The two faces of agreement

Alsina i Keith, Àlex; Arsenijevic, Boban

doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1353/lan.2012.0039

The two faces of agreement

Citation

Alsina A, Arsenijevic B. The two faces of agreement. Language (Baltim). 2012; 88(2):369-79. DOI 10.1353/lan.2012.0039.

Abstract

The goal of this discussion note is to argue that the complex facts of hybrid agreement in Serbo Croatian can and should be accounted for by assuming that only two sets of features are relevant to agreement: a syntactic set and a semantic set. This is in opposition to existing proposals that claim that two distinct sets of syntactic features are required in addition to the set of semantic fea tures in order to account for those agreement facts (Wechsler & Zlatic 2000, 2003). The proposal defended here with two sets of agreement features is shown to be superior to the alternative with three feature sets because it not only is simpler and accounts for the facts just as well, but it also does not make some incorrect predictions that the alternative makes when crucial facts are considered.