Open AccessVariable Conjunct Agreement in Qaraqalpaq
Author(s) -
Sarah Asinari,
Si Kai Lee
Publication year - 2021
Publication title -
proceedings of the workshop on turkic and languages in contact with turkic
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 2641-3485
DOI - 10.3765/ptu.v6i1.5057
Subject(s) - pronoun , agreement , linguistics , sentence , computer science , merge (version control) , subject pronoun , head (geology) , verb , syntactic structure , feature (linguistics) , natural language processing , artificial intelligence , philosophy , information retrieval , geomorphology , geology
This paper examines a unique Variable Conjunct Agreement (VCA) pattern in Qaraqalpaq. In this language, the second or third person pronoun can undergo conjunct agreement with the verb from either the first or last conjunct. This agreement pattern is disrupted in the presence of any first person pronoun, regardless of whether the pronoun is within the ConjP. We use a multidominant structure to represent coordination in Qaraqalpaq. We propose that a \emph{Speaker} head is required to merge the ConjP with the rest of the structure. This Speaker head is also required to license the [+Speaker] feature of the first person pronoun. This competition prevents first person pronouns and VCA from co-occurring in the same sentence; the only possibility in the relevant cases is full subject agreement.