The Agreement Hierarchy revisited: The typology of controllers

Abstract

The Agreement Hierarchy consists of four principal target positions: attributive, predicate, relative pronoun and anaphoric personal pronoun. It constrains the distribution of alternative agreements, in that the likelihood of agreement with greater semantic justification increases monotonically as we move rightwards along the hierarchy. The Agreement Hierarchy covers a wide range of disparate data, and continues to figure regularly in work on theoretical syntax. Since the hierarchy was first proposed, typology has moved on. This means that to remain fit for the purposes for which it is currently used, the hierarchy needs an overhaul. The typology of agreement controllers is the area where the need is most urgent; this is therefore our focus. The canonical typology of controllers is shown to have two dimensions: lexeme to phrase, and local to extraneous (the latter involving honorific agreement, associative agreement, back agreement and “pancake sentences”). These two dimensions are amply illustrated. Finally, interactions between the different types of agreement controller are investigated, since these prove revealing for the typology. Besides making progress on the typology of agreement, the paper contributes to typology more generally, in incorporating insights from other typological disciplines.

The Agreement Hierarchy and (generalized) semantic agreement

“…A further interesting example is the alternative agreements of human versus diminutive in Chichewa (nya, Corbett & Mtenje 1987). There are numerous references on lexical hybrids, and ways into this considerable literature include Corbett (2015;2022b).…”

“…Corbett (2022b: 198-199) argues that such constructions are intermediate to lexical hybrids, since nouns like group can take plural agreements without a dependent phrase (hence can behave as lexical hybrids) but the plural is more likely when there is a dependent phrase, and hence we have a complex nominal construction. References can be found in Corbett (2022b), recent work on Bulgarian can be found in Stamenov ( 2022), and a Russian example is analysed in the context of triple agreement alternatives in §5.1.…”

“…We now analyse five phenomena where the source of one of the agreement alternatives is not within the controller, but is extraneous to it (Corbett 2022b). These phenomena would not fit straightforwardly under the term "semantic agreement", hence "generalized semantic agreement" is preferable here.…”

“…The importance of "pancake sentences" for the argument was discussed in §3.2.2. Key references include Enger (2004), which has careful discussion of semantic agreement in this construction, Enger (2013) and Haugen & Enger (2019); Corbett (2006: 223-224) makes the link to the Agreement Hierarchy, while Corbett (2022b) provides references to other languages with the construction. For a survey of the literature, see Åkerblom (2020).…”

“…This paper helps to provide a firm underpinning for the Agreement Hierarchy, in the spirit of Round & Corbett (2020). Elsewhere, Corbett (2022b) gives a principled account of agreement controllers, while here the component "semantic agreement" is made more secure.…”