Singular concord in Kalhori Kurdish: A distributed morphology approach
Introduction Concord, or agreement, is defined as the correspondence between the morphosyntactic categories of two or more grammatical units. The most common type of concord across languages is subject-verb agreement in terms of number [SG/PL]. Following Adger (2003), subject-verb concord operates...
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| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | Persian |
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Alzahra University
2025-02-01
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| Series: | زبان پژوهی |
| Subjects: | |
| Online Access: | https://zabanpazhuhi.alzahra.ac.ir/article_7954_44aa456f25250f055600c6502e2b167b.pdf |
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| Summary: | Introduction
Concord, or agreement, is defined as the correspondence between the morphosyntactic categories of two or more grammatical units. The most common type of concord across languages is subject-verb agreement in terms of number [SG/PL]. Following Adger (2003), subject-verb concord operates through a checking relationship called Agree. In this relationship, a plural subject bears an interpretable feature [num: Pl], which checks and values an uninterpretable feature [unum:] on T. However, certain structures cannot be formed using this mechanism. In fact, it refers to the condition in which the verb cannot agree with the plural subject. This phenomenon, known as singular concord, primarily concerns [NUM] agreement. In other words, despite the plural nature of the subject, the verb carries a singular agreement morpheme, as illustrated in (1):
Mehman –ayl -ian hat/ hat -en.
Guest -PL -Their come. 3SG / come -3PL.
‘Their guest come.’
While some plural subjects can co-occur with a verb carrying a singular agreement morpheme, others cannot, as shown in (2):
Aw moalem-ayla hat -en /*hat.
Those teacher-PL come –3PL/ come(3SG)
'Those teachers come.'
This study aims to find out whether a non-lexicalist approach is needed to describe the process of singular concord in Kalhori Kurdish. The ability to describe the subject-verb agreement in this language can be used as a criterion for evaluating the explanatory adequacy of different theoretical approaches to Kalhori Kurdish.
Materials and methods:
To address the challenge outlined above, this study analyzes Kalhori Kurdish sentences collected by the authors, who are native speakers of the language. The research focuses on two questions:
Is the subject-verb agreement relation determined at the Computational System?
Alternatively, can this relation be computed post-syntactically?
To investigate these questions, the analyses proceed as follows: first, we introduce various hypotheses that account for agreeing and non-agreeing verbal forms. Then, we evaluate whether these hypotheses can explain the different structures in Kalhori Kurdish.
Discussion and Results
Let us consider the first hypothesis. In 1995, Henry recognized differences in agreement patterns between full DPs and plural pronouns in Belfast English (BelE). The former can co-occur with plural or singular verbs, as shown in (3a-b):
a) The children is happy.
b) The children are happy.
However, singular concord is not allowed with plural pronouns, as illustrated in (4a-b):
a) They are happy.
b) *They is happy.
To account for these seemingly incompatible sentences, Henry (1995) proposed a configuration in which two subject positions are responsible for these variations. In this framework, referred to as the Two Subject Positions Hypothesis, plural pronouns are located in the specifier position of AgrsP (agreeing position), and full DPs remain in the lower position (spec TP), which is a non-agreeing position. Henry (1995) suggests that plural pronouns must raise to spec AgrsP, ensuring obligatory agreement.
According to Tubau (2022), the negative phrase is a maximal projection that dominates TPs and is itself dominated by AgrsPs. If a negative polarity item (NPI) rises from its initial position (spec TP) to check its features in AgrsP, it exits the licensing domain of NegP, causing the derivation to fail. Based on this prediction, it can be assumed that in a structure with an NPI in its subject position, the subject-verb agreement would not be triggered. However, the following example from Kalhori Kurdish challenges this assumption. In this sentence, although the subject has remained in its base generating position (spec TP), the subject-verb agreement is still allowed.
Hich-Kam a awan na-t-en.
Any-one of them Neg-come-3PL.
‘none of the girls come.'
Some scholars suggest that the nature of the subject should be considered as an important factor in subject-verb concord. Relying on the nature of subjects in Farsi, Karimi (2005) proposed two different subject positions. She argues that non-specific subjects remain in their base generating positions (in PredP). They do not check their case and number features. By contrast, specific subjects raise to the specifier position of vP, where they trigger subject-verb agreement.
Adger & Smith (2008) proposed the third hypothesis. They observed that singular concord constructions in Buckie English (BuckE) did not correlate with the agreement mechanism in BelE and Welsh. The Two Subject Positions hypothesis cannot be applied to BuckE data in the case of interrogatives (more elaborated in section 4). Therefore, they proposed a new hypothesis, where the presence of an N feature impacts the possibility of agreement marking.
In addition to different theoretical argumentations, we argue that confirming or rejecting these assumptions requires empirical analysis of Kalhori Kurdish. This study demonstrates that counterexamples invalidate these proposed mechanisms. As for the post-syntactic mechanism in Distributed Morphology and some morphological operations such as Impoverishment (Bonet 1991, Noyer 1998), we adopted this non-lexical approach as the most appropriate model to describe and determine the variation of agreement patterns in Kalhori Kurdish.
Conclusions
Overall, the analyses indicated that the assumptions of lexicalists cannot explain why singular concord is possible in some sentences with plural subjects, while it is not allowed in others. On the other hand, analyzing the data within the framework of Distributed Morphology showed that the dual behavior of these Kurdish structures can only be explained by considering morphological operations such as impoverishment and the post-syntactic agreement process. |
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| ISSN: | 2008-8833 2538-1989 |