Universal 1383:
- Original
- No language with a traditional auxiliary verb which has subject agreement will not include it in the auxiliary.
- Standardized
- IF the finite verb agrees with a subject, THEN the auxiliary agrees with a subject.
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- Keywords
- agreement, auxiliary, verb
- Domain
- inflection, syntax
- Type
- implication
- Status
- achronic
- Quality
- absolute
- Basis
- 20 languages in Steele 1978, see Steele 1978: 18
- Source
- Steele 1978: 42
- Counterexamples
- In Amharic (Semitic, Afro-Asiatic), compound past tenses are formed with an inflected and tense-marked main verb, but the auxiliary is an invariable abbreviated 3SG.M form näbbär. Thus, subject-marking is not attached to AUX (but see Comments). In Hungarian, neither subject nor tense-marking is attached to AUX in the conditional past (Hetzron 1980: 270).English modals.
Hetzron (1980: 270, fn.16) mentions that cases of fully conjugated auxiliary are also attested in Amharic, but they are barely used today. Actually this demonstrates that the trend is to get rid of auxiliary subject-marking, quite contrary to Steele’s preference.