concord, agreement and suppletion,

[Daniel Everett]

There are many languages in which object agreement is optional but
where the presence of object agreement is almost always associated with
definiteness. Not only Spanish object clitic-doubling, but Yagua object
agreement/clitics, Wari, and some facets of Arawan (a family) object
agreement (gender agreement is with the topic, which is definite. The
proviso is that Topic must be either subject or object).

The Spanish ( Porteno especially) case is a well-known example of
course (there is an interesting treatment of this in Givon's syntax,
for those who would like to read about some other than Kayne's
Generalization and clitic-doubling). I have discussions of several of
these in my _Why there are no clitics_ and there is a discussion of the
Wari' facts in the Everett and Kern grammar.

-- Dan Everett



On Tuesday, January 14, 2003, at 07:57 PM, Jonathan David Bobaljik
wrote:

> Dear Ora:
>
> At 23:56 +0100 1/13/03, Ora Matushansky wrote:
>> Would anyone know if the following three phenomena are possible:
>> (1)	Definiteness agreement: the main verb/predicate reflects the
>> definiteness of the subject. Things like the Hebrew accusative "et" on
>> definite objects and Spanish "a" don't count :)
>
> For whatever it's worth, Hungarian object agreement is described in
> this way (though with complexities). References include work by
> Szabolcsi, e.g., in Kiefer & E. Kiss, 1994, Syntactic Struct of H;
> Synt/Sem 27, Academic Press. See H. Bartos, in U Penn Working Papers
> 4.2 (1997) for important critique of this position, and an
> alternative.
>
> I'd be interested in a summary of responses, if you are getting
> responses off-list as well.
>
> Best,
>
> -Jonathan
> --
> _______________________
> Jonathan David Bobaljik
> Department of Linguistics
> McGill University
> 1085 Dr. Penfield
> Montreal PQ H3A 1A7
> CANADA
>
> tel: (514) 398-4224
> fax: (514) 398-7088
>
> http://www.arts.mcgill.ca/programs/linguistics/faculty/bobaljik
>
>

------------------------------------------

Daniel L. Everett
Chair of Phonetics and Phonology
Department of Linguistics
The University of Manchester
Oxford Road
Manchester, UK M13 9PL
http://lings.ln.man.ac.uk/
FAX & Department phone: 44-161-275-3187
Office: 44-161-275-3158