The multi-valuation Agreement Hierarchy

Abstract

This paper investigates multi-valuation, i.e. cases where one probe agrees with multiple goals thus obtaining multiple feature values. Focusing on number agreement, I look at the cross-linguistic patterns on multi-valued Ns in the nominal Right Node Raising construction (Nominal RNR) reported in Belyaev et al. (2015); Harizanov & Gribanova (2015); Shen (2016) as well as multi-valued Ts in TP RNR construction reported in Yatabe (2003); Grosz (2009; 2015); Kluck (2009). I show that three types of languages are attested: languages like Serbo-Croatian that show singular marking on both multi-valued Ns and Ts, languages like Russian that show plural marking on both multi-valued Ns and Ts, and languages like English that show singular marking on multi-valued Ns and plural marking on multi-valued Ts. No language is attested that shows plural marking on multi-valued Ns and singular marking on multi-valued Ts. I use this 3/4 pattern to argue that multi-valuation shows the effect of the Agreement Hierarchy discussed by Corbett (1979; 2006) among others.

First conjunct complementiser agreement and the structure of coordination

“…( 24)). It has been observed that languages vary in how agreement is resolved under RNR (Grosz 2015;Shen 2019): in some languages, the RNR'ed element shows agreement with the subject of both conjuncts (summative agreement), and in other languages, the element that has been Right Node Raised agrees with the subject of the last conjunct (distributive agreement). The options are illustrated in ( 28).…”