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Agreement (linguistics)
 
 
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In language
Language

A language is a form of symbol communication in which elements are combined to represents something other than themselves. Language can also refer to the use of such systems as a general phenomenon....
s, agreement is a form of cross-reference between different parts of a sentence or phrase. Agreement happens when one word changes in form depending on to which other words it is being related.

For example, one does not say I is in English, because is cannot be used when the subject is I. The word is is said not to agree with the word I. This is why the grammatical form is I am, even though the verb still has the same function and basic meaning.

ement often adds redundancy
Redundancy (language)

In linguistics, redundancy is considered a vital feature of language. It shields a message from possible flaws in transmission . In this way, it increases the odds of predictability of a message's meaning....
 to languages.






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In language
Language

A language is a form of symbol communication in which elements are combined to represents something other than themselves. Language can also refer to the use of such systems as a general phenomenon....
s, agreement is a form of cross-reference between different parts of a sentence or phrase. Agreement happens when one word changes in form depending on to which other words it is being related.

For example, one does not say I is in English, because is cannot be used when the subject is I. The word is is said not to agree with the word I. This is why the grammatical form is I am, even though the verb still has the same function and basic meaning.

Functions

Agreement often adds redundancy
Redundancy (language)

In linguistics, redundancy is considered a vital feature of language. It shields a message from possible flaws in transmission . In this way, it increases the odds of predictability of a message's meaning....
 to languages. In addition, in some languages, agreement allows word order to be varied without resorting to case endings. In Swahili
Swahili language

Swahili is the first language of the Swahili people , who inhabit several large stretches of the Indian Ocean coastline from southern Somalia to northern Mozambique, including the Comoros Islands....
, with its many noun classes, if a verb's arguments have different classes, a word order other than the default SVO can be used because agreement makes it clear which words belong to the subject and which belong to the object(s). Common types of characteristics that may trigger grammatical agreement are:
  • Grammatical person
    Grammatical person

    Grammatical person, in linguistics, is deixis reference to a participant in an event, such as the speaker, the addressee, or others. Grammatical person typically defines a language's set of personal pronouns....
    : e.g. I am versus He is.
  • Grammatical number
    Grammatical number

    In linguistics, grammatical number is a grammatical category of nouns, pronouns, and adjective and verb agreement that expresses count distinctions ....
    : e.g. One car versus Two cars, or I am versus We are.
  • Grammatical gender
    Grammatical gender

    In linguistics, grammatical genders, sometimes also called noun classes, are classes of nouns reflected in the behavior of associated words; every noun must belong to one of the classes and there should be very few which belong to several classes at once....
    : e.g. Jenny loves her cat versus Jimmy loves his cat.
  • Grammatical case
    Declension

    In linguistics, declension is the occurrence of inflection in nouns, pronouns and adjectives, indicating such features as grammatical number , grammatical case , and grammatical gender....
     e.g. I told him versus He told me.


See also Grammatical conjugation
Grammatical conjugation

In linguistics, conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a verb, noun or adjective from its principal parts by inflection . Conjugation may be affected by grammatical person, grammatical number, grammatical gender, grammatical tense, Grammatical aspect, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, or other grammatical category....
, for other agreement categories.

Examples

Languages can have no conventional agreement whatsoever, as in Japanese
Japanese language

IPA: [n?iho?go] is a language spoken by over 130 million people in Japan and in Japanese emigrant communities. It is related to the Ryukyuan languages....
; barely any, as in English
English language

English is a West Germanic language that originated in Anglo-Saxon England and has lingua franca status in many parts of the world as a result of the military, economic, scientific, political and cultural influence of the British Empire in the 18th, 19th and early 20th centuries and that of the United States from the mid 20th century onwa...
; a small amount, as in spoken French
French language

French is a Romance language spoken around the world by around 80 million people as first language, by 190 million as second language, and by about another 200 million people as an acquired tongue, with significant speakers in 54 countries....
; a moderate amount, as in Greek
Greek language

Greek is an Indo-European languages native to the southern Balkan peninsula, the language of the Greek people. It forms an independent branch within Indo-European....
 or Latin; or a large amount, as in Swahili
Swahili language

Swahili is the first language of the Swahili people , who inhabit several large stretches of the Indian Ocean coastline from southern Somalia to northern Mozambique, including the Comoros Islands....
.

English

Modern English does not have a particularly large amount of agreement, although it is present.

All regular verbs in English agree in the third-person singular of the present indicative by adding a suffix
Affix

An affix is a morpheme that is attached to a word stem to form a new word. Affixes may be derivation , like English -ness and pre-, or inflectional, like English plural -s and past tense -ed....
 of either -s or -es. The latter is generally used after stems ending in the sibilants sh, ch, ss or zz (e.g. he rushes, it lurches, she amasses, it buzzes.)

Present tense of to love:

There are not many irregularities in this formation:

to have, to go and to do render has, goes and does.

The highly irregular verb to be is the only verb with more agreement than this in the present tense.

Present tense of to be:

Future tense of "to be":

Emphatic future tense of "to be":

Note: the use of shall and the use of the emphatic tense are rare in Standard English.

In English, defective verb
Defective verb

In linguistics, a defective verb is a verb with an incomplete grammatical conjugation. Defective verbs cannot be conjugated in certain grammatical tense, grammatical aspect, or grammatical mood....
s generally show no agreement for person or number, they include: can, may, shall, will, must, should, ought.

In Early Modern English
Early Modern English

Early Modern English is the stage of the English language used from about the end of the Middle English period to 1650. Thus, the first edition of the King James Bible and the works of William Shakespeare both belong to the late phase of Early Modern English, although the King James Bible intentionally keeps some archaisms that were not comm...
 agreement existed for the second person singular of all verbs in the present tense, as well as in the past tense of some common verbs. This was usually in the form -est, but -st and -t also occurred. Note that this does not affect the endings for other persons and numbers.

Example present tense forms: thou wilt, thou shalt, thou art, thou hast, thou canst. Example past tense forms: thou wouldst, thou shouldst, thou wast, thou hadst, thou couldst

Note also the agreement shown by to be even in the subjunctive.

Imperfect subjunctive of to be in Early modern English:

However, for nearly all regular verbs, a separate thou
Thou

The word thou is a grammatical person grammatical number pronoun in English language. It is now largely archaism, having been replaced in almost all contexts by you....
 form was no longer commonly used in the past tense. Thus the auxiliary verb
Auxiliary verb

In linguistics, an auxiliary is a verb functioning to give further semantics or syntax information about the main or full verb following it....
 to do would be used, e.g. thou didst help, not thou helpedst.

Latin

Compared with English, Latin is an example of a highly inflected language. The consequences for agreement are thus:

Verbs must agree in person and number, and sometimes in gender, with their subjects. Articles and adjectives must agree in case, number and gender with the nouns they modify.

Sample Latin verb: the present indicative active of "porto"

porto - I carry


portas - you [singular] carry


portat - he carries


portamus - we carry


portatis - you [plural] carry


portant - they carry


Note also that the inflectional endings mean it is not necessary to include the subject pronoun, except for emphasis, or to avoid ambiguity in complex sentences. For this reason, Latin is described as a null-subject language.

French

Spoken French always distinguishes the first person plural and the second person plural from each other and from the rest of the present tense. The other endings that appear in written French are often pronounced the same, except in liaison contexts. Irregular verbs such as ętre, faire, aller, and avoir possess more distinctly pronounced agreement forms than regular verbs.

Adjectives agree in gender and number with the nouns they modify in French. As with verbs, forms that are written with different agreement suffixes are sometimes pronounced the same (e.g. joli, jolie), although in many cases the final consonant is pronounced in feminine forms, but silent in masculine forms (e.g. petit vs. petite). Most plural forms end in -s, but this consonant is only pronounced in liaison contexts. The participle
Participle

In linguistics, a participle is a derivative of a non-finite verb verb, which can be used in compound Grammatical tense or Grammatical voice, or as a Grammatical modifier....
s of verbs agree in gender and number with the subject or object in some instances. Articles also decline for number and gender.

Hungarian

In Hungarian, verbs have polypersonal agreement, which means they agree with more than one of the verb's arguments
Verb argument

In linguistics, a verb argument is a phrase that appears in a syntax relationship with the verb in a clause. In English language, for example, the two most important arguments are the subject and the direct object ....
: not only its subject but also its (accusative) object. Difference is made between the case when there is a definite object and the case when the object is indefinite or there is no object at all. (The adverbs do not affect the form of the verb.) Examples: Szeretek (I love somebody or something unspecified), szeretem (I love him or her or it or them, specifically), szeretlek (I love you); szeret (he or she loves me or us or you or someone or something unspecified), szereti (he or she loves her or him or it or them, specifically). Of course, nouns or pronouns may specify the exact object. In short, there is agreement between a verb and the person and number of its subject and the specificity of its object (which often refers to the person more or less exactly).

See Definite and indefinite conjugations
Hungarian grammar (verbs)

This page is about verbs in Hungarian grammar....


The predicate
Predicate (grammar)

In traditional grammar, a predicate is one of the two main parts of a sentence . In current semantics, a predicate is an expression that can be true of something....
 agrees in number with the subject and if it is copulative (i.e., it consists of a noun/adjective and a linking verb), both parts agree in number with the subject. For example: A könyvek érdekesek voltak "The books were interesting" ("a": the, "könyv": book, "érdekes": interesting, "voltak": were): the plural is marked on the subject as well as both the adjectival and the copulative part of the predicate.

Within noun phrases, adjectives do not show agreement with the noun, e.g. a szép könyveitekkel "with your nice books" ("szép": nice): the suffixes of the plural, the possessive "your" and the case marking "with" are only marked on the noun.

Swahili

Swahili
Swahili language

Swahili is the first language of the Swahili people , who inhabit several large stretches of the Indian Ocean coastline from southern Somalia to northern Mozambique, including the Comoros Islands....
 and related languages have numerous noun class
Noun class

In linguistics, the term noun class refers to a system of categorizing nouns. A noun may belong to a given class because of characteristic features of its referent, such as sex, animacy, shape, but counting a given noun among nouns of such or another class is often clearly conventional....
es. Verbs must agree in class with their subjects and adjectives with the nouns that they qualify. For example: Kitabu kimoja kitatosha (One book will be enough), Mchungwa mmoja utatosha (One orange-tree will be enough), Chungwa moja litatosha (One orange will be enough).

There is also agreement in number. For example: Vitabu viwili vitatosha (Two books will be enough), Michungwa miwili itatosha (Two orange-trees will be enough), Machungwa mawili yatatosha (Two oranges will be enough).

Class and number are indicated with prefixes (or sometimes their absence) which are not always the same for nouns, adjectives and verbs, as illustrated by the examples.

See also

  • Declension
    Declension

    In linguistics, declension is the occurrence of inflection in nouns, pronouns and adjectives, indicating such features as grammatical number , grammatical case , and grammatical gender....
  • Inflection
    Inflection

    In grammar, inflection or inflexion is the way language handles grammatical relations and relational categories such as grammatical tense, grammatical mood, grammatical voice, grammatical aspect, grammatical person, grammatical number, grammatical gender, grammatical case....
  • Synthetic language
    Synthetic language

    A synthetic language, in linguistic typology, is a language with a high morpheme-per-word ratio. This linguistic classification is largely independent of morpheme-usage classifications , although there is a common tendency for agglutinative languages to exhibit synthetic properties....
  • Redundancy (language)
    Redundancy (language)

    In linguistics, redundancy is considered a vital feature of language. It shields a message from possible flaws in transmission . In this way, it increases the odds of predictability of a message's meaning....
  • Case government
    Case government

    Government is a Linguistics term for a kind of influence that one grammatical element exerts on another, and the canonical example of government is case government, when a verb or preposition is said to 'govern' the grammatical case on its noun phrase complement ....
  • Sequence of tenses
    Sequence of tenses

    In grammar, the sequence of tenses is a rule of a particular language governing the relationship between the grammatical tenses of verbs in related clauses or sentences to show the temporal relationship of the events to which they refer....
     — sometimes called agreement of tenses


External links



Bibliography


  • Corbett, Greville (1994) "Agreement". In R.E. Asher (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Oxford: Pergamon Press. 54--60.
  • Corbett, Greville (2006) Agreement. Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
  • Givon, Talmy (1984) Syntax. A Functional Typological Introduction. Vol 1. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Chapter 10.
  • Mel'cuk, Igor (2006): Aspects of the theory of morphology. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Chapter 1.
  • Moravcsik, Edith A. (1978). "Agreement". In: Joseph Greenberg, (ed.), Universals of Human Language. vol. 4. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 331--374.