Universal #1066
Legacy number: 1066
| Number | 1062 |
| Original | In case of polite plural subject, ... more verb-like predicates tend to agree with features of the surface subject, while more noun-like predicates tend to agree with the underlying subject. |
| Standardized | Whenever predicates agree with subjects in number and there is a politeness contrast for pronouns of address, with plural forms serving as polite singulars, the more verb-like a predicate the likelier it is to agree according to surface features of the subject (i.e., to be plural), and the more noun-like a predicate the likelier it is to agree according to the referential semantics of the subject (i.e., to be singular). |
| Keywords | agreement, number, politeness |
| Domain | inflection, syntax, semantics |
| Type | unconditional |
| Status | achronic |
| Quality | statistical |
| Basis | Slavic, Romance languages, Modern Greek (all Indo-European) |
| Source | Comrie 1975b: 406 |
Discussion
Counterexamples
Hungarian (Ugric, Uralic) (Moravcsik 1997)
Notes
See #429, where the Standardized version is implicational.
Comment
See <a class="innerLink" href="browse.php?entry_id=429"><img src="../img/entry.gif" border="0">, where the Standardized version is implicational.
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