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Multiple Agreement and Case Deletion: Against φ‐incompleteness
Author(s) -
Carstens Vicki
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
syntax
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.587
H-Index - 24
eISSN - 1467-9612
pISSN - 1368-0005
DOI - 10.1111/1467-9612.00042
Subject(s) - agreement , linguistics , subject (documents) , noun , bantu languages , head (geology) , object (grammar) , completeness (order theory) , theme (computing) , computer science , value (mathematics) , nominalization , mathematics , natural language processing , artificial intelligence , philosophy , biology , mathematical analysis , library science , operating system , paleontology , machine learning
I argue against Chomsky’s (1999, 2000) proposal that Case deletion correlates with the φ‐completeness of probes, based on (i) the omission of gender in subject agreement in, for example, Romance languages; and (ii) the inclusion of full φ‐features in subject agreement in Bantu, repeated on all verbal heads within a clause. I propose instead a return to the traditional view that certain categories are Case “assigners,” such that Agree deletes the goal’s Case only if the probe has an intrinsic structural Case value. Finally, I show that Agree so modified accounts for concord in noun phrases, including concord on ‘of’ in African languages, reflecting φ‐features of head nouns. Crucial to this account is a structural analysis in which ‘of’ is merged with a nominal constituent that includes the head noun but excludes the surface ‘of’ object, be it possessor, agent, or theme.