eBook - PDF

Verbal Agreement and the Grammar behind its 'Breakdown'

Name: Verbal Agreement and the Grammar behind its 'Breakdown'
Author: Elly van Gelderen

Minimalist feature checking

Elly van Gelderen,

236 pages
English
PDF
Available on iOS & Android

eBook - PDF

Verbal Agreement and the Grammar behind its 'Breakdown'

Minimalist feature checking

Elly van Gelderen,

About this book

This book is about what the 'lack' of agreement indicates about the structure of language. Rather than assuming that mistakes occur in languages, disagreement can be seen as an indication of a certain structural relationship. In a Minimalist framework, the partial agreement or complete lack of agreement is determined by when checking of case and agreement takes place and with what nominal element. Earlier work has shown that there may be variation regarding the number of functional categories a language activates. If that account is correct, languages with fewer functional categories (Dutch and Old English) will also have fewer specifiers and therefore less Spec-Head agreement. In these cases, government will play a role in the checking of case and agreement. There are, however, other reasons for the 'breakdown'. For instance, expletives play a major role and they may only be specified for some features (number or person) and when they agree with the verb, the 'real' subject does not. Two additional reasons are discussed: the impact from grammaticalization and from asymmetrical (e.g. coordinate) structures. The focus is on Modern, Old and Middle English and Dutch, but other Germanic languages (German, Swedish, Yiddish), Romance languages (Catalan, French, Italian, Spanish), Arabic, Chamorro, Hebrew, Hopi, Kirundi, O'odham, Navajo, and Urdu/Hindi are discussed as well.

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Yes, you can access Verbal Agreement and the Grammar behind its 'Breakdown' by Elly van Gelderen in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Languages & Linguistics & German Language. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.