Theoretical Implications of Directionally Asymmetric Transparency

Transparent segments have been a well known challenge for accounts of patterns of long distance agreement, such as vowel and consonant harmony. Two standard ways to account for transparency are autosegmental feature spreading with underspecification (e.g. Kiparsky 1981; Steriade 1987) and Agreement by Correspondence (ABC; Walker 2000; Walker & Rose 2004; Hansson 2001). Both, however, fail to derive the multiple instances of transparency encountered in Tsilhqút'í­n (Cook 1993; 2013). Here, non-retracted dorsals act both as transparent and as opaque to the process of vowel retraction, depending on which side of the trigger, a retracted sibilant, they are located. On the other hand, both retracted and non-retracted dorsals are transparent in sibilant harmony, in which sibilants are forced to agree in retraction. I propose a superset approach that combines feature spreading and underspecification with ABC: All dorsals are transparent in sibilant harmony, because they are outside the correspondence relation. At the first step of the derivation, non-retracted dorsals are not specified for retraction, allowing them to be transparent to regressive retraction. At a later step, they are negatively specified and hence able to block progressive retraction.

Against some approaches to long-distance agreement without AGREE

With the introduction of AGREE into Minimalism by Chomsky (2000), the relationship between the two elements in an agreement relationship went from being strictly local (Specifier-Head) to being unbounded (c-command with no intervening strong phase boundary) in order to accommodate long-distance agreement phenomena. Concern over the less restricted nature of the new approach led researchers to propose alternatives that eschewed the unbounded reach of AGREE , in the hope that a more restrictive theory might yet be salvaged. This paper scrutinizes some of the most widely cited and fully developed of these alternative proposals (employing predicate inversion of expletives, restructuring, covert movement), applied to extensively studied spheres of data (English existentials, Icelandic agreement), and concludes that they are deeply, perhaps fatally, flawed. While Chomsky’s version of AGREE is far from providing a complete and satisfactory theory of agreement, it has yet to be shown that it can be eliminated.

Checking Up on (ϕ-)Agree

We argue for a uniformly upward-probing implementation of Agree (Upward Agree, UA), showing that it can account for a wide range of long-distance agreement phenomena, including cases that have been cited as evidence against earlier UA models of ϕ-agreement. Our core revision to earlier UA approaches is a distinction between checking and valuation: while we maintain that checking is strictly regulated by UA, we propose that valuation depends on a secondary relation of accessibility, which allows valuation of a higher probe by a lower, accessible goal, in cases where the checker of the probe cannot (fully) value it. This model provides a better account of asymmetries between Spec-head agreement and long-distance agreement patterns, and also accounts for movement-agreement interactions without a need for EPP features.

Raising and long-distance agreement in Passamaquoddy: A unified analysis

This article presents an analysis of two constructions in the Eastern Algonquian language Passamaquoddy in which the position of the object of a verb of cognition (‘know’, ‘believe’, ‘remember’, ‘wonder about’, ‘suspect’) is linked, either by apparent raising or by apparent long-distance agreement, to a position within a clausal complement to the verb. The latter position may be arbitrarily deeply embedded. The analysis developed here, formulated in the framework of Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar, demonstrates that the two constructions in fact represent alternative realizations of identical argument structures for the verbs in question and that the apparent long-distance dependencies involved can be accounted for in terms of a purely local principle of argument selection.

Raising, inversion and agreement in modern Hebrew

This paper focuses on the interaction between raising, subject–verb inversion and agreement in Modern Hebrew. It identifies, alongside ‘standard’ (i.e., English-like) subject-to-subject raising, two additional patterns where the embedded subject appears post-verbally. In one, the raising predicate exhibits long-distance agreement with the embedded subject, while in the other, a colloquial variant, it is marked with impersonal (3sm) agreement. The choice between the three raising constructions in the language is shown to be solely dependent on properties of the embedded clause. The data are discussed and analyzed against a background of typological and theoretical work on raising. The analysis, cast in the framework of Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar (HPSG), builds on research on raising, selectional locality, agreement, subjecthood and information structure, as well as verb-initial constructions in Modern Hebrew.

Obligational Constructions in New Indo-Aryan Languages of Western India

The paper describes historical roots as well as syntactic and semantic properties of the three main obligational constructions in modern Hindi-Urdu, Punjabi, Rajasthani 1 and Gujarati2 These constructions differ from one another by the degree and by the type of obligation. The main syntactic properties of obligational constructions discussed in the paper are Agent marking and long distance agreement rules. It will be demonstrated that the increasing frequency of the Dative instead of the Instrumental Agent marking in constructions of obligation was part of the gradual destruction of the ‘passive syntax’ typical for the climactic stage of ergative development.