Query on agreement

[Joan Bresnan]

Dan Everett writes:

> I have a question about LFG that someone might be able to help me
> with. Please be patient with me if the question only reveals my
> ignorance of LFG. Here is my question: does LFG constrain possible
> agreement relations configurationally or only functionally (i.e. based
> only on grammatical function)? The empirical motivation for this
> question comes from work I am doing on agreement in Arawan
> languages. I will give an example of one of those here (English
> tokens, though, to avoid all the glosses, etc. I can give real data to
> anyone strongly interested).
> 

Agreement in lfg is defined on f-structures, not c-structures, so it
depends on function, not position.  Nevertheless, because there are
strong constraints relating functions and positions (as in Bresnan
1996 Lexical-Functional Syntax), there are indirect constraints on
position affecting agreement.  For example, in some languages,
agreement with a subject to the left of the verb has different
morphology from agreement with a subject to the right.  A typical lfg
solution would be that leftward subject agreement is really a case of
pronominal resumption of a dislocated topic whose c-structure position
is left of the verb, while ordinary grammatical subject agreement
would be to the right, where the subject is positioned.  This type of
analysis would have many empirically testable consequences; see e.g.
Bresnan and Mchombo 1987, Bresnan 1996, etc.

> In Banawa, the verb agrees in person and number with the subject and
> in gender with the topic. Person and number surfaces as a fusional
> verbal prefix. Gender surfaces as a verbal suffix.  The special
> interest of Banawa verb agreement is seen when the topic NP is both
> the subject of the clause and an inalienable possession
> construction. In this case, the possessed NP governs person-number
> agreement in the verbal prefix position, while the possessor NP
> governs gender agreement in the verbal suffix position. That is, the
> possessed NP behaves like the subject, the possessor as the
> topic. This occurs, again, from subject position, not object
> position. Moreover, it involves no overt movement. It is not,
> therefore, possessor raising/ascension.
> 
> A hypothetical pair of examples:
> 
> (1) My[fem] brother[masc] 3sg-fell-masc.
> 
> (2) My[fem] hand[masc] 3sg-hurts-fem.
> 
> Ex. (2) shows that in an inalienable possession (and not in other NPs)
> construction the possessed noun governs person-number agreement, while
> the possessor governs gender agreement on the verb. Informally, it is
> not hard to see that gender, which agrees with the topic, would agree
> with the possessor since it is the possessor which is ultimately being
> talked about or topicalized, not merely a part of his/her body or
> inalienable possessions.
> 

Yes, this is the most natural analysis.  Similar cases involving
honorification in Korean (Ibelieve) were discussed in Ki-Sun Hong's
Stanford dissertation.  You can contact her as:

LRICYM%KRSNUCC1.BITNET at Forsythe.Stanford.EDU (Ki-Sun Hong)

to access the dissertation.

> But formally, the situation is nontrivial. Simple feature percolation
> won't get it. I have ideas on how to handle this in GB/Minimality theory,
> but I am interested in knowing if any readers of this list find the 
> structure problematic. I know that a rule in LFG format can be written
> for this. That is not the question. I am interested in knowing whether
> LFG constrains the kinds of rules that might be written so that writing
> a rule for this construction is harder than writing a rule for
> run-of-the-mill topic/subject agreement.
> 
> Thanks for any help you can provide.
> 
> Dan Everett

I don't think any special agreement rules are required.  If the gender
suffix were actually a bound pronominal inflection having a topic
antecedent, the case could be handled as an instance of transfer of
reference from part to whole.  Something for the pragmatics of
reference--very common across languages.  If the gender suffix is a
grammatical agreement marker with the topic (something that I think
*might* occur in some languages), you could simply have a poss-headed
f-structure for inalienable possession NPs: the whole NP is the topic,
as usual, but internal to the NP of an inalienable possessor
construction, the possessor becomes the functional head (annotated by
up = down) and the categorial head becomes an adjunct.  The latter might be viewed as a grammaticalization of the referential transfer involved in part-whole realtions.

Send me a copy of your ppr when you get it written up.  Very interesting.

Joan Bresnan
(bresnan at turing.stanford.edu)