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Agreement and concord in nominal expressions

  • Giuliana Giusti
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The Bantu–Romance Connection
This chapter is in the book The Bantu–Romance Connection

Abstract

This paper claims that feature sharing should be analyzed as the result of at least two different processes, which are named here Agreement and Concord, and inquires how these two processes are manifested inside nominal expressions (NEs). Agreement is the transfer of the Person features of the possessor (the “subject” of the NE) onto some functional head (parallel to subject Agreement in the clause) with the effect that (Genitive) Case is assigned. On the contrary, Concord is the transfer of Number, Word Class, and Case specifications from a functional head onto a modifier, which is first-merged as a Specifier of that functional head. The claim is that, quite differently from Agreement, Concord arises from the merger of a modifier, underspecified for uninterpretable features, in the specifier of a functional head, carrying a copy of those features. In other words, Concord is directly enhanced by the Spec-Head configuration; it does not involve merger of a probe which targets a goal and, as a consequence, never triggers (overt or covert) movement. This proposal can dispense with a number of otherwise unmotivated movements and can derive the different properties of these two kinds of feature sharing phenomena. The argument is supported by observing macro-parallelisms across Bantu and Romance languages, in particular Swahili and Xhosa on the one hand and Romanian and Italian on the other hand.

Abstract

This paper claims that feature sharing should be analyzed as the result of at least two different processes, which are named here Agreement and Concord, and inquires how these two processes are manifested inside nominal expressions (NEs). Agreement is the transfer of the Person features of the possessor (the “subject” of the NE) onto some functional head (parallel to subject Agreement in the clause) with the effect that (Genitive) Case is assigned. On the contrary, Concord is the transfer of Number, Word Class, and Case specifications from a functional head onto a modifier, which is first-merged as a Specifier of that functional head. The claim is that, quite differently from Agreement, Concord arises from the merger of a modifier, underspecified for uninterpretable features, in the specifier of a functional head, carrying a copy of those features. In other words, Concord is directly enhanced by the Spec-Head configuration; it does not involve merger of a probe which targets a goal and, as a consequence, never triggers (overt or covert) movement. This proposal can dispense with a number of otherwise unmotivated movements and can derive the different properties of these two kinds of feature sharing phenomena. The argument is supported by observing macro-parallelisms across Bantu and Romance languages, in particular Swahili and Xhosa on the one hand and Romanian and Italian on the other hand.

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Acknowledgments vii
  4. List of contributors ix
  5. Introduction xi
  6. Part 1. Clitics and agreement
  7. Concepts of structural underspecification in Bantu and Romance 3
  8. On different types of clitic clusters 41
  9. Pronominal object markers in Romance and Bantu 83
  10. The Bantu-Romance connection in verb movement and verbal inflectional morphology 111
  11. Part 2. The structure of DPs
  12. DP in Bantu and Romance 131
  13. On the interpretability of φ-features 167
  14. Agreement and concord in nominal expressions 201
  15. A unified syntactic analysis of Italian and Luganda nouns 239
  16. Part 3. Information structure
  17. The fine structure of the Topic field 261
  18. Focus at the interface: Evidence from Romance and Bantu 293
  19. Agreement in thetic VS sentences in Bantu and Romance 323
  20. Index of languages 351
  21. General index 353
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.131.12giu

Chapters in this book

  1. Prelim pages i
  2. Table of contents v
  3. Acknowledgments vii
  4. List of contributors ix
  5. Introduction xi
  6. Part 1. Clitics and agreement
  7. Concepts of structural underspecification in Bantu and Romance 3
  8. On different types of clitic clusters 41
  9. Pronominal object markers in Romance and Bantu 83
  10. The Bantu-Romance connection in verb movement and verbal inflectional morphology 111
  11. Part 2. The structure of DPs
  12. DP in Bantu and Romance 131
  13. On the interpretability of φ-features 167
  14. Agreement and concord in nominal expressions 201
  15. A unified syntactic analysis of Italian and Luganda nouns 239
  16. Part 3. Information structure
  17. The fine structure of the Topic field 261
  18. Focus at the interface: Evidence from Romance and Bantu 293
  19. Agreement in thetic VS sentences in Bantu and Romance 323
  20. Index of languages 351
  21. General index 353
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