The many facets of agreement

Agreement is a phenomenon that spans multiple areas of linguistic theorizing. On the one hand, agreement has been regarded as purely syntactic/morphological phenomenon because it has no clear contribution to meaning. However, this clashes with the observation that agreement may also influence interpretation in subtle ways, allowing languages to express nuances in meaning that would otherwise get lost. The book addresses the phenomenon of agreement and its place in the grammar from multiple linguistic perspectives. The individual chapters in this book investigate the question what we can learn about the general process of agreement based on the detailed study of its syntax, semantics and morphology, including its production/processing by the human brain.

Contents: Acknowledgements - Introduction - I The morphology of f-agreement - Pavel Caha The layered structure of concord - Daniar Kasenov: Third person-sensitive allomorphy of accusative case of possessed nominals in Balkar and Kumyk - Michal Starke, Maria Cortiula and Lucie Taraldsen Medová: Straightening up the Czech 3.PL suffixes - Tarald Taraldsen: Tense-sensitive vs. tense-neutral F-suffixes - II Beyond f-agreement - Alexander Letuchiy: Identity approach to absolute tense - Pavel Rudnev: The Anaphor Agreement Effect as epiphenomenon - Natalia Slioussar: Syncretism in sentence processing.