Agreement (linguistics)

In languages, agreement is a form of cross-reference between different parts of a sentence or phrase. Agreement happens when one word changes in form depending on which other words it is being related to. These other words are called its arguments.

For example, one does not say "I is" in English, because "is" cannot be used when the subject is "I". The word "is" is said not to agree with the word "I". This is why the usual form is "I am", even though the verb still has the same function and basic meaning.

Functions

Agreement often adds redundancy to languages. In addition, in some languages, agreement allows word order to be varied without resorting to case endings. In Swahili, with its many noun classes, if a verb's arguments have different classes, a word order other than the default SVO can be used because agreement makes it clear which is which.

Examples

Languages can have no agreement whatsoever, as in Japanese; barely any, as in English; a small amount, as in spoken French; a moderate amount, as in Greek or Latin; or a large amount, as in Hungarian.

English

Modern English does not have a particularly large amount of agreement, although it is present. Verbs have person and number, and agreement through gender and number occurs, in a non-productive sense, for pronouns.

All regular verbs in English agree in the third-person singular of the present indicative by adding a suffix of either "-s" or "-es". The latter is generally used after stems ending in the sibilants "sh", "ch", "ss" or "zz" (e.g. "he rushes", "it lurches", "she amasses", "it buzzes".)

Present tense of "to love":

	Singular	Plural
First	I love	we love
Second	you love	you love
Third	he/she/it loves	they love

There are not many irregularities in this formation:

"to have", "to go" and "to do" render "has", "goes" and "does".

The highly irregular verb "to be" is the only verb with more agreement than this in the present tense (with the possible exception of the defective "will".)

Present tense of "to be":

	Singular	Plural
First	I am	we are
Second	you are	you are
Third	he/she/it is	they are

Defective verbs are those which cannot be fully conjugated; in English, they have no infinitive, and no past participle. Also the past tenses of "should" and "must" are identical with the present, and can therefore be used only in a subordinate clause, to avoid ambiguity.

"He MUST come." - present tense

"I told him that he MUST come." - past tense

In English, defective verbs generally show no agreement for person or number, and those in English are as follows: "can", "may", "shall", "will", "must", "should", "ought". All except "will" and "ought" originate from a Germanic preterite-present verb.

However, some users show agreement of "will", whose present and past tenses respectively are used in the formation of the future and conditional.

Future tense of "to be":

	Singular	Plural
First	I shall be	we shall be
Second	you will be	you will be
Third	he/she/it will be	they will be

Emphatic future tense of "to be":

	Singular	Plural
First	I will be	we will be
Second	you shall be	you shall be
Third	he/she/it shall be	they shall be

Note: the use of "shall" and the use of the emphatic tense are archaic in Standard English.

In Early Modern English agreement existed for the second person singular of all verbs in the present tense, as well as in the past tense of some common verbs. This was usually in the form "-est", but "-st" and "-t" also occurred. Note that this does not affect the endings for other persons and numbers.

Example present tense forms: "thou wilt", "thou shalt", "thou art", "thou hast", "thou canst". Example past tense forms: "thou wouldst", "thou shouldst", "thou wast", "thou hadst", "thou couldst"

Note also the agreement shown by to "to be" even in the subjunctive.

Imperfect subjunctive of "to be" in Early modern English:

	Singular	Plural
First	(if) I were	(if) we were
Second	(if) thou wert	(if) you were
Third	(if) he/she/it were	(if) they were

However, for nearly all regular verbs, a separate "thou" form was no longer commonly used in the past tense. Thus the auxiliary verb "to do" would be used, e.g. "thou didst help" and "thou didst save", not "thou helpedst" nor "thou savedst".

Third person singular pronouns agree in gender, but this is not a productive use. Only things that possess natural gender (such as people and sometimes animals) can be referred to as "he" or "she", and everything else must be considered an "it".

Pronouns of the first and third persons agree with their antecedents in number. "this" and "that" become "these" and "those" to agree with plural nouns, whether used as pronouns or as articles.

French

Spoken French always distinguishes the first person plural and the second person plural from each other and from the rest of the present tense. The other endings that appear in written French are usually pronounced the same unless the next word starts with a vowel, and thus aren't truly agreeing. The highly irregular verbs être, faire, aller, and avoir possess more agreement than regular verbs.

Adjectives agree in gender and number with their heads in written French. Again, due to liaison, the suffixes are generally pronounced alike. In practice, this means that feminine adjectives usually end in consonant sounds, while masculine adjectives usually end in vowel sounds. Irregular adjectives that decline more fully or not at all do exist. The participles of verbs agree in gender and number with the subject or object in some instances. Articles also decline for number and gender.

Hungarian

In Hungarian, verbs have polypersonal agreement, which means they agree with more than one of the verb's arguments.

Latin

Compared with English, Latin is an example of a highly inflected language. The consequences for agreement are thus:

Verbs must agree in person and number, and sometimes in gender, with their subjects. Articles and adjectives must agree in case, number and gender with the nouns they modify. Pronouns must agree in number and gender with the nouns they refer back to, but their case is independent.

Sample Latin verb: the present indicative active of "porto"

porto - I carry

portas - you ^* carry

portat - he carries

portamus - we carry

portatis - you ^* carry

portant - they carry

Note also that the inflectional endings mean it is not necessary to include the subject pronoun, except for emphasis.

Swahili

Swahili and related languages have numerous noun classes; nouns fall into different classes depending on the properties of that which they describe. Verbs must agree in class with their subjects.

External links

Agreement Biblio Home Page

Bibliography

Corbett, Greville (1994) "Agreement". In R.E. Asher (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Oxford: Pergamon Press. 54--60.
Givon, Talmy (1984) Syntax. A Functional Typological Introduction. Vol 1. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Chapter 10.
Moravcsik, Edith A. (1978). "Agreement". In: Joseph Greenberg, (ed.), Universals of Human Language. vol. 4. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 331--374.

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