Agree is commonly considered to have no semantic effects (Chomsky 2000, 2001 a.o.). However, based on the behaviors of the Japanese object honorific (OH) construction, this work claims that Agree can affect interpretation in such a way that its result feeds a semantic predicate. This claim is based on two observations regarding OH. First, I examine a theoretically overlooked observation that OH is felicitous only when the object referent is honored by the subject referent as well as the speaker. I show that this observation suggests that the head responsible for the OH marking induces the interpretation that the subject and the speaker honor the object. Second, I examine the distribution of the honoree in OH and argue that the head responsible for OH marking accesses the object via Agree, in line with previous theoretical studies (Niinuma 2003; Boeckx & Niinuma 2004). I account for both observations by proposing that the honorific head serves as a semantic predicate honor, which finds its arguments via Agree.

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The operation Agree is generally considered to lack direct semantic effects. Based on the Japanese object-honorific construction, this work claims that Agree can in fact interact with LF interpretation such that some semantic predicates select their arguments via Agree. More specifically, I claim that the object-honorific marker serves as a semantic predicate honor, which selects its arguments via Agree.Based on the distribution of the NP that can trigger object-honorific marking, the object-honorific marker seems to access the object via Agree, as previous studies have argued; I examine, however, the theoretically overlooked observation that object honorification is felicitous only when the object referent is honored by the subject referent as well as the speaker. Based on this observation and the result from previous studies, I argue that object-honorific morphology is semantically a predicate that takes two arguments, an honorer and an honoree, and finds those arguments via Agree.

Linguists disagree on whether morphological representations should be strings or trees. We argue that tree-based views of morphology can provide new insights into morphological complexity even in cases where the posited tree structure closely matches the surface string. Our argument is based on a subregular case study of morphologically conditioned allomorphy, where the phonological form of some morpheme (the target) is conditioned by the presence of some other morpheme (the trigger) somewhere within the morphosyntactic context. The trigger and target can either be linearly adjacent or non-adjacent, and either the trigger precedes the target (inwardly sensitive) or the target precedes the trigger (outwardly sensitive). When formalized as string transductions, the only complexity difference is between local and non-local allomorphy. Over trees, on the other hand, we also see a complexity difference between inwardly sensitive and outwardly sensitive allomorphy. Just as unboundedness assumptions can sometimes tease apart patterns that are equally complex in the finitely bounded case, tree-based representations can reveal differences that disappear over strings.