Agreement in Natural Language: Approaches, Theories, Descriptions

Michael Barlow and Charles A. Ferguson

Although grammatical agreement or concord is widespread in human languages, linguistic theoriess have generally treated agreement phenomena as secondary or even marghinal. Widespread interest in a general theory of agreement or a universal framework for describing agreement has appeared only in the last ten years. This upsurge in interest arises in part from a recognition of the challenges agreement offers to all current syntactic theories. This interest arises also from new language data that either extend previous notions of agreement or reveal unexpected constraints on its operation.

Agreement in Natural Language is a collection of fifteen papaers on the topic of grammatical agreement. The papers, contributed by distinguished scholars in linguistics, represent theoretical, descriptive, functional, historical, and developmental approaches to agreement. They grew out of presentations made at an international conference held at Stanford University, cosponsored by the Department of Linguistics and the Center for the Study of Language and Information. Although the papers represent highly diverse approaches, they all report on intensive research either on general theoretical issues or on problems of description.

This unique collection of papers on a hitehrto negelected area of linguistic research will stimulate linguists of various persuasions to rethink such matters as the relation of anaphora to agreement or the role of morphological categories in syntax. In some instances, it may lead them to reexamine basic assumptions of linguistic theory construction.

MICHEAL BARLOW is a graduate student in the Department of Linguistics, Stanford University. CHARLES A. FERGUSON is professor of linguistics at Stanford University.

3/31/88

ISBN (Paperback): 0937073032

ISBN (Cloth): 0937073024

Subject: Linguistics; Grammar--Agreement