Universal #915

Legacy number: 915

 Number  912
 Original  Agreement is often carried out in such a way that the verb agrees with noun phrases higher in animacy, and fails to agree with those lower in animacy, even where this overrides, in particular cases or in general, grammatical relations, the unusual determiners of agreement cross-linguistically.
 Standardized  IF verbs agree with inanimate NPs, THEN they also agree with animate NPs of the same grammatical relation, or even of a grammatical relation lower on the relational hierarchy which otherwise determines agreement preferences.
 Keywords  agreement, animacy, grammatical relations
 Domain  inflection, syntax
 Type  implication
 Status  achronic
 Quality  statistical
 Basis  105 languages of Comrie’s sample
 Source  Comrie 1981: 184

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