question establish an Agree relationship with the verb à la Chomsky (2000, 2001, 2004, 2008), I submit that in Spanish there is an operative condition on the output of Agree, which posits that if full/optimal agreement between the verb and the subject does not obtain, at most one feature can be left unchecked/ unvalued syntactically. The remaining unvalued feature of T0 is deleted/valued for convergence through alternative agreement mechanisms available in the grammar, including default agreement and possibly semantic/pragmatic agreement. From this, it follows that agreement in Spanish may not be a quintessentially syntactic phenomenon handled exclusively by a probe-goal system like Chomsky’s Agree. Keywords: Agree; subjects; disagreement; extra-grammatical agreement; Spanish
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Foreword & acknowledgements ix
- List of contributors xi
- Editors’ introduction 1
-
Part I. Phonetics/Phonology
- Correcting the record on Dominican [s]-hypercorrection 15
- V-to-V assimilation in trisyllabic words in French 25
- The production and provenance of palatal nasals in Portuguese and Spanish 43
- Lenition and phonemic contrast in Majorcan Catalan 63
- Alveolar laterals in Majorcan Spanish 81
- Units of speech production in Italian 95
- Pitch polarity in Palenquero 111
- Word-minimality and sound change in Hispano-Romance 129
- Multiple opacity in Eastern Regional French 153
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Part II. Syntax
- Syntactic variation in Colombian Spanish 169
- Anaphoricity, logophoricity and intensification 187
- More on the clitic combination puzzle 203
- The Spanish dative alternation revisited 217
- Romanian genderless pronouns and parasitic gaps 231
- To agree or not to agree 249
- Variation in subject expression in Western Romance 267
- A phase-based analysis of Old French genitive constructions 285
- V2 loss in Old French and Old Occitan 301
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Part III. Morphology, and interfaces
- The loss and survival of inflectional morphology 323
- Allomorphy in pre-clitic imperatives in Formenteran Catalan 337
- Preverbal vowels in wh-questions and declarative sentences in Northern Italian Piacentine dialects 353
- Pitch accent, focus, and the interpretation of non- wh exclamatives in French 369
- Detours along the perfect path 387
- Grammaticalization of commencer/cominciare “to begin” in French and Italian 405
- Index of subjects, terms and languages 423
Chapters in this book
- Prelim pages i
- Table of contents v
- Foreword & acknowledgements ix
- List of contributors xi
- Editors’ introduction 1
-
Part I. Phonetics/Phonology
- Correcting the record on Dominican [s]-hypercorrection 15
- V-to-V assimilation in trisyllabic words in French 25
- The production and provenance of palatal nasals in Portuguese and Spanish 43
- Lenition and phonemic contrast in Majorcan Catalan 63
- Alveolar laterals in Majorcan Spanish 81
- Units of speech production in Italian 95
- Pitch polarity in Palenquero 111
- Word-minimality and sound change in Hispano-Romance 129
- Multiple opacity in Eastern Regional French 153
-
Part II. Syntax
- Syntactic variation in Colombian Spanish 169
- Anaphoricity, logophoricity and intensification 187
- More on the clitic combination puzzle 203
- The Spanish dative alternation revisited 217
- Romanian genderless pronouns and parasitic gaps 231
- To agree or not to agree 249
- Variation in subject expression in Western Romance 267
- A phase-based analysis of Old French genitive constructions 285
- V2 loss in Old French and Old Occitan 301
-
Part III. Morphology, and interfaces
- The loss and survival of inflectional morphology 323
- Allomorphy in pre-clitic imperatives in Formenteran Catalan 337
- Preverbal vowels in wh-questions and declarative sentences in Northern Italian Piacentine dialects 353
- Pitch accent, focus, and the interpretation of non- wh exclamatives in French 369
- Detours along the perfect path 387
- Grammaticalization of commencer/cominciare “to begin” in French and Italian 405
- Index of subjects, terms and languages 423
