Morphology and syntax … and semantics … and pragmatics
Deconstructing “semantic agreement”
Agreement minimally involves interaction between morphology and syntax, as a target’s features vary according to the morphological form of a controller in a given syntactic context. However, semantics can also play a role, and the term “semantic agreement” has been used to describe various constructions where morphosyntactic feature values of the agreement target do not match the formal features of the controller, reflecting instead meaning-based properties of the noun. In this paper, we deconstruct instances of “semantic agreement,” as there is good evidence to believe that more than just the semantics is involved in the agreement process. In some cases, e.g. Russian hybrid nouns like vrač ‘doctor’, the local context provides the agreement features, giving a type of “pragmatic agreement”. In other cases, socio-cultural information plays a role, showing a broader type of pragmatic agreement. In light of these observations, we offer a deconstruction of semantic agreement phenomena in order to show the complex ways morphology interacts with syntax, semantics, and pragmatics. Finally, we argue that the distinction between syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic agreement is paralleled by (and benefits from) earlier discussions of syntactic versus pragmatic control.
References
Bianchi, C
(Ed.) 2004 The semantics/pragmatics distinction. Stanford: CSLI.
Comrie, B
1975 Polite plurals and predicate agreement.
Language, 51(2), 406–418.
Corbett, G. G
1979 The agreement hierarchy.
Journal of Linguistics, 15(2), 203–224.
Corbett, G. G
1991 Gender. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Corbett, G. G
2006 Agreement. Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.
Dahl, O
2000 Animacy and the notion of semantic gender. In
B. Unterbeck,
M. Rissanen,
T. Nevalainen, &
M. Saari (Eds.),
Gender in grammar and cognition (pp. 99–115). Berlin/New York: Mouton de Gruyter.
Enger, H
2004 Scandinavian pancake sentences as semantic agreement.
Nordic Journal of Linguistics, 271, 5–34.
Enger, H
2013 Scandinavian pancake sentences revisited.
Nordic Journal of Linguistics, 36(3), 275–301.
Hankamer, J., & Sag, I
1976 Deep and surface anaphora.
Linguistic Inquiry, 7(3), 391–428.
Hock, H. H
2007 Agreeing to disagree: Agreement with non-agreeing antecedents, with focus on Sanskrit and Latin. Presentation at East Coast Indo-European Conference, Yale University, June 2007.
Hoffner, H., & Melchert, H. C
2008 Hittite grammar. Winona Lake, Indiana: Eisenbrauns.
Johnson, C. A., & Joseph, B. D
2014 Limiting the power of zero: Agreement with Sanskrit elliptic duals. Presented at the 88th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, Minneapolis, MN, January 4, 2014.
Joseph, B. D
1979 On the agreement of reflexive forms in English.
Linguistics, 171, 519–23.
Kathol, A
1999 Agreement and the syntax-morphology interface in HPSG. In
R. D. Levine, &
G. M. Green (Eds.),
Studies in contemporary phrase structure grammar (pp. 223–274). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kiparsky, P
2010 Dvandvas, blocking, and the associative: The bumpy ride from phrase to word.
Language, 86(2), 302–331.
Oliphant, S. G
1912 The Vedic dual: Part VI, the elliptic dual; Part VII, the dual dvandva.
Journal of the American Oriental Society, 321, 33–57.
Pesetsky, D
2013 Что дѣлать? what is to be done? Plenary talk at the 87th Annual Meeting of the Linguistic Society of America, 4 January 2013.
Szabo, Z
2005 Semantics versus pragmatics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Wierzbicka, A
2008 Semantics versus pragmatics. Encyclopaedia of the linguistic sciences: Issues and theories. New Delhi: Allied Publishers.
Zwicky, A
1987 Phonologically conditioned agreement and purely morphological features. Technical report UCSC Syntax Research Center, Report SRC-87-06.
Cited by
Cited by 2 other publications
Corbett, Greville G.
2023.
The Agreement Hierarchy and (generalized) semantic agreement.
Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 8:1
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 3 march 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.