ECCENTRIC AGREEMENT AND MULTIPLE CASE-CHECKING*Eccentric Agreement • May 5th, 2020
Let us consider now how the structure suggested by the distribution of agreement morphology meshes with the analysis of Chukchi syntax (case) presented in section 4.1. To begin with, the role of C was not considered in that section. The fact that both C-agreement and T-agreement reflect the features of the subject in intransitive clauses can be implemented by adding a CP to the top of the tree in (9) and stipulating that C must check features with the closest argument. This will force an intransitive subject to raise to T and then on to C, checking agreement features twice. For the transitive derivation we have proposed, both subject and object check case at T—tucking in leaves the subject as the highest argument and it will then be attracted by C. From
Eccentric agreement can be monstrousEccentric Agreement • February 18th, 2016
Béjar and Rezac (2009) develop an elegant proposal which accounts for the syntax of so-called agreement displacement sensitive to person hierarchies, i.e. patterns of agreement where either the subject or the object may control agreement in the same morphological position depending on their relative specification for person and grammatical function (also called eccentric agreement, context-sensitive agreement, and dependent agreement). E.g. in Basque the controller for person agreement alternates between the internal argument (IA) and the external argument (EA) depending on their relative φ-feature specification. In brief, the essence of their Cyclic Agree mechanism boils down to the following ingredients: (i) The π- probe is placed between the EA and the IA on v°, (ii) The π-probe in a given language is sensitive to a particular specification of the goal in terms of [person], [participant], and [speaker], and (iii) The agreement displacement pattern follows from a bottom-up derivation
