Windschuttel, Glenn: Morphology or syntax: The two types of non-agreeing verb
Sporadic verb agreement, that is, where some verbs show agreement and others do not, is not a common feature of languages around the world, especially if lexically defined (Fedden 2019, Windschuttel 2019a). Where it affects objects, there are two types. In the first type, there are other syntactic differences between the verbs and their objects, not just agreement. Dahlstrom (2009) analysed this as a difference in the grammatical functions they subcategorise for, OBJ where indexed and OBJθ where unindexed. The other type cannot be reconciled to this analysis, the difference in agreement behaviour having no wider syntactic significance. Instead, morphology is the only difference. The two analyses correspond to two systems, morphological vs syntactic. This parallels the distinction between morphological and syntactic ergativity both in behaviour and analysis.
December 22, 2022 |
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