Universal #579

Legacy number: 579

 Number  576
 Original  The Agreement Hierarchy
If agreement features are optionally referential-semantic or syntactic, the likelihood of semantic agreement increases monotonically as one moves down the following hierarchy of targets:
Attributive > Predicate > Relative pronoun > Personal pronoun
 Standardized  IF personal pronouns can have semantic rather than syntactic agreement in gender or number with a particular noun, THEN relative pronouns, predicative, and attributive constituents can also have semantic agreement with that noun.
IF relative pronouns can have semantic agreement in gender or number with a particular noun, THEN predicative, and attributive constituents can also have semantic agreement with that noun.
IF predicative constituents can have semantic agreement in gender or number with a particular noun, THEN attributive constituents can also have semantic agreement with that noun.
 Formula  semantic agreement for personal pronouns ⇒ semantic agreement for relative pronouns ⇒
⇒ semantic agreement for predicates ⇒ semantic agreement for attributes
 Keywords  agreement, gender, number, attributive, predicate, relative pronoun, personal pronoun
 Domain  inflection, syntax, semantics
 Type  implicational hierarchy
 Status  achronic
 Quality  absolute
 Basis  languages in Corbett 1979, Corbett 1988, Corbett 1991: more than 200 from all over the place; claim originally motivated by Slavonic
 Source  Corbett 1979, Corbett 1983, Corbett 1988, Corbett 1991: Ch. 8

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Discussion
Counterexamples
Hungarian (Ugric, Uralic) possibly violates this hierarchy, if appositives count as attributes. In Hungarian, appositives (nouns and adjectives) show semantic agreement, whereas predicates do not (Moravcsik 1997).
Notes
See #2008 for the 1991 version.
Comment
Frans Plank · 3 Aug 2006
See <a class="innerLink" href="browse.php?entry_id=2008"><img src="../img/entry.gif" border="0"> for the 1991 version.