The Role of Agreement in Non-Finite Predication: 90 (Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today) - Hardcover

Dalmi, Gréte

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 9027233543 ISBN 13: 9789027233547

Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Co, 2005

Synopsis

This comparative syntactic study claims that agreement is the most central functional category responsible for licensing predication in finite, non-finite and small clauses alike. Intriguing syntactic phenomena like Icelandic infinitival predicates taking non-nominative (quirky) subjects; psych-impersonal and modal predicates in Italian, Hungarian and Russian; meteorological predicates, existential clauses, post-verbal and null subjects in the so-called null-subject VSO languages can all be better analyzed through a concept of predication that is closely related to AGRP, manifesting subject-verb agreement. The overt agreement marking in Hungarian and Portuguese infinitival clauses further strengthens this view. Obviation and control subjunctive clauses in the Balkan languages, Welsh finite and non-finite infinitival clauses as well as case-marked secondary predicates in Icelandic, Slovak, Hungarian, Russian and Finnish also lend support to an analysis where the [+pred] feature is checked in AGRP.

Edition details

• Publisher: John Benjamins Publishing Co
• Publication date: 2005
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 9027233543
• ISBN 13: 9789027233547
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 240