Cambridge University Press

978-0-521-85547-1 - The Syntax of Agreement and Concord

Mark C. Baker
Frontmatter
More information

T H E S Y N TA X O F AG R E E M E N T A N D C O N C O R D

© Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org

Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-85547-1 - The Syntax of Agreement and Concord
Mark C. Baker
Frontmatter
More information

In this series
75 l i l i a n e h a e g e m a n: The syntax of negation
76 p a u l g o r r e l: Syntax and parsing
77 g u g l i e l m o c i n q u e: Italian syntax and universal grammar
78 h e n r y s m i t h: Restrictiveness in case theory
79 d . r o b e r t l a d d: Intonational morphology
80 a n d r e a m o r o: The raising of predicates: predicative noun phrases and the theory
of clause structure
81 r o g e r l a s s: Historical linguistics and language change
82 j o h n m . a n d e r s o n: A notional theory of syntactic categories
83 b e r n d h e i n e: Possession: cognitive sources, forces and grammaticalization
84 n o m t e r t e s c h i k - s h i r: The dynamics of focus structure
85 j o h n c o l e m a n: Phonological representations: their names, forms and powers
86 c h r i s t i n a y. b e t h i n: Slavic prosody: language change and phonological theory
87 b a r b a r a d a n c y g i e r: Conditionals and prediction
88 c l a i r e l e f e b v r e: Creole genesis and the acquisition of grammar: the case of
Haitian creole
89 h e i n z g i e g e r i c h: Lexical strata in English
90 k e r e n r i c e: Morpheme order and semantic scope
91 a p r i l m c m a h o n: Lexical phonology and the history of English
92 m at t h e w y. c h e n: Tone Sandhi: patterns across Chinese dialects
93 g r e g o r y t. s t u m p: Inflectional morphology: a theory of paradigm structure
94 j o a n b y b e e: Phonology and language use
95 l a u r i e b a u e r: Morphological productivity
96 t h o m a s e r n s t: The syntax of adjuncts
97 e l i z a b e t h c l o s s t r a u g o t t and r i c h a r d b. d a s h e r: Regularity in
semantic change
98 m aya h i c k m a n n: Children’s discourse: Person, space and time across languages
99 d i a n e b l a k e m o r e: Relevance and linguistic meaning: the semantics and
pragmatics of discourse markers
100 i a n r o b e r t s and a n n a r o u s s o u: Syntactic change: a minimalist approach to
grammaticalization
101 d o n k a m i n k o va: Alliteration and sound change in early English
102 m a r k c . b a k e r: Lexical categories: verbs, nouns and adjectives
103 c a r l o ta s . s m i t h: Modes of discourse: the local structure of texts
104 r o c h e l l e l i e b e r: Morphology and lexical semantics
105 h o l g e r d i e s s e l: The acquisition of complex sentences
106 s h a r o n i n k e l a s and c h e r y l z o l l: Reduplication: doubling in morphology
107 s u s a n e d wa r d s: Fluent aphasia
108 b a r b a r a d a n c y g i e r and e v e s w e e t s e r: Mental spaces in grammar:
conditional constructions
109 h e w b a e r m a n, d u n s ta n b r ow n and g r e v i l l e g . c o r b e t t: The
syntax-morphology interface: a study of syncretism
110 m a r c u s t o m a l i n: Linguistics and the formal sciences: the origins of generative
grammar
111 s a u m u e l d . e p s t e i n and t. d a n i e l s e e ly: Derivations in minimalism
112 p a u l d e l a c y: Markedness: reduction and preservation in phonology
113 y e h u d a n. f a l k: Subjects and their properties
114 p. h . m at t h e w s: Syntactic relations: a critical survey
115 m a r k c . b a k e r: The syntax of agreement and concord

Earlier issues not listed are also available

© Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org

Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-85547-1 - The Syntax of Agreement and Concord
Mark C. Baker
Frontmatter
More information

CAMBRIDGE STUDIES IN LINGUISTICS

General editors: p. a u s t i n, j . b r e s n a n, b. c o m r i e ,
s . c r a i n, w. d r e s s l e r , c . j . e w e n, r . l a s s ,
d . l i g h t f o o t, k . r i c e , i . r o b e r t s , s . r o m a i n e ,
n. v. s m i t h

The Syntax of Agreement and Concord

© Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org

Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-85547-1 - The Syntax of Agreement and Concord
Mark C. Baker
Frontmatter
More information

T H E S Y N TA X O F
AG R E E M E N T A N D
CONCORD

M A R K C . BA K E R
Rutgers University

© Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org

Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-85547-1 - The Syntax of Agreement and Concord
Mark C. Baker
Frontmatter
More information

cambridge university press

Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo, Delhi
Cambridge University Press
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 8RU, UK
Published in the United States of America by Cambridge University Press, New York

www.cambridge.org
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521671569


C Mark Baker 2008

This publication is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception

and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements,
no reproduction of any part may take place without
the written permission of Cambridge University Press.

First published 2008

Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge

A catalogue record for this publication is available from the British Library

ISBN 978-0-521-85547-1 hardback

ISBN 978-0-521-67156-9 paperback

Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or

accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to
in this publication, and does not guarantee that any content on such
websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.

© Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org

Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-85547-1 - The Syntax of Agreement and Concord
Mark C. Baker
Frontmatter
More information

This book is dedicated to the three wonderful children – Catherine,

Nicholas, and Julia – that God has given me to enliven my journey
through this life. I only ask that they not fight about who gets to be
the noun, who the verb, and who the adjective.

© Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org

Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-85547-1 - The Syntax of Agreement and Concord
Mark C. Baker
Frontmatter
More information

Contents

Acknowledgments page xi
List of abbreviations and conventions xiv

1 Introduction: category distinctions as a window on the

theory of agreement 1
1.1 A generalization to be explained 1
1.2 The incompleteness of previous discussions 3
1.3 What a better theory could look like 6
1.4 What is in this book 6
1.5 What is not in this book 7

2 Basic agreement and category distinctions 12

2.1 The generality of the categorical asymmetries in agreement 13
2.2 The category-theoretic infrastructure 27
2.3 The agreement-theoretic contribution 40
2.4 Explaining the basic categorical asymmetries in agreement 48
2.5 Issues arising 56
2.6 Conclusion 64

3 The unity of verbal and adjectival agreement 65

3.1 Downward agreement on adjectives 67
3.2 Upward agreement on verbs 74
3.3 Verbs that cannot agree in person, like adjectives 85
3.4 Conclusion 107

4 Explaining the restriction on person agreement 111

4.1 Person agreement and other categories 112
4.2 Operator-variable agreement and Agree 121
4.3 A locality condition on first and second person variables 124
4.4 On the strictness of locality conditions involving heads 138
4.5 Deriving the SCOPA 142
4.6 Conclusion 148

ix

© Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org

Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-85547-1 - The Syntax of Agreement and Concord
Mark C. Baker
Frontmatter
More information

x Contents

5 Parameters of agreement 153

5.1 Introduction: parameters and other kinds of variation 153
5.2 Agreement on tense 157
5.3 Agreement on FA and the formulation of the parameters 171
5.4 Agreement on complementizers 178
5.5 Agreement on determiners 184
5.6 Agreement on adpositions 191
5.7 Agreement on v 196
5.8 Agreement on the linker head 206
5.9 Agreement in auxiliary constructions 207
5.10 A third value for the Direction of Agreement Parameter 214
5.11 Many little parameters or two big parameters? 219
5.12 General conclusion 244

Appendix: Table of languages and their

agreement properties 246
References 254
Index 264

© Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org

Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-85547-1 - The Syntax of Agreement and Concord
Mark C. Baker
Frontmatter
More information

Acknowledgments

As I get older, I seem to be losing my sense of history. As in many families,

I have fewer pictures documenting every developmental stage of my youngest
child than I do of my oldest child. In the same way, I feel like I have less to say
by way of preface and acknowledgments with each book that I write. But there
are still plenty of people to thank, so here goes.
I do not think that I would have started another book so soon after finishing
Lexical Categories (Baker 2003a) if Andrew Winnard of Cambridge Univer-
sity Press had not approached me about the possibility of publishing some
manuscripts he had seen on my website. Talking to him made me realize that
there was in fact a common theme underlying many of those studies of par-
ticular languages, which I had not fully realized, and that common theme had
to do with agreement. I further realized that my theory of lexical categories
raised some huge unanswered questions about agreement – questions that had
not been answered by other people’s theories either. So I decided to delve into
this topic with some gusto. As I sought to write a capstone essay that would
draw together my little discoveries about agreement in particular languages
(Mapudungun, Kinande, Lokaa, Icelandic), the outlines of a broader theory
began to emerge, and the capstone essay took over the book as a whole. I fear
that some of the original papers are still unpublished (or published in less-visible
venues), but I hope that the final book is more consistent and unified, and paints
a bigger picture than it otherwise would have. It was also personally rewarding
for me to dive back fully into pure linguistic research after some time spent as
department chair and being involved in some cognitive science projects. I thank
Andrew and Cambridge University Press for the excuse to do this.
Of course, one needs not only a project worth working on, but also some
time to work on it. For meeting that need, I thank Rutgers University for pro-
viding a sabbatical leave and a competitive leave fellowship, and the American
Philosophical Society for awarding me a sabbatical leave fellowship (funded
by the Mellon Foundation) for 2005–2006. I would not have had the freedom

xi

© Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org

Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-85547-1 - The Syntax of Agreement and Concord
Mark C. Baker
Frontmatter
More information

xii Acknowledgments

to do the survey of 108 languages reported in chapter 5 if I had not received

this special support.
One also needs some facts to work with, and it is nice when some of them are
new ones that people have not had access to before. In this most recent period of
my career, I have been privileged to work with native-speaker linguists on their
fascinating languages in ways that have been inspiring and helpful to me. This
group includes Elisa Loncon (Mapudungun), Alexander Iwara (Lokaa), Willie
Udo Willie (Ibibio), and – of special significance to this particular study –
Philip Mutaka (Kinande). Kinande gets the most press in what follows, but
meditating on the challenges and wonders of all of these languages has provided
the impetus to do this work. I also wish to thank many linguists who have
generously answered email questions arriving from me “out of the blue” about
the languages that they know when I felt some small but crucial piece of a
puzzle was missing. These are acknowledged individually at the relevant points
in the text, but here I single out Halldór Sigurð sson for service beyond the call
of duty, since Icelandic turned out to be particularly important at several points.
And one needs some inspiring colleagues, who can stimulate you, challenge
you, and help you put your ideas to the test. I have been lucky enough to
present this material in a number of colloquiums and more extended forums,
including graduate seminars at Rutgers University in spring 2005 and fall 2006,
an LSA summer institute class at MIT in 2005, extended colloquia at UCLA and
Georgetown University in 2006, and week-long classes at the University of the
Basque Lands and the LOT summer school at the University of Amsterdam in
2006. I thank all of these audiences for their encouragement and input, including
José Camacho, Liliana Sanchez, Roger Schwarzchild, David Pesetsky, Esther
Torrego, Seth Cable, Hilda Koopman, Anoop Mahajan, Philippe Schlenker,
Carson Schütze, Raffaella Zanuttini, Bob Franks, Michael Diercks, Itziar Laka,
Javier Ormazabal, Myriam Uribe-Extebarria, Hans Broekenhuis, Jenneke van
der Wal, and others that I forgot – or whose names I never even learned. I thank
Jessica Rett and Cedric Boeckx for sending me written comments on parts of
the manuscript. I thank my students who have also been interested in issues of
case and agreement, including Vita Markman, Natalia Kariaeva, Jessica Rett,
and Carlos Fasola. Three people stand out for special thanks in this category.
First, I thank Chris Collins for early collaborative work on what we originally
called “the Bantu Parameter.” This provided the seeds for what became chapter
5, once I was finally able to investigate how that parameter might apply to other
languages. Second, I thank Ken Safir for his enormous influence on chapter 4,
helping me to get up to speed (or at least closer to speed) on the issues of binding,
person, and pronoun interpretation that are crucial there, and showing me how to

© Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org

Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-85547-1 - The Syntax of Agreement and Concord
Mark C. Baker
Frontmatter
More information

Acknowledgments xiii

say what I wanted to say in a much cleaner and more straightforward way. Third,
I thank Carlos Fasola, who in the guise of being my research assistant helped me
to discover the properties of many of the 108 languages discussed in chapter 5,
and helped to nurture in us both a common pleasure in grammar-reading.
One might not literally need a loving and supportive family in order to write
a book like this, but I certainly would not want to do it any other way. Many
thanks to my wife Linda and my three children for much help, support, prayers,
and companionship along the way.
Finally, I am convinced that I needed the grace of the Lord Jesus Christ, the
love of God, and the fellowship of the Holy Spirit to do something like this. I
thank my God for providing all of the people and resources listed above, and
everything else besides.

© Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org

Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-85547-1 - The Syntax of Agreement and Concord
Mark C. Baker
Frontmatter
More information

Abbreviations and conventions

In this book, I cite examples from a large number of languages, some of which
I do not know well. This presents certain challenges for effective glossing. The
safer course would be to simply follow the glossing practice of the source that
the example is taken from. The problem with this is that it multiplies greatly the
number of abbreviations used, and can obscure comparison by giving similar
morphemes very different glosses. This problem could be addressed by trying
to impose a uniform system of glossing on all of the languages considered. But
that creates other problems: in particular, languages might have morphemes
that are similar in their usage but not identical in all respects, and I might not
know enough to do it accurately. I have tried to strike a middle path between
these two courses, making the glosses more uniform when I thought I could do
it with reasonable accuracy and when the morphemes are relatively important
to my topic – in particular, when they are agreement morphemes. I am not fully
satisfied with the results, and experts on the relevant languages may be even
less so. But that is what I did.
Agreement morphemes (particularly those on verbs) are glossed by a com-
plex symbol that begins with a number indicating the person of the agreed-with
phrase (1, 2, or 3), then has a lower-case letter indicating the number of the
agreed-with phrase (s, singular; d, dual; p, plural), and then a capital letter indi-
cating the grammatical function of the agreed-with phrase (S, subject; O, object;
P, possessor; A, absolutive; D, dative/goal; E, ergative). Thus, 1pS means first
person plural subject agreement, 3sO means third singular object agreement,
and so on. Sometimes one member of this triple is missing when the correspond-
ing category is not marked – for example, when the agreement indicates person
but not number, or vice versa. When two agreement factors are expressed with
a single portmanteau morpheme, their features are separated with a slash.
The reader should also note that 1, 2, and 3 have two meanings in agreement
morphemes: they can mean first, second, or third person (all languages), or
they can mean a third person noun phrase in class 1 (human singular), class 2
(human plural), or class 3 (singular) in a Bantu language or Lokaa. Thus 1sS

xiv

© Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org

Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-85547-1 - The Syntax of Agreement and Concord
Mark C. Baker
Frontmatter
More information

Abbreviations and conventions xv

always means first person singular subject, but 1S in the gloss of a Niger Congo
language means subject agreement with a noun of class 1 (third person human
singular). (1S in the gloss of a non-Bantu language could mean first person
subject agreement, with number unspecified.) I hope this will not be unduly
confusing.
Other abbreviations used in the glosses of linguistic examples are as follows.
Readers should consult the original sources for more on what these categories
amount to in particular languages.

1–19 noun class (Bantu)

a,b,c gender/number categories (Southern Tiwa)
abs absolutive case
acc accusative case
act actor
adj adjectival
adv adverbial
aff affirmative
agr agreement
an animate
aor aorist tense
appl applicative morpheme
art article
asp aspect
assoc associative marker
aug augmented
aux auxiliary
ben benefactive applicative marker
caus causative
cl noun class (Bantu), classifier (Tariana)
comp complementizer
compl completive
cond conditional
conj conjunction
cont continuous aspect
contr contrastive
cs construct state (Berber)
dat dative case
decl declarative
dem demonstrative

© Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org

Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-85547-1 - The Syntax of Agreement and Concord
Mark C. Baker
Frontmatter
More information

xvi Abbreviations and conventions

desid desiderative
det determiner
dir direct
disj disjunctive prefix
dr directional
dur durative
dyn dynamic
erg ergative case
eu euphonic
ext extended aspect (Bantu)
f feminine gender
fam familiar
foc focus
fut future
fv final vowel (Bantu, indicative mood marker?)
gen genitive case
ger gerund
hab habitual aspect
i irrational
imp imperative
impf imperfective
inan inanimate
ind indicative
indf indefinite
inf infinitive
instr instrumental
int intentional
intrans intransitive
inv inverse
irr irrealis
lk linker
loc locative
log logophoric
m masculine gender
n neuter gender
neg negative
ni noun incorporation
nom nominative case
noml nominalizer
np nonpast tense

© Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org

Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-85547-1 - The Syntax of Agreement and Concord
Mark C. Baker
Frontmatter
More information

Abbreviations and conventions xvii

npst nonpast tense

nsf noun suffix (determiner?)
obj objective case marker
obl oblique
opt optative
pass passive
past past tense
perf perfective aspect
pl plural number
poss possessor
pp past perfective
pred predicative head
pres present tense
prev preverb
prog progressive aspect
ptpl participle
q question particle
r rational
rcp recent past
refl reflexive
rel relative
rem remote past
rep reported
rpst recent past
sbjn subjunctive
sg singular number
ss same subject
stat stative aspect
sub subordinate
subj subject
t Tense, unspecified tense marker
ta Transitive animate (Algonquian)
th thematic
thsy hearsay particle
top topic
tr transitive
unposs unpossessed
val validator
vbzr verbalizer
veg vegetable gender (Mayali)

© Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org

Cambridge University Press
978-0-521-85547-1 - The Syntax of Agreement and Concord
Mark C. Baker
Frontmatter
More information

xviii Abbreviations and conventions

vis visible
x special gender class in Burushaski

The following are abbreviations of linguistic terms: names of principles, gram-

matical categories, language families, and construction types.

a, ap adjective, adjective phrase

c, cp complementizer, complementizer phrase
d, dp determiner, determiner phrase
deg degree head
ecm Exceptional Case Marking
ecp Empty Category Principle
epp “Extended Projection Principle” feature (triggers the
movement of a phrase to the category that bears it)
fp functional phrase
ie Indo-European languages
n, np noun, noun phrase
nc Niger-Congo languages
p, pp adposition (preposition or postposition), adpositional
phrase
pf Phonological Form
plc Person Licensing Condition
plc(h) Person Licensing Condition applied to Heads
scopa Structural Condition on Person Agreement
spec, xp Specifier of XP
t, tp tense head, tense phrase
v, vp light verb (abstract verbal element, assigner of external
argument), light verb phrase
v, vp verb, verb phrase
vso, sov, etc. Verb-subject-object word order; subject-object-verb order,
etc.
wals World Atlas of Language Structures

Finally, the following are some conventions used in presenting examples:

(x) The example has the same grammatical status with or

without X included.
(*x) The example is good without X, but bad when it is included.
*(x) The example is bad unless X is included.

In some cases, an agreement morpheme and the NP that it agrees with are both
underlined.

© Cambridge University Press www.cambridge.org