The agreement hierarchy

Abstract

Consideration of the problem of alternative agreement forms (§ 1) leads us to postulate a hierarchy of agreement positions (§ 2) which allows us to make predictions as to the possibility and relative frequency of semantic as compared to syntactic agreement. The hierarchy is justified by data from a variety of languages which permit alternative agreements (§ 3). Confirming evidence comes from a study of the instances where agreement in case and person is required in different languages (§ 4). The status of the hierarchy and the type of prediction it makes are discussed. It is suggested that the hierarchy determines the main divisions of a measure called SYNTACTIC DISTANCE and that other factors (word order, distance between controller and agreeing element, depth of stacking) determine relative degrees of distance within these main divisions (§ 5). The basic claim of the paper is that as syntactic distance increases so does the likelihood of semantic agreement.

One or More Labels on the Bottles? Notional Concord in Dutch and French

“…Starting with the study of Slavic languages, Corbett (1979Corbett ( , 1983 postulated that the probability of conceptual agreem ent, rather than syntactic agreement, increases as the agreem ent target occupies a rightward position in the following series of syntactic positions: attributive modi er, predicate, relative pronoun, personal (anaphoric) pronoun. Different languages can occupy different positions in this hierarchy and, if a language allows conceptual agreem ent at a certain agreem ent position (e.g.…”

Gender assignment and gender agreement: Evidence from pronominal gender languages

“…Also, there is typological evidence that speakers are sensitive to the difference in syntactic distance among the agreement targets. This fact is captured in the Agreement Hierarchy (Corbett 1979(Corbett , 2006 Cross-linguistic evidence shows that preferences for one or the other alternative are constrained in principled ways, with attributive elements most strongly favouring syntactic agreement and personal pronouns being most likely to agree semantically. This proves that agreement can be sensitive to target sort, and that pronouns are in some respects an extreme target sort.…”

The canonical approach in typology*

“…The possible patterns of agreement with hybrid controllers are tightly constrained by the Agreement Hierarchy (Corbett 1979(Corbett , 1991(Corbett : 225-260, 2000Cornish 1986: 203-211;Barlow 1991Barlow , 1992Kirby 1999: 92-96). The Agreement Hierarchy distinguishes four types of agreement target:…”