External agreement - Surrey Morphology Group

<!DOCTYPE html>    <html class="no-js">  <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <meta http-equiv="X-UA-Compatible" content="IE=Edge,chrome=1"> <link href="/favicon.ico" rel="icon" /> <title>External agreement - Surrey Morphology Group</title> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1"> <meta name="keywords"> <meta name="description" content=""> <link rel="canonical" href="/projects/external-agreement/" /> <link href="//fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Roboto:400,300,700,900,500" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css"> <link href='http://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Noto+Sans:400,700,400italic,700italic&subset=latin,cyrillic-ext,vietnamese,latin-ext,greek-ext,cyrillic,greek,devanagari' rel='stylesheet' type='text/css'> <link rel="stylesheet" href="/assets/css/style.min.css"> <script type="text/javascript" src="/assets/scripts/libs/modernizr-2.6.2.min.js"> </script>  <script async src="https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtag/js?id=UA-120080746-1"></script> <script> window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; function gtag(){dataLayer.push(arguments);} gtag('js', new Date()); gtag('config', 'UA-120080746-1'); </script> </head> <body class="ProjectPage blue"> <div class="container"> <header class="header"> <div class="top"> <div class="wrapper"> <a href="http://www.surrey.ac.uk/" class="logo"> <img src="/assets/img/logo.png" alt="" /> </a> <div class="right"> <div class="search"> <form method="get" action="/search"> <input type="text" placeholder="Search..." id="s" name="s" class="in-text" /> <input type="submit" class="search-btn" /> </form> </div> <a id="btn-staff-students" href="http://www.surrey.ac.uk/" class="btn-blue">Staff & Students <i></i> </a> </div> </div> </div> <div class="bottom"> <div class="wrapper"> <a href="/" class="logo-main"> <img src="/assets/img/logo-main.png" alt="" /> </a> <nav class="main-navigation"> <ul> <li > <a href="/people/">People</a> </li> <li > <a href="/events/">Events</a> </li> <li class="active"> <a href="/projects/">Projects</a> </li> <li > <a href="/approaches/">Approaches</a> </li> <li > <a href="/languages/">Languages</a> </li> <li > <a href="/databases/">Databases</a> </li> <li > <a href="/study/">Study</a> </li> <li > <a href="/blog/">Blog</a> </li> </ul> <a href="javascript:;" class="mobile-nav-btn"> <i class="ico mobile-nav"></i> <span>menu</span> </a> </nav> </div> </div> </header> <section class="content" id="content"> <div class="wrapper details-page extra-bottom-space"> <div class="intro"> <h1>External agreement</h1> </div> <div class="sidebar"> <ul class="sidebar-nav tab-links"> <li class="area-home priority first"><a href="/projects/"><span>Projects</span></a></li> <li class="current priority"> <a href="/projects/external-agreement/"><span>Project Overview</span></a> </li> <li class=""> <a href="/projects/external-agreement/outputs/"><span>Outputs</span></a> </li> <li class=""> <a href="/projects/external-agreement/workshop/"><span>Workshop on External Agreement with Unexpected Targets</span></a> </li> </ul> <a href="javascript:;" class="mobile-menu-btn"> <i class="ico"></i> </a> <div class="mobile-navigation inner-menu"> <ul> <li> <a href="/projects/external-agreement/"><span>Project Overview</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/external-agreement/outputs/"><span>Outputs</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/external-agreement/workshop/"><span>Workshop on External Agreement with Unexpected Targets</span></a> </li> </ul> </div> <div class="desktop widget"> <a href="https://ahrc.ukri.org/" title="https://ahrc.ukri.org/" target="_self"> <img src="/media/134270/ahrc-logo.png?width=140" alt="" class="" /> </a> <h4></h4> </div> <div class="tab-content"> </div> <div class="tab-content"> </div> <div class="tab-content"> </div> </div> <div class="right-content"> <h2>Project Overview</h2> <div class="row"> <div class="grey-box"> <div class="one-half"> <h5>Project</h5> <p class="add-space"> External agreement </p> <h5>Project members: </h5> <p>Dr Marina Chumakina<br />Dr Oliver Bond<br />Dr Steven Kaye</p> </div> <div class="one-half right"> <h5>Period of award</h5> <p> June 2018 - May 2021 </p> <h5>Funder:</h5> <p> Arts and Humanities Research Council </p> </div> </div> </div> <p>In languages like English, the form of a verb is dependent on the properties of the subject. For instance, we say <em>My brother laughs at these photographs</em> but <em>My brothers laugh at these photographs</em>. The mechanism which provides the correct form of the verb is called agreement: in these sentences the verb agrees with the subject, and the difference in the form of the verb (<em>laughs</em> vs. <em>laugh</em>) is determined by the fact that the subject in one sentence is third person singular (<em>my brother</em>) whereas in the other it is third person plural (<em>my brothers</em>). The agreement between a verb and its arguments is a familiar and cross-linguistically frequent phenomenon, considered by many linguists, of different theoretical persuasions, to be at the core of language.</p> <p>Another type of agreement familiar from English, is the agreement between a noun and its modifier: in the examples above <em>these</em> agrees with <em>photographs</em> in plural number (compare the singular alternative <em>this photograph</em>). Since the controller of the agreement, <em>photographs</em> is plural in both sentences, it is not surprising that the form of the demonstrative is also plural.</p> <p>While verbs, adjectives, and demonstratives agree in many languages, a situation in which a preposition (such as <em>at</em> in the examples above) would change in any way is rather unusual. Still, there are languages, such as Welsh and Breton, where the form of a preposition changes depending on the grammatical properties of the noun it introduces.</p> <p>A situation where the form of a preposition would change depending on the properties of the subject, as verbs do in English, and not with the noun it introduces as in Welsh, is so rare that it until now has escaped linguistic analysis altogether. To give an illustration: if in the example sentences above the preposition <em>at</em> had to appear in two forms: one in accordance with the singular number of the subject <em>my brother</em> and another in accordance with the plural number, <em>my brothers</em>, we would consider this to be a very unusual agreement pattern. This type of agreement does not respect the existing syntactic grouping in a sentence but connects elements which belong to different syntactic phrases (such as <em>my brother</em> and <em>at</em>). We call this pattern "external agreement". External agreement challenges existing syntactic models: all current approaches define agreement as a local syntactic relation, i.e. occurring within clear syntactic domain such as verb phrase, noun phrase, prepositional phrase, etc.</p> <p>External agreement, being extremely rare typologically, appears with fascinating regularity in languages of the Nakh- Daghestanian family spoken in the Caucasus: there are 17 languages with diachronically unrelated instances of external agreement. Such an abundance of examples appearing in languages with considerable variation in their syntactic systems makes external agreement in Nakh-Daghestanian an ideal opportunity for research into morphosyntactic, semantic and pragmatic mechanisms which regulate not only agreement, a fundamental part of a grammar of many languages, but also the less obvious relationships between syntactic elements in a sentence.</p> <p>Our previous work on agreement gives us the theoretical apparatus necessary for accounting for this challenging phenomenon. Our typological work makes us aware of the range of morphological and syntactic possibilities in agreement systems. Finally, our expertise in Nakh-Daghestanian languages in general enables us to go straight into the intricacies of external agreement patterns.</p> <p>Our project will (i) investigate the phenomenon of external agreement from a theoretical perspective; (ii) collect new data from little studied and/or endangered languages; (iii) compile a database and make it fully available for public online use; and (iv) publish a book and articles on the significance of our findings for current theories of grammar.</p> <div class="row"> <div class="tablet widget"> <a href="https://ahrc.ukri.org/" title="https://ahrc.ukri.org/" target="_self"> <img src="/media/134270/ahrc-logo.png?width=140" alt="" class="" /> </a> <h4></h4> </div> </div> </div> <a href="javascript:;" class="to-top off-bottom">TOP</a> </div> </section> <footer class="footer" id="footer"> <div class="top-bar"> <div class="wrapper"> <ul class="breadcrumb"> <li> <a href="/"> <i class="ico home"></i> Home </a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/"> Projects </a> </li> <li class="last"> <a href="javascript:;">External agreement</a></li> </ul> <a href="/" class="logo-footer"> <img src="/assets/img/logo-footer.png" alt="" /> </a> </div> </div> <div class="main"> <div class="wrapper"> <div class="top"> <ul> <li> <a href="/events/" target="_self">Events</a> </li> <li> <a href="http://eepurl.com/clVCz9" target="_blank">Join our mailing list</a> </li> <li> <a href="http://morph.surrey.ac.uk/" target="_blank">Subscribe to our blog</a> </li> <li> <a href="https://www.surrey.ac.uk/school-literature-languages" target="_blank">School of Literature and Languages</a> </li> </ul> <div class="right"> <h3>Surrey Morphology Group</h3> <span><a href="tel:01483 686230">01483 686230</a></span> <a href="mailto:smg@surrey.ac.uk">smg@surrey.ac.uk</a> </div> </div> <div class="bottom"> <ul class="social-network"> <li> <a href="https://www.google.co.uk/maps/place/Surrey+Morphology+Group/@51.243112,-0.589814,15z/data=!4m2!3m1!1s0x0:0x7692d176f40cad75" target="_blank"> <i class="ico google-map"></i> </a> <div class="tooltip"> <div class="tooltip-inner"> <span class="arrow"></span> <p>Find us</p> </div> </div> </li> <li> <a href="https://twitter.com/SurreySMG" target="_blank"> <i class="ico twitter"></i> </a> <div class="tooltip"> <div class="tooltip-inner"> <span class="arrow"></span> <p>Twitter</p> </div> </div> </li> <li> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/c/SurreyMorphologyGroupGuildford" target="_blank"> <i class="ico youtube"></i> </a> <div class="tooltip"> <div class="tooltip-inner"> <span class="arrow"></span> <p>Youtube</p> </div> </div> </li> <li> <a href="https://plus.google.com/+SurreyMorphologyGroupGuildford/photos" target="_blank"> <i class="ico instagram"></i> </a> <div class="tooltip"> <div class="tooltip-inner"> <span class="arrow"></span> <p>Google +</p> </div> </div> </li> </ul> <p> <p><span>Surrey Morphology Group,</span><br />School of Literature and Languages,<br /><span>University of Surrey, Guildford, GU2 7XH, UK</span></p> </p> </div> </div> </div> </footer> </div> <script type="text/javascript"> function AdjustHeight() { var height = document.getElementById("footer").offsetHeight; document.getElementById("content").style.paddingBottom = height + 'px'; } window.onload = AdjustHeight; window.onresize = AdjustHeight; </script> <div class="mobile-navigation"> <a href="javascript:;" class="close-btn"> <i></i> <span>close</span> </a> <ul> <li><a href="/"><span>Home</span></a></li> <li> <a href="/people/"><span>People</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/events/"><span>Events</span></a> <ul> <li><a href="/"><span>Home</span></a></li> <li> <a href="/events/25th-anniversary-workshop/"><span>25th Anniversary Workshop</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/events/apll10/"><span>APLL10</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/events/llcd-workshop-ws8-future-directions-in-word-and-paradigm-morphology/"><span>LLCD Workshop WS8: Future directions in Word and Paradigm morphology</span></a> </li> </ul> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/"><span>Projects</span></a> <ul> <li><a href="/"><span>Home</span></a></li> <li> <a href="/projects/nilomorph/"><span>NILOMORPH: The evolution of suprasegmental morphology in West Nilotic</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/revoluphon/"><span>REVOLUPHON - Rational Evolutionary Phonology</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/analogical-growth/"><span>Analogical growth of grammatical systems</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/ecf-2022-286/"><span>What Is Understood ? Simulating Human-Scale Word Comprehension Using AI</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/predicting-language-evolution/"><span>Predicting language evolution: Analogy in morphological change</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/nuer-literacy-initiative/"><span>Nuer Literacy Initiative</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/declining-case-inflectional-loss-in-progress/"><span>Declining Case: Inflectional Loss in Progress</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/word-puzzle/"><span>Solving the word puzzle: morphological analysis beyond stem and affixes</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/accelerating-our-discovery-of-the-linguistic-past/"><span>Accelerating our discovery of the linguistic past</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/mutual-intelligibility/"><span>Morpho-syntax of mutual intelligibility in the Turkic languages of Central Asia</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/optimal-categorisation/"><span>Optimal categorisation</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/external-agreement/"><span>External agreement</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/seri-verbs-multiple-complexities/"><span>Seri verbs: multiple complexities</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/lexical-splits/"><span>Lexical splits</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/loss-of-inflection/"><span>Loss of inflection</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/prominent-possessors/"><span>Prominent possessors</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/complexity-in-nuer/"><span>Morphological complexity in Nuer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/gender-classifiers/"><span>Combining gender and classifiers in natural language</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/verb-classification/"><span>Verb classification in Gújjolaay Eegimaa (Atlantic, Niger-Congo)</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/optional-ergative/"><span>Optional ergative case marking: What can be expressed by its absence?</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/endangered-complexity/"><span>Endangered complexity: Inflectional classes in Oto-Manguean languages</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/competing-theories/"><span>From competing theories to fieldwork: The challenge of an extreme agreement system</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/morphological-complexity/"><span>Morphological complexity: Typology as a tool for delineating cognitive organization</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/sencoten/"><span>SEN膯O纽EN on the web: Access for linguists and community</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/alor-pantar/"><span>Alor-Pantar languages: Origins and theoretical impact</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/russian-dialects/"><span>The corpus of Russian regional dialects: Acoustic database with discourse annotation</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/periphrasis/"><span>Brighter, cleverer, but more intelligent: Understanding periphrasis</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/defectiveness/"><span>A typology of defectiveness</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/possession/"><span>Turning owners into actors: Possessive morphology as subject-indexing in languages of the Bougainville region</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/stmc/"><span>Short term morphosyntactic change</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/archi-dictionary/"><span>A dictionary of Archi (Daghestanian) with sound files and cultural materials</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/features/"><span>Grammatical features: A key to understanding language</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/oceanic-languages/"><span>Essential documentation of seven highly endangered Oceanic languages</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/deponency/"><span>Extended deponency: The right morphology in the wrong place</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/possible-words/"><span>'Possible words': The outer bounds of inflectional morphology</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/paradigms/"><span>Paradigms in use</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/suppletion/"><span>The notion 'possible word' and its limits: A typology of suppletion</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/agreement/"><span>Agreement: An investigation into the distribution of information</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/syncretism/"><span>Where word forms collide: A typology of syncretism</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/slavonic-colour/"><span>Predicting the past: Reconstructing the Slavonic colour lexicon</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/number-use/"><span>Number use in language: A quantitative and typological investigation</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/exceptional-cases/"><span>Feature-based approaches to exceptional cases in Russian</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/inflectional-description/"><span>Challenges for inflectional description</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/network-morphology/"><span>The theory of Network Morphology</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/alternative-perspectives/"><span>Russian verbal morphology: Alternative perspectives and implementations and their theoretical justification</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/frontiers/"><span>Frontiers of research in morphology</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/russian-derivation/"><span>A computer implementation of Russian derivational morphology represented in DATR</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/datr/"><span>A DATR theory of Russian morphology</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/projects/canonical-phonology/"><span>Canonical Phonology</span></a> </li> </ul> </li> <li> <a href="/approaches/"><span>Approaches</span></a> <ul> <li><a href="/"><span>Home</span></a></li> <li> <a href="/approaches/canonical-typology/"><span>Canonical Typology</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/approaches/open-research/"><span>Open Research</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/approaches/network-morphology/"><span>Network Morphology</span></a> </li> </ul> </li> <li> <a href="/languages/"><span>Languages</span></a> <ul> <li><a href="/"><span>Home</span></a></li> <li> <a href="/languages/alor-pantar/"><span>Alor-Pantar</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/languages/archi/"><span>Archi</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/languages/chichimec/"><span>Chichimec</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/languages/eegimaa/"><span>Eegimaa</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/languages/eleme/"><span>Eleme</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/languages/kayardild/"><span>Kayardild</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/languages/mian/"><span>Mian</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/languages/northwest-solomonic/"><span>Northwest Solomonic</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/languages/nuer/"><span>Nuer</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/languages/oto-manguean/"><span>Oto-Manguean</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/languages/russian/"><span>Russian</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/languages/sencoten/"><span>SEN膯O纽EN</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/languages/seri/"><span>Seri</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/languages/skolt-saami/"><span>Skolt Saami</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/languages/slavonic/"><span>Slavonic</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/languages/tamangic/"><span>Tamangic</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/languages/vanuatu-and-new-caledonia/"><span>Vanuatu and New Caledonia</span></a> </li> </ul> </li> <li> <a href="/databases/"><span>Databases</span></a> <ul> <li><a href="/"><span>Home</span></a></li> <li> <a href="https://lexicalsplits.surrey.ac.uk/chichimec.html"><span>Chichimec Paradigm Visualisations</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="https://lexicalsplitsdb.surrey.ac.uk/"><span>Lexical Splits Database</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/nuerlexicon/"><span>Nuer Lexicon</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="https://lexicalsplits.surrey.ac.uk/skoltsaami.html"><span>Skolt Saami Paradigm Visualisations</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/siberia/"><span>Endangered Languages and Cultures of Siberia</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/oto-manguean/"><span>Oto-Manguean Inflectional Class Database</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/archi-dictionary/"><span>Dictionary of Archi</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="https://smg-complexity.surrey.ac.uk/"><span>Surrey Morphological Complexity Database</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/bibliographies/"><span>Bibliographies</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/saanich-verbs/"><span>Saanich Verb Database</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="https://mian-kilivila.surrey.ac.uk"><span>The Mian & Kilivila Collection</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/periphrasis/"><span>Surrey Periphrasis Database</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/deponency/"><span>Surrey Deponency Databases</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/suppletion/"><span>Surrey Suppletion Database</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/stmc/"><span>Surrey Short Term Morphosyntactic Change Databases</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/agreement/"><span>Surrey Database of Agreement</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/possession/"><span>Surrey Turning Owners into Actors Database</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/personsyncretism/"><span>Surrey Person Syncretism Database</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/syncretism/"><span>Surrey Syncretisms Database</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="https://zenodo.org/communities/smg/"><span>SMG Zenodo community</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.10462727"><span>Paradigms in Use</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/paralex-lexicons/"><span>Paralex lexicons</span></a> </li> </ul> </li> <li> <a href="/study/"><span>Study</span></a> </li> <li> <a href="/blog/"><span>Blog</span></a> </li> </ul> </div> <script type="text/javascript" src="//ajax.googleapis.com/ajax/libs/jquery/1.9.1/jquery.min.js"> </script> <script type="text/javascript"> window.jQuery || document.write("<script src='/assets/scripts/libs/jquery-1.9.1.min.js'>\x3C/script>") </script> <script type="text/javascript" src="/assets/scripts/main/default.min.js"> </script> <script type="text/javascript" src="/assets/scripts/libs/jquery.carouFredSel-6.2.1-packed.js"> </script> <script type="text/javascript" src="/assets/scripts/pages/sidebar.js"> </script>  </body> </html>

CINXE.COM

External agreement - Surrey Morphology Group