the emergence of locality in concordhank/mrg.readings/norris.concord.qe.pdf · with the nouns they...

The Emergence of Locality in Concord∗

Mark NorrisQualifying Exam Draft

May 30, 2011

1 Introduction

In many languages, relationships between various words in asentence are encoded by morpholog-ical marking termedagreement. This familiar phenomenon is exemplified in (1–3):

(1) L-esthe-PL

fille-sgirl-PL

arriv-ent.arrive-3PL.PRES

‘The girls arrive/are arriving.’ (French)

(2) Nee-dthese-NOM.PL

tudruku-dgirl-NOM.PL

saabu-si-d.arrive-PST-3PL

‘These girls arrived.’ (Estonian)

(3) Stelp-ur-nargirl-NOM.F.PL-the.NOM.F.PL

kom-u.arrive(PST)-3PL

‘The girls arrived.’ (Icelandic)

In the above examples, there are two relationships marked byagreement. First, there is agreementbetween a determiner/demonstrative and the noun it modifies(to speak informally). In (1), thenounfilles ‘girls’ is plural and the determinerles ‘the’ is marked plural as well. I will refer tothis agreement asconcord. We also see agreement between the subject noun phrases and the verb.In (2), the subjectneed tudrukud ‘these girls’ is third person and plural, and the verbsaabusid‘arrived’ is marked with a suffix indicating third person andplural. I will refer to this agreement asArgument-Predicate agreement, or A-P agreement. These relationships are by no means the onlykinds of agreement seen cross-linguistically, but they arecertainly common.

These two agreement relationships are particularly interesting for theories of syntax that aim todraw direct parallels between the clausal and nominal domains, as they seem to be two sides of thesame coin. On the one hand, we have agreement in the nominal domain (concord), and on the other

∗Many thanks to Sandra Chung, Boris Harizanov, Heidi Harley,Ruth Kramer, James McCloskey, Anie Thompson,Matt Tucker, the participants of UC-Santa Cruz’s Winter 2011 Research Seminar, and audiences at UC-Santa Cruz’sMorphology Reading Group, LASC 2011, and WCCFL 29 for stimulating discussion and thoughtful critique of thiswork. Even more thank to my advisor Jorge Hankamer for the same as well as unending support and guidance. Allerrors lie with me.

1

hand, we have agreement in the verbal domain (A-P agreement). In this previous work (see Norris(2011, To Appear b)), I argued that although A-P agreement and concord are similar in that bothare forms of agreement, there are several descriptive differences between the two that cast seriousdoubt on any attempt to equate them. Using data from concord in Icelandic, I further argued thatrecent approaches to agreement based on AGREE (Chomsky (2000, 2001),et seq.) could accountfor concord without seriously weakening some of the core assumptions of the theory. Specifically,I showed that concord does not seem to require a c-command relationship between the agreeinghead and the origin of the features expressed by agreement. Thus, I developed a novel analysisof concord building on research in the framework of Distributed Morphology (DM, Halle (1990);Halle and Marantz (1993)). This analysis gave a global character to concord: all elements showingconcord end up bearing the same value for gender, number, andcase.

In this paper, I argue that this view of concord is mistaken. While it is indeed true that in thegeneral case, concord will manifest as apparent agreement in features between all the elements in aparticular DP, this is a direct result of the fact that there is only one available value for each feature(gender, number, and case, or GNC) in a given DP. Using data from (primarily) Estonian andFinnish, I will show that, when more than one value is available for either one of those features,the global nature of concord disappears, and the features are shared more locally. These factslend support to a different view of concord advanced here based on Grimshaw’s (2005) notionof extended projection, where features are, by default, shared between members of an extendedprojection, but higher heads can introduce different values (e.g., a semantic value for gender)which can “take over” for a previously introduced value (e.g., a grammatical value for gender).Thus, in cases where there is only one value available for a particular gender, that value will beshared by every member showing concord, but if there is more than one value available, we willsee this global nature pull apart. This analysis has the added benefit of drawing a clear distinctionbetween concord and A-P agreement by treating only one of thetwo as a probe-goal relationship.

1.1 Outline

The outline of the paper is as follows. In section 2, I will go over the concord facts from Ice-landic as well as cover the distinctions between concord andA-P agreement as explained by Nor-ris (2011). In section 3, I will present the analysis of concord developed in Norris (2011) (theAGREE-approach) based on Minimalism’s AGREE and the DM operation of Feature Copying, andin section 4, I will compare this account to a new theory of concord based on Grimshaw’s (2005)theory of Extended Projections (the EP-approach). In section 5, I consider cases where elementsin a single DP do not all agree— that is, there is a mismatch in some of the features participating inconcord. I argue that the EP-approach can be easily extendedto account for such phenomena, butthe AGREE-approach cannot. In section 6, I discuss how the formal account of concord developedhere (the EP-approach) can happen simultaneously with possessor agreement as we see in Finnish,which is another area that causes trouble for the AGREE-approach. In section 7, I conclude.

2

2 Preliminaries

2.1 Concord in Icelandic: Basics

In Icelandic, nearly all of the elements in a DP must show concord, most commonly expressed bywhat I will refer to asconcord markers(CM). Concord markers vary in morphophonological formaccording to the GNC features of a nominal phrase:1

(4) fjor-irfour-CMi

litl-irlittle-CMi

snigl-arsnail-NOM.M .PLi

‘four little snails’

CMs appear to be a kind of agreement morphology. The agreement they mark is what I refer to asconcord, and it is obligatory. The suffixes cannot be dropped(see (5)) and in the general case, theymust all match in feature values (see (6)).

(5) Concord markers are obligatory

* fjorfour

lıtillittle

snigl-arsnail-NOM.M .PL

(6) Concord markers must match in features (including the noun)

* fjor-arfour-NOM.F.PL

lıtil-llittle-NOM.M .SG

snigl-arsnail-NOM.M .PL

Concord in Icelandic is very rich. As I have mentioned, nearly all elements must express thefeatures of the nominal phrase. A more complicated version of the DP in (4) is given below:

(7) all-irall-CMi

hin-irother-CMi

litl-ulittle-CMi

snigl-ar-nirsnail-NOM.M .PLi -the.CMi

mın-irmy-CMi

fjor-irfour-CMi

‘all my other four little snails’

In example (7) above, there are seven different elements (including the noun) bearingCMs:

(8)

a. Quantifier: all-ir snigl-ar ‘all snails’b. Demonstrative: hin-ir snigl-ar-nir ‘the other snails’c. Adjective: litl-u snigl-ar-nir ‘the little snails’d. Definite article: snigl-ar-nir ‘the snails’e. Possessive pronoun:snigl-ar-nir mın-ir ‘my snails’f. Numeral: fjor-ir snigl-ar ‘four snails’

As I mentioned, the most common way to indicate concord is viaCMs. The set ofCMs thatappear (more or less) on every element except the noun, and I thus take it to be the “default” setof CMs, is given in Table 1. In addition to suffixation, GNC features are sometimes representedon the stem/Root directly. For example, all of the∅ forms in Table 1 are accompanied by what isessentially an umlaut process calledu-shift. U-shift is normally triggered by the addition of a suffix

1A note on notation: As a way to save space, I will gloss concordmarkers asCM except when it could lead toconfusion. I will indicate the features that theCM is marking by using subscripts, both on theCM and on the featurestheCM is marking. The features will always be written in full on thenoun.

3

MASC FEM NEUT

SG PL SG PL SG PL

NOM -ur/-l/-n -ir -∅ -ar -t -∅ACC -an -a -a -ar -t -∅DAT -um -um -ri -um -u -umGEN -s -ra -rar -ra -s -ra

Table 1: Default paradigm for concord markers in Icelandic

beginning inu (phonologically the high front lax rounded vowel[Y]), and it causes precedinga tochange to eithero [œ] or u. However, in some cases, such as the∅ forms above,u-shiftapparentlyhappens for no reason. In addition tou-shift, there is a vowel change process affecting somestems, which i calli-shift, because the triggering environment isi [I]. Finally, there are some wordswhich simply show suppletion for particular constellations of GNC features. A clear exampleof this is the numeraltveir ‘two’, given in Table 2. Since the focus of this paper is not how GNC

MASC FEM NEUT

NOM tve-ir tvær tvoACC tvo tvær tvoDAT tveim(ur)GEN tveggja

Table 2: Inflectional paradigm for the numeraltveir ‘two’

features are expressed, but how they get to the positions where they are expressed, I will essentiallybe ignoring the difference between suppletive marking and affixal marking of GNC features. Thequestion of how the allomorphy exhibited in Icelandic concord can be analyzed in existing theoriesof allomorphy (e.g., Embick 2010) will be left to future work(but see Norris 2011 for one challengeto Embick’s (2010) view).

In Icelandic, the generalization is that nearly every element in the DP must agree in GNCfeatures. This agreement is most generally expressed in suffixes (concord markers). However, thevalues of GNC features can, at times, trigger changes on the stems themselves as well. Beforeexploring possible analyses of concord, it is worth reconsidering some of the evidence that ledNorris (2011) to the claim that concord and A-P agreement aredistinct phenomena.

2.2 Morphological Agreement

In a broad sense, concord and A-P agreement are the same: bothinvolve aspects (features) of somelinguistic item being morphologically marked on another linguistic item. When they are discusseddescriptively, the same word is often used to describe the process: e.g., adjectives must agreewith the nouns they modify (concord) or verbs must agree withtheir subjects (A-P agreement).Of course, one very obvious difference between the two is that they happen in different domains:concord is (most commonly) a property of nominal phrases, and A-P agreement is a property ofclauses. From a theoretical standpoint, much of the work on concord has presupposed that concordand A-P agreementare the same, or at least, that they should be explained with the same machinery

4

as A-P agreement (see Kramer (2009) for a review of the literature). This need not be the caseapriori , especially if we find reason to believe the two are in fact different. When we actually digdeeper into the notions, we find evidence that strongly suggests theyaredifferent.

First, let us consider which features “agree.” The featuresof a concord relationship can includegender, number, and (morphological) case.2 In A-P agreement, we commonly see person, gender,and number features. The lack of person features in concord makes sense, since it is only in pro-nouns that we can really see a distinction in person, and the extra elements in the nominal phrasewhere concord is visible (e.g., adjectives, determiners) cannot typically be used with pronouns.The lack of case features in A-P agreement also makes sense, as case is often assigned based onsyntactic position within the clause, so, e.g., in subject-verb agreement, the case of the subject isgenerally invariant. In cases where the subject is in an irregular case, like for Icelandic quirkysubjects, the agreement we see is generally default rather than a new set of markers due to the dif-ferent case. With respect to features expressed, concord and A-P agreement are slightly different,but there might be a functional explanation.

Next, let us consider where the features appear. In concord,features can show up on heads(e.g., nouns, determiners), on specifiers (e.g., numerals), and on adjuncts (e.g., adjectives).3 InA-P agreement, features are expressed on heads (e.g., T/V, Aux, participles), and if we countthe features as appearing on subject DPs, we could also say the features appear on specifiers. Ifthere are cases of features appearing on adjuncts (i.e., adverbs), they are rare– certainly rarer thanadjectives showing concord. In this case, we have a clear asymmetry: concord shows up on moreelements in more syntactic positions than A-P agreement.

Finally, and most importantly, we must consider where the agreeing features originate. In A-Pagreement, this is simple: all of the features come from the DP-arguments (e.g., subjects) that theverb can be said to agree with. For concord, the answer is lessstraightforward. In short, gender ismost likely a property of the noun itself, and number is either a feature of a Num(ber) head, or it isalso a feature on N as well. Case, on the other hand, cannot be straightforwardly attributed to N orNum– it is assigned based on the entire DP’s syntactic role orposition, and has nothing to do withthe identity of the N.

CONCORD A-P AGREEMENT

feature origin feature origingender N gender DP-argumentnumber N/Num number DP-argumentcase DP-external person DP-argument

Table 3: The origins of features in concord and A-P agreement

The difference here is striking. While the features of A-P agreement come from a consistentsource, features participating in concord come from varying places (see Table 2.2). Furthermore,

2There are also examples of what is called “negative concord”and “definiteness concord” in the literature. I willnot treat either of these in my discussion of concord, as theyboth seem different from the main focus (concord ingender, number, and case). In fact, some cases of what appearto be definiteness concord may not even be concord atall (see, e.g., LaCara (To Appear)).

3Of course, if one adopts a Cinque (1994)-style analysis for adjectives, then concord might not appear on adjuncts.I am not aware of any cases of concord marking on other possible adjuncts in the DP (e.g., PP adjuncts, relativeclauses).

5

notice that there are no features of any verbal head in the clause (e.g., V, Asp, T) that play a role inA-P agreement– all of the features come from phrasal arguments of V’s extended projection (in thesense of Grimshaw (2005)). In concord, the features (mostly) come from heads, but they certainlydo not come from phrasal arguments, and most of the features come from the nominal projectionitself— the features are born there, and they are expressed there.

In summary, categorizing concord as the analog of A-P agreement in the nominal domain isdescriptively problematic for at least three reasons. First, the features participating in the agreementprocess are different. Second, the features are realized inmore and different places. Finally, thefeatures originate in different places. From a descriptivestandpoint, the processes are clearlydifferent. A-P agreement is indicative of a particular syntactic relationship between a head andone of its arguments (e.g., c-command or Spec-Head), and therelationship is an exchange: thearguments gets case, and the head bears agreement features.In contrast, concord is not indicativeof the same syntactic relationship, as elements in a wide variety of syntactic positions can bearfeatures from concord. Rather, concord is the expression ofthe features of an extended projection(e.g., DP) by elements inside that DP.

2.2.1 A-P agreement in Nominals: Possessor Agreement

If the idea that concord and A-P agreement are truly distinctphenomena is correct, then we wouldhope to find a true correlate of A-P agreement in the nominal domain and concord in the verbaldomain. I set aside the question of concord in the verbal domain for now, but there is an obviouscorrelate of A-P agreement in the nominal domain:possessor agreement. What I mean by posses-sor agreement is when a possessed noun (hereafter,possessum) bears a suffix indicating the personand number of the possessor. This phenomenon occurs in many languages, and some examples aregiven below:

(9) Possessor agreement in Finnish

a. (minu-n)I-GEN

kirja-nibook-POSS.1SG

‘my book’ (Adapted from Karlsson, 1999)

b. (teidan)you.PL.GEN

auto-nnecar-POSS.2PL

‘your (pl.) car’ (Adapted from Karlsson, 1999)

(10) Possessor agreement in Azerbaijani

a. biz-imwe-GEN

dovsan-ımızrabbit-POSS.1PL

‘our rabbit’ (Anie Thompson, p.c.)

b. s@n-inyou-GEN

alma-napple-POSS.2PL

‘your apple’ (Anie Thompson, p.c.)

Possessor agreement looks like A-P agreement for several reasons. First of all, possessor agree-ment involves person features. Second, the features are only marked on one element. For example,they do not show up on adjectives modifying the possessum. Third, all of the features come from

6

a separate extended projection: the possessor DP. Crucially, they are not features that originate inthe domain where they are marked. Finally, in some languages, there is significant morphologi-cal overlap between the possessor agreement morphology andverbal agreement paradigms in somelanguages. For example, in Mayan languages, the “set A” agreement markers are used both for ver-bal agreement with ergative subjects and for agreement withpossessors. This led Aissen (1996);Coon (2010) to propose analyses that unify the possessor andverbal domains as a way of capturingthis generalization. These facts are in line with the proposed idea that possessors in the nominaldomain are akin to subjects in the clausal domain (see e.g., Abney (1987)) and distributionally,they match up much better with the properties of A-P agreement than concord does.

Taking this one step further, if concord and possessor agreement are truly distinct phenomena,then we also expect to find both in the same language. We do see this in Finnish, and someexamples are given below:

(11) Finnish: both possessor agreement and concord

a. iso-ssabig-INE

talo-ssa-nihouse-INE-POSS.1SG

‘in my big house’ (Daniel Karvonen, p.c.)

b. * iso-ssa-ni talo-ssa-ni (Daniel Karvonen, p.c.)

c. punaise-ssared-INE

auto-ssa-nicar-INE-POSS.1SG

‘in my red car’

d. * punaise-ssa-ni auto-ssa-ni

I will return to the co-occurrence of possessor agreement and concord in §6, but for now, I takeall of this as strong evidence that, at least empirically, A-P agreement and concord are distinctphenomena.

2.3 Preliminaries: Summary

In this section, I covered some necessary background information on concord in general and in Ice-landic. The generalization in Icelandic is that nearly every element in a DP must bear or expressGNC features of the entire DP, regardless of that elements structural position (i.e., specifier, ad-junct, or head in the main spine). I then provided a detailed comparison of the common propertiesof A-P agreement and concord, arguing that concord is not simply the nominal phrase correlate ofA-P agreement.

That being said, this difference could merely be descriptive. Whether we analyze concordand A-P agreement using the same formal analysis is a different question entirely, and it cruciallydepends on what our theory of agreement is. In Norris (2011),I argued that concord could notbe adequately explained with Minimalism’s AGREE alone, as it is built on the relationship ofc-command. While there are some adjustments that can be madeto AGREE such that it wouldhave a better chance at handling concord, they all essentially subvert the c-command requirement.Since AGREE is sensitive to structure (by hypothesis), using it by itself to account for concord,which is not sensitive to structure in the same way necessarily requires weakening of the structuralrequirements imposed on AGREE.

7

I will now turn to two possible analyses of concord. First, I will present the analysis developedNorris 2011, which I callFeature Collection and Copying. Feature Collection and Copying isbuilt around the idea that all three GNC features are collected in one head (partially by AGREE)and then distributed to the rest of the elements in the DP. Given the distinction just made betweenA-P agreement and concord, it would seem that the stronger claim would be to analyze concordwithout AGREE at all. To that end, after explaining the Norris 2011 analysis, I will turn to adifferent analysis of concord that does not make use of AGREE at all.

3 Norris (2011): Feature Collection and Copying

One of the most striking facts about concord is the fact that even though the features of con-cord come from different sources, they still pattern together. I assume, following Kramer (2009);Carstens (1991) that grammatical gender is an inherent property of nouns. Thus, in a sense, it muststart low in a DP and percolate its way up. On the other hand, morphological case depends on aDP’s syntactic position, and thus it must start high and percolate down the tree. Still, all elementsshowing concord vary in form based on gender, number,and case, and not a subset of those fea-tures depending on the element’s location in the DP. It is only in very special circumstances thatthe two are pulled apart in Icelandic. Ideally, then, an analysis of concord would capture that factand also provide a principled explanation for the cases whenthe concord is pulled apart. In thissection, I will propose an analysis of concord in Icelandic that does exactly that, which Norris(2011) informally calledFeature Collection and Copying. Feature Collection is the descriptiveterm given to the syntactic side, where all features are “collected” on a certain head (via AGREE),and Feature Copying is the PF-operation from DM. Since the purpose of this paper is to comparethis approach to a different approach, which still uses a form of feature collection and copying, Iwill hereafter refer to Norris’s (2011) approach as the AGREE-approach.

3.1 The AGREE-approach: basics

I propose that features are collected on the highest head in the nominal phrase, which I proposeis K (for Kase, or morphological case). K always has unvaluedfeatures for gender and number,which means K is a probe. In order to get values for its gender and number features, K probesinto its c-command domain until it finds a goal with values forthe features. K receives a value forcase through whatever mechanism is responsible, and thus will possess values for gender, number,and case. This is the part of concord I descriptively callfeature collection. In the tree below, I usedotted lines to symbolize an AGREE relation, whereas the solid line indicates assignment of casefrom the preposition,af.

8

(12) PP

Paf

KP

K

DAT

PL

MASC

DP

D . . .

Num NP

n(P)√

HEST n

PP

The reason for having K be the locus of these features (instead of say, D) is consistency. In Ice-landic, the position of demonstratives and quantifiers has been argued to be higher than D/Spec,DPJulien (2005); Norris (To Appear a). Thus, if we wanted to have the features “collected” in thehighest head, it would depend on what heads are present in thestructure. I have claimed that thiscollection comes as a result of the head entering the derivation with unvalued features for genderand number, and subsequently probing to find the relevant values. If K is uniformly the highesthead in the nominal projection, we only need one head with unvalued features: K.

However, if K is not uniformly the highest head in the projection, then it is either Q, Dem, orD, depending on what is present in the structure. As we will see, the head where the features are“collected” must c-command the rest of the elements in the tree— it must always be the highesthead in the nominal phrase. Furthermore, in my account, thishead enters the derivation withunvalued features for gender and number. This means that Q, Dem, and D must be able to enterthe derivation with unvalued features for gender and number.

Thus, when the highest head in the nominal phrase is Dem, it isDem that probes. However, itis less clear what happens when Dem is not the highest head in the nominal phrase. In particular,when Dem is not the highest head (i.e., when there is a Q), we may wish to prevent Dem fromhaving unvalued features, and it is not clear to me how this could be done. The analysis wherethe highest head is always K avoids this concern, but an obvious downside is the fact that K itselfis never overt in Icelandic. For concreteness, I continue the discussion under the analysis whichmakes use of the KP layer, but it seems workable without it.

3.1.1 PF: AGR node insertion and Feature Copying

Then, I assume a DM analysis of agreement, where agreement happens postsyntactically beforeVocabulary Insertion and Linearization. The first operation is the insertion of anAGR node (adissociated morpheme) adjoined to the target of agreement,and the second operation is FeatureCopying of the relevant features and feature values onto theAGR node. In Icelandic,AGR nodesare adjoined to all the heads which show concord. We could think of it as a sort of rule, schematized

9

below:4

(13) AGR InsertionX → [X AGR]

K c-commands everything else in the nominal phrase, and K possessesall of the relevant featuresfor concord. Thus, if we copy the features of K onto everyAGR node, we will have essentiallyensured that all elements of the nominal phrase have the appropriate values for gender, number,and case. The rule of Feature Copying would look something like what is written in (14) (seeKramer (2009, 2010) for a similar formulation of a Feature Copying rule).

(14) Feature CopyingThe features of the closest c-commanding K to any particularAGR node are copied into it.

To sum up, I argued for a two-step analysis of Icelandic concord, where gender, number, andcase are “collected” in the highest head in the syntax and then copied ontoAGR nodes insertedpostsyntactically. This analysis gives a straightforwardreason to why the features pattern togetherin GNC concord: they are copied from the same source. This analysis also sheds some light on themore complicated concord patterns seen in partitives in Icelandic, which I turn to now.

3.2 Concord in Icelandic Partitives

In Icelandic partitives, concord in gender and number (ϕ-concord) appears to reach farther thancase concord. Some examples are given below:

(15) Sum-irsome.NOM .M .PL

afof

þess-umthese.CMi

litl-ulittle-CMi(DEF)

snigl-umsnail- DAT .M .PLi

eruare

gul-ir.yellow-NOM.M .PL

‘Some of these little snails are yellow.’

(16) Sum-irsome.NOM .M .PL

þess-arathese.CMi


snigl-asnail- GEN .M .PLi

eruare

gul-ir.yellow-NOM.M .PL

‘Some of these little snails are yellow.’

The important fact to notice about the above examples is thatall of the relevant elements have thesame value for gender (MASC) and number, but the quantifiersumir ‘some’ has a different casefrom the rest of the nominal phrase (hereafter, thepartitive phrase).5 If we change the noun to afeminine or neuter noun, thensumurmust change as well:

(17) a. sum-arsome-NOM. F .PL

afof

þess-umthese-CMi

borg-umcity-DAT. F .PLi

‘some of these cities’4Of course, if the rule given in (13) is interpreted literally, then we expect anAGR node to be adjoined to every

single X at PF, which is not what we see. To avoid that, we wouldneed a separate rule for each kind of head showingconcord, with the rule in (13) as a template. For more discussion of AGR node insertion, see Norris 2011.

5The quantifiersumar, which means ‘some (as opposed to others)’ does not have the indefinite meaning of Englishsome. That meaning would be translated with the wordeinhver‘some(one) or other’. With count nouns,sumur isonly compatible with the plural, as it requires creating twogroups— those that fall in the group, and those that do not.However, it can bear singular agreement when modifying massnouns e.g.,folk, the word for ‘people’ in Icelandic,which is singular:sumt folk ‘some people’,sumt afþessu folki ‘some of these people’.

10

b. sum-∅some-NOM. N .PL

afof

þess-umthese-CMi

dyr-umanimal-DAT. N .PLi

‘some of these animals’

In the AGREE-approach, elements showing concord get their GNC featuresfrom K via FeatureCopying at PF. Therefore, the mismatch in case (and the matching in gender) must be attributableto the features on K. To see how this works, let us step throughan analysis of both the dativepartitive and the genitive partitive, beginning with the dative.

3.2.1 Dative Partitives in the AGREE-approach

The basic structure I assume for dative partitives is given in (18):

(18) KP1

K1 QP

Q

sumir

...

NP

N PP

P

af

KP2

K2 DemP

Dem

þessum

...

NP

N

sniglum

The partitive phrase itself looks like a full nominal phrase(a Dem(onstrative)P in this case). Thereason I have postulated a N outside of the partitive phrase is to unify the structures of partitiveswith an agreeing element as the quantifier (e.g., Q), hereafter quantifier partitives, and partitivesthat have a noun acting as a quantifier, hereafternominal partitives. In quantifier partitives, thereis a null N (as in (18), while in nominal partitives, that N is overt. I will return to the distinctionmomentarily.

Given that there are two case values in the structure, there must be two K heads according to theAGREE-approach. The differing case features as seen in (15) are clearly due to the locations of thetwo KPs. One is in subject position of a copular clause, and its value for case is thusNOM, whilethe other is the argument of the prepositionaf ‘of’, which always assignsDAT to its complements.As for gender and number, the AGREE-approach argues that K receives values for gender andnumber via AGREE: K2 probes into its c-command domain and finds the gender featureon snigil

11

‘snail’ and the number feature on Num. As for K1, there are no elements with a differing gender ornumber value between K1 and K2. Thus, when K1 probes, it finds the gender and number valueson K2, and thus receives the valuesMASC andPL. We can see this schematized below, where thedotted lines indicate an AGREE relationship.6

(19) KP1

K1

NOM

PL

MASC

QP

Qsumir

...

NP

N∅

PP

Paf

KP2

K2

DAT

PL

MASC

DemP

þessum litlu sniglum

After the narrow syntax, the tree in (19) is sent to the morphology. The various heads showingconcord trigger insertion ofAGR nodes, and then we apply the rule of Feature Copying, which isrepeated below:

(14) Feature CopyingThe features of the closest c-commanding K to any particularAGR node are copied into it.

Because the closest c-commanding K tosumis K1, then it is those features that are copied onto theAGR node attached tosum. The closest c-commanding K to everything in DemP is K2, and thuseverything there receives the values from K2.

6The higher N in the tree below is∅. Obviously, there is no overt noun betweensumirand the PP. The reason that Ipropose a null N is there is to unify the structure of partitives with agreeing quantifiers in the full DP (i.e., the elementoutside of the partitive phrase) and partitives with noun-like elements (i.e., elements that do not agree but have theirown values for gender/number) in the full DP.

12

(20) KP1

K1

NOM

MASC

PL

QP

Q

...

NP

N

∅PP

P

af

KP2

K2

DAT

MASC

PL

DemP

Dem

...

NP

N

N

snigl-

AGR

[DAT.M .PL]

-um

Q

sum-

AGR

[NOM.M .PL]

-ir

Dem

þess-

AGR

[DAT.M .PL]

-um

There are also cases where K1 finds a value for number or both gender and number featuresbefore it reaches KP2. We can see this in examples (21) and (22), where K1 has a different valuefor number than K2 (in (21)) and both gender and number (in (22)):

(21) einone.NOM.F. SG

afof

þess-umthese.CMi

borg-umcity-DAT.F. PL

‘one of these cities’

(22) helming-urhalf-NOM. M .SG

afof

þess-umthese.CMi

borg-umcity-DAT. F.PL

‘half of these cities’

The data above show that the gender and number of the quantifier-like element in KP1 can beindependent of the gender and number value of KP2. This is not surprising given the wide range

13

of words and phrases that can serve as quantifiers. The quantifier in (22),helmingur, is actually anoun itself, so it certainly has its own value for gender. It can apparently have its own value fornumber as well, as it is singular in (22) while KP2 is plural. We clearly need to be able to givephrases acting as quantifiers inherent values for gender andnumber in some cases, and in thosecases, K1 will find a value for the relevant featuresbeforereaching K2.

This makes a clear prediction that quantifiers can show independent concord, too, and this isborne out. In example (23) below, the quantifier is the phrasetveir þrikjungar ‘two thirds’, andthe numeraltveir agrees withþrikjungar and notbokum. This is exactly what we predict:tveir ismost closely c-commanded by K1, whose number and gender features were valued byþrikjungar:

(23) tveirtwo.CMi

þrikjung-arthird-NOM.M .PLi

afof

þess-umthese-CMj

borg-umcities-DAT.F.PLj

‘two thirds of these cities’

3.2.2 Genitive Partitves in the AGREE-approach

As we have seen, in addition to generating the partitive phrase as complement to the prepositionaf, partitives can also be made by generating the partitive phrase in what appears to be possessorposition. This example is repeated below:

(16) Sum-irsome-NOM .M .PLj

þess-arathese-CMi



eruare

gul-ir.yellow-CMj

‘Some of these little snails are yellow.’ Adapted from (Sigurksson, 2006)

There are two reasons to think that the partitive phrase is inthe same position as possessors inIcelandic. First of all, possessors in Icelandic are markedwith structural genitive case,7 and thepartitive phrase above also appears in genitive case. Second, the partitive phrase surfaces post-nominally, which is the same position as other genitives in Icelandic. The structural position ofpossessors seems to be low in Icelandic– every account that Iam aware of argues that they are inSpec,NP (Sigurksson (1993, 2006), Julien (2005), Norris (To Appear a)). Head movement to afunctional projection above N (e.g., Num, and in Julien 2005and Norris To Appear a, ultimatelyto a functional projection above Num) derives the post-nominal order.

(24) a. bæk-urbook-NOM.F.PL

kennar-a-nsteacher-GEN.M .SGi -the.CMi

‘the teacher’s books’

b. hund-ur-inndog-NOM.M .SGi -the.CMi

hennarher(she.GEN)

‘her dog’

The structure I propose for genitive partitives is given below, with the partitive phrase representedby the KP in Spec,NP:

7There is one exception to this: the possessive pronouns. Possessive pronouns is the term used to refer tominn‘my’, þinn ‘your’, and sinn ‘3.REFL’s’ which show concord with the head noun. For all other pronouns, genitiveversions of the pronouns are used instead of agreeing forms.There are also regular genitive forms of the pronounsfor 1SG, 2SG, and 3REFL, which are visible in all other places we might expect to see genitive case (i.e., when thepronouns are arguments of verbs (e.g.,ak sakna‘to miss’) or prepositions (e.g.,til ‘to(wards)’) that assign genitivecase).

14

(25) KP1

K1 QP

Q

sumir

DP

D ...

NP

KP2 N′

N

∅K2 DemP

Dem

þessara

...

NP

N

snigla

In the structure above, just as with the dative partitives, the N head of the full DP is phonologicallynull and lacksϕ-features. When K1 probes, the only available features are those belonging to thepartitive phrase in Spec,NP, and thus, K1 acquires the features of the partitive phrase. The FeatureCopying rule applies as before, and the features of K1 are copied ontosum, with the result beingthatsumiragrees with the head noun of the partitive phrase.

A more complicated case to consider is what happens when the head of the full DP is not null,but is a nominal quantifier likehelmingur. Recall that in those cases, K1 finds the features of thequantifier instead of the features of the partitive phrase, as we saw fortveir þrikjungar ‘two thirds’in (23). In the structure given for genitive partitives, it seems that N and K2 are equidistant fromK1.

15

(26)...

NP

KP2 N′

N

helmingur

K2 DemP

Dem

þessara

...

NP

N

snigla

It is not clear to me what would happen in this case, but based on the empirical facts, it is clear whatshould happen: the probe should find the features on N. There are two possible ways to conceptual-ize this. First, if we assume that the features of a head percolate up to the its maximal projection (asin GPSG/HPSG (Gazdar et al., 1985)), this would make the features of N closer than the featuresof K2, because the NP dominates KP2. Alternatively, we could rely on the independently motivatedhead movement of N. As I mentioned in the discussion of where the partitive phrase is located ingenitive partitives, previous work on Icelandic DP structure has motivated head movement of N toa functional projection above NP, though the nature of this projection has varied somewhat. Afterhead movement, the N would be structurally closer to K1 than K2. I leave this matter open here.

3.3 AGREE-approach: Summary

The reason that case concord pulls apart from gender/numberconcord in Icelandic partitives isbecause there are two case assigners but only one available value for gender and number. Sincegender and number are accessed via AGREE, but case is not, we predict they will pull apart inexactly those situations. The account sketched here unifiesquantifier partitives and nominal par-titives by assuming each kind of partitive involves two fully articulated KPs, but in the quantifierpartitives, the head N of the full KP lacksϕ-features and is thus not a suitable goal for AGREE.

Considering the fact that Norris’s (2011) main thesis is that A-P agreement and concord aredifferent phenomena, it seems unfortunate that the approach proposed there and reconsidered heremakes use of the mechanism of AGREE. However, I would like to point out that the AGREErelationis not actually between the locus of features and the head bearing those features. AGREE simplytransmits the features to a position where they can be distributed to the rest of the elements ofthe DP at PF. The AGREE relationship here is used in a somewhat indirect manner, which doesdistinguish it from AGREE-ment between subjects and verbs.

16

(27) Direct AGREE-ment8

YP

XP

X[GNC]

YP

Y[GNC]

NP

N[GNC]

AGREEAGREE

(28) Indirect AGREE-mentKP

K[GNC]

YP

XP

X[GNC]

YP

Y[GNC]

NP

N[GNC]

AG

RE

E

FC

FCThat being said, it seems the stronger claim would be to remove AGREE from the analysis

entirely. In Norris 2011, I briefly considered this idea, butI argued that the agreement facts inIcelandic partitives indicated that feature transmissionbetween separate extended projections (thefull DP and the partitive phrase) was at work. I return to thisquestion in the next section, buildinga theory of concord based on Grimshaw’s (2005) notion ofExtended Projection, which I will calltheEP-approach.

4 Concord without AGREE: the EP-approach

I adopt as a starting point Grimshaw’s (2005) notion of extended projection. Extended projections(EPs) are a formalization of the connection between lexicalheads (e.g., N, V) and the functionalstructure above them (e.g., D, T). In careful detail, Grimshaw surveys several reasons from boththe verbal and clausal domains about why we might want to havea clear understanding of suchconnections, in particular with respect to locality. Before discussing how the notion applies toconcord, let us first consider some of those reasons.

One area Grimshaw considers is so-called semantic selection. If arguments of verbs are DPsand the only head of those DPs is D, then a verb cannot locally select for properties of the N (e.g.,animacy, plurality). However, such selection appears to bepossible:

(29) a. They merged the files/ *the file.

b. They amalgamated the files/ *the file.

c. They combined the files/ *the file.

Under the theory of Extended Projections, the selection relationship remains local. As we will see,the properties of the various heads within a single DP (e.g.,N and D among others) will project upto DP. Thus, those properties can be selected by the V.

8It is worth noting that, under standard assumptions, the head X (of the adjunct XP) is not actually in the appropri-ate structural position to enter into an AGREE relation with N. This is arguably true in (27), but certainlytrue if thatX were to be further embedded in the adjunct or if it had a complement. As mentioned in section 1, items showingConcord are not sensitive to structure in the same way as A-P agreement.

17

Another example that Grimshaw provides is subject-verb agreement in English, as in (30). Theverb agrees with the subject in number even when the feature is encoded on N but not on D:9

(30) a. the dogs *is/are

b. the dog is/*are

c. dogs *is/are

Under the theory of extended projections, the [PL] feature of the N percolates up to DP, where it isvisible to or can be accessed by T. In an EP-less account whereD is the head of DP, we would beforced to say that ‘the’ is also plural (perhaps through agreement with N), but under the theory ofEP, this is what we expect.

The core components of Extended Projection are that lexicalheads form larger projections withthe functional material above them and that the formation ofthose projections depends on identityof category. To capture the identity of category, Grimshaw designates feature complexes of N, D,and P as [nominal], and that of V, I, and C are categorized as [verbal]. Different formalizations ofthese features have been argued for by other authors (see (Grimshaw, 2005, p.3) for some propos-als), but this will suffice for our purposes. Lexical heads are distinguished from their functionalcounterparts by functional status, which is encoded as a value for a non-binary featureF. Takingthese two assumptions, Grimshaw describes category labelsas pairs of categorial and functionalspecifications, as in (31) and (32).

(31)a. V [+V –N] F0b. I [+V –N] F1c. C [+V –N] F2

(32)a. N [–V +N] F0b. D [–V +N] F1c. P [–V +N] F2

The notion ofheadandprojectionare redefined as in (33) and (33d).

(33) X is aheadof YP and YP aprojectionof X iff:

a. YP dominates X

b. The categorial features of YP and X are consistent

c. There is no inconsistency in the categorial feature of allnodes intervening between Xand YP (where a node Nintervenesbetween X and YP if YP dominates X and N, andN dominates X.)

d. Either:

i. TheF-value of X is lower than theF-value of YPor:

ii. The F-value of X is not higher than theF-value of YP

(Grimshaw, 2005, p.4)

What will be relevant for our purposes is how information is shared among the heads of a par-ticular extended projection. For example, since DP (and PP)are projections of N, information fromthe lexical head percolates through the head structure in the same way that categorial informationdoes. For example, as we saw above, the entire DP is plural when N is plural.

9I am simply replicating Grimshaw’s assumptions here. It could be that ‘the’ does agree with the noun and wesimply do not see any morphological evidence for that agreement. Grimshaw briefly discusses such an analysis, butdoes not adopt it.

18

These assumptions will allow the feature values on N to percolate all the way to the highestprojection in the nominal. For Grimshaw, these features include gender and number. If we assumethat number is instead generated in a Num(ber) head above N, we can simply say that the genderfeature of N projects through the extended projection, and number can project from the Num headthrough the (rest of) the extended projection. In this way, every projection in the extended nominalprojection, including the highest, comes to be marked for gender and number This is representedin Figure 1.

QP[M .PL]

Q DP[M .PL]

D NumP[M .PL]

Num[PL]

NP[M]

N[M]

Figure 1: Percolation of head features in the nominal extended projection

Notice, this structure is minimally different from the structure given above for the AGREE-approach. The main difference is that instead of collectingthe features in the highest head (e.g.,K), they are collected on the highest maximal projection, which, just as before, is also assignedcase. Consequently, the second part of this approach could also look nearly identical to the secondpart of the AGREE-based analysis. By using FC, we can copy feature values fromthe highestmaximal projection onto the variousAGR nodes in the tree, which are inserted postsyntactically asbefore. The formulation of the conditions for Feature Copying are given below.

(34) Feature Copying (EP-approach), take one: The featuresof a projection XP are copied ontoanAGR node ZAGR that it dominates iff...

a. XP is the maximal projection of its extended projection (i.e., XP’s sister is either adifferent category than X or has a lower value for the F feature than F),

b. There is no YP such that YP is a maximal projection of its extended projection, YPdominates ZAGR, and XP dominates YP (i.e., no interveners)

Let us unpack this rule. Condition (a) requires that the location features are copied from be thehighest projection in the nominal phrase, whatever that maybe. Condition (b) is a way of pre-venting features of higher extended projections from beingcopied into lower extended projections.We could possibly cash this notion out in terms of cyclicity:if the lower extended projection hasalready been spelled out (e.g., if it is a phase), then we cannot copy new features into it. For now,I will leave condition (b) in the rule. As stated, the rule allows the kind of copying schematized

19

in (35), but prevents copying into complements of N (see (36)) or copying into possessors (see(37)).10

(35)

DP

NOM

PL

FEM

D

[NOM.F.PL]

NumP

Num

[NOM.F.PL]

NP

N

[NOM.F.PL]

(36)

DP

NOM

PL

FEM

D ...

NP

N PP

P DP

[FEAT]

D

[NOM.F.PL]

. . .X

(37)

DP

NOM

PL

FEM

D ...

NP

DP

[FEAT]

N′

N

D

[NOM.F.PL]

. . .

X

At first blush, this rule of Feature Copying appears to be muchmore complicated than the ruleproposed for the AGREE-approach. That rule is repeated below:

(14) Feature Copying (AGREE-approach)The features of the closest c-commanding K to any particularAGR node are copied into it.

However, there are two bits of complexity that obscured by the way it is written here. First ofall, we would need a precise formulation of “closest.” Presumably, it could be formulated inmuch the same way that it was formulated in condition (b) of (34). Second, this formulation wasmade under the assumption that KP is always the highest projection in a nominal phrase. Wecould make the very same assumption for the EP-approach and thus do away with condition (a)of (34). Alternatively, we could do away with that assumption for the AGREE-approach, resultingin a more complicated formulation than the one given in (14).Either way, it seems the FeatureCopying rules for both approaches are equally complex with the only difference being that one isbuilt on c-command and the other is built on domination.

The basics of the EP-approach are very straightforward. If we assume that features of the var-ious heads of the extended projection are all shared by the projections in the extended projection,then the features of gender and number will be able to get highenough to allow FC to distributethem in the morphology in a straightforward way (i.e., to nodes that the projection dominates).Since the reason AGREE was used in the first place was to get the features of gender andnumber

10Possessors here are represented in Spec,NP, which is the apparent position of possessors in Icelandic. Regardlessof the position of possessors, the Feature Copying rule in (34) does not allow copying into them.

20

“high enough” in the tree, it seems that, at least for the simplest case, the EP-approach is just asadequate as the AGREE-approach. In addition, the EP-approach does a better job ofcapturing theconceptualization of concord as members of an extended projection expressing features of thatprojection. Feature percolation is built into the theory ofextended projections, and the only extrastep we need is to provide a way to distribute the features to the various heads.11

This account preserves one of the main benefits of the AGREE-approach. Because the featuredistribution is done in the morphology (via FC), we can capture the intuition that concord is notsensitive to syntactic relationships (e.g., c-command or Spec-Head) in the same way as A-P agree-ment. Second, we have an understanding for why the features pattern together in concord: thefeatures pattern together, because they are copied from thesame source. Thus far, it seems that anaccount of concord relying on feature percolation in extended projections instead of AGREE basedfeature valuation would work quite well. However, since thetheory is built on sharing within asingle extended projection, the EP-approach alone cannot explain apparent agreement in Icelandicpartitives. Let us turn to them now.

4.1 Icelandic Partitives in the EP-Approach

Though the general pattern is for features in Icelandic to pattern together, recall that in Icelandicpartitives, theϕ-concord appears to reach farther than case concord. The canonical examples arerepeated below in (15) and (16). Recall that the quantifier agrees in gender and number with thenoun in the partitive phrase, but the two are assigned different cases.


afof

þess-umthese-CMi


snigl-umsnail- DAT .M .PLi

eruare

gul-ir.yellow-CMj



þess-arathese-CMi



eruare

gul-ir.yellow-CMj


In both examples, the quantifiersumir ‘some’ agrees in gender and number with the nounsnigill‘snail’, but it bears a different case:sumiris nominative in both examples, while the rest is in dativecase in (15) and genitive case in (16). The problems that partitives pose for the EP-approach areessentially the same for both dative and genitive partitives, so I will focus discussion on the dativeones. The basic structure I assume for dative partitives is given in (38):

11Under Grimshaw’s formalization of the theory, adjectives actually head their own extended projections as well.If that is correct, then the fact that adjectives agree with the nouns they modify runs counter to the idea that concordis merely the sharing of features among elements in one single extended projection. Assuming adjectives are nominal(i.e., [+N], we could perhaps formulate the notion of concord by referring only to the nominal category (as opposedto both nominal and verbal categories), treating adjectives and nouns as identical, but still excluding verbal elements.For now, I leave this matter unresolved, but I will return to adiscussion of adjectives in §7.

21

(38) QP

Q

sumir

DP

D ...

NP

N

∅PP

P

af

DemP

Dem

þessum

...

NP

N

sniglum

In the AGREE-approach, I argued that the reasonsumir agrees in gender with N is because thereare no values for gender intervening between K1 and K2, where K1 is above Q and K2 is aboveDem. Thus, when K1 probes, the first values for gender and number that it finds arethose on K2,and thus, it is valued [M .PL]. In the EP-approach, this is less straightforward. While both P and Nare part of the same category, theF value for N is lower than theF value for P. Thus, accordingto (33d), they cannot be a part of the same extended projection. Because feature percolation isconstrained to the domain of a single extended projection, transmission to the full DP should beblocked.

22

(39)...

NP[F(0)]

[M .PL]

N

∅PP[F(n)]

[M .PL]

P DemP[F(n-1)]

[M .PL]

Dem ...

NP[F(0)]

[M .PL]

N

[M .PL]

([ F] value increases)

([ F] value increases)

X

([ F] value decreases)

One possible to solution to this is to assume thataf is not actually a true preposition but isdefective in the sense that it is not necessarily the highestnode of the extended projection. Since Qis presumably a functional category in Grimshaw’s (2005) terms, then it is plausible that an entirepartitive would form a single EP. Under this analysis, the structure of a dative partitive wouldactually be as given below, where I represent the defective Pwith p:

(40) QP[F(n)]

Q

sumir

pP[F(n-1)]

p

af

DemP[F(n-2)]

Dem

þessum

...

NP

N

sniglum

This approach is problematic for the following reasons. First, this cannot be the structure of nom-inal partitives (since there must be an N above the preposition), and thus the defectivep analysiswould fail to unify the nominal partitives with the quantifier partitives. Second, this defectivep‘af’ is nearly identical to the full P ‘af’ (beyond the identical phonological content). It can take DP

23

complements (although presumably not QP complements) and it assigns dative case to its com-plement. In order for this analysis to be viable, we would want some independent evidence for adefectivep of this sort, and I cannot think of any at present, nor what that kind of evidence wouldlook like. Even if we found such evidence, it seems clear thatthe defectivep account cannot beextended to account for genitive partitives.

Intuitively, though, this approach is on the right track. What we want is for quantifier partitivesto behave as though they constitute a single EP as far as feature percolation is concerned. There-fore, if we wish to maintain the definition of an EP as is, then we must relax the restrictions onfeature percolation. One possibility would be to say that the feature values from one EP (call itEP1) can project into another EP (call it EP2) only if EP2 does not have values for those particularfeatures. In the case of quantifier partitives in Icelandic,since the N does not have any valuesfor gender (and Num presumably does not have any values for number), then the features of thepartitive phrase can percolate higher.

4.2 EP-Approach: Summary

In this section, I outlined a theory of concord based on Grimshaw’s (2005) notion of extendedprojections. In this theory, features are automatically shared amongst all projections in the ex-tended nominal projection. Whereas the AGREE-approach uses AGREE to get features of genderand number high enough to be able to to c-command all elementsin the DP, the EP-approach usesthe built in notion of feature sharing/percolation. The theories come together at PF, where featuresare distributed from very high in the nominal projection to the rest of the elements in the DP.

While both accounts can account for the general pattern straightforwardly, we saw that theEP-approach failed to account for the agreement patterns inIcelandic partitives. Because featurepercolation is restricted to a single extended projection,we need something more in order to ac-count for the feature sharing between two separate extendedprojections. I suggested that the mostpromising approach we could use to account for would be to relax the restrictions on feature per-colation, such that feature values could percolate outsideof an EP if the higher EP lacks valuesfor that feature. Since EPs are usually headed by lexical items with inherent featural content, wealmost never see this percolation at work. It is just in quantifier partitives in Icelandic, which lacksuch lexical items (or whose corresponding lexical items lack the relevant features), where thepercolation comes to the surface.

Descriptively speaking, it is not at all surprising that these quantifiers agree with the noun in thepartitive phrase. With a few exceptions, all elements in Icelandic nominal phrases must bear GNCfeatures. It is as though adjectives, quantifiers, demonstratives, etc. are not full words withoutconcord markers—sum-simply must bear agreement features from something. We might expectit to be possible forsum-to bear some sort of default concord, but to my knowledge, there is nosuch thing in Icelandic. At any rate, what is going on here is clearly not default agreement, as wehave already seen thatsum-agrees with whatever noun is in the partitive phrase. While Ihave madea suggestion as to how we might approach this problem, it remains a problem for the EP-approach.

Based on partitives alone, it seems we have reason to favor the AGREE-approach, but it doesnot seem like the EP-approach is unsalvageable. I will now turn to some examples which I believeargue strongly in favor of the EP-approach. These involve cases where there is more than one valuefor gender, number, or case within a single DP. Let us turn to them now.

24

5 DP-Internal Feature Mismatch

For the most part, the two approaches are empirically identical. This is not a surprise, as theEP-approach requires domination for distributing features and the AGREE-approach requires c-command (or “almost domination”). Because feature distribution is mediated by one single nodeunder each analysis (K for the AGREE-approach, the highest node for the EP-approach), they bothmake a clear prediction as formulated: every node exponing features of a DP will bear the samefeatures as other nodes in the DP. That is to say, every node ina single DP will bear the same valuefor gender, number, and case. In Icelandic, this is exactly what we see.

Although the concord system in Icelandic is very rich, it is also rather simple. As far as I know,there are no cases of feature mismatch within a single DP— allelements showing concord withina particular DP must express the same GNC features. I explained this fact by arguing that featuresare distributed from the highest (or almost highest) node within the DP to all the elements of thatDP. This kind of analysis explicitly rules out instances where one element of a DP (for example, anadjective or demonstrative) bears a different feature specification than some other element of theDP (for example, a noun). This turns out to be too strong a claim, as such mismatches are attestedcross-linguistically.

Based on this evidence, I will argue in this section that the apparent “global” nature of concord(that is, that every element in a DP must bear the same featurevalue for gender, number, and case)is epiphenomenal. All that the elements showing concord have in common is they must expressthe same features. The actual values for the features can vary. The distribution of feature valuesoccurs much more locally, and the only reason that the globalsituation arises is because, in themost general case, there is only one available value for eachfeature. Because the heads showingconcord must bear values for all three features, they all endup bearing the same value. However,when more than one value is available, we see this pull apart.

5.1 Case Mismatch in DPs with Numerals

The first case to consider is feature mismatch in DPs with numerals (henceforth,NumDPs). Beforetalking about the kinds of feature mismatch seen in NumDPs, Iwill briefly cover some terminologythat I will use for numerals based on the following structure, which is the structure that I assumefor NumDPs:

(41) DP

D NumP

NumeralP Num′

Num NP

N

25

This is essentially the structure proposed by Zabbal (2005)for NumDPs. The numeral is in thespecifier position of a functional head, perhaps Num(ber), as represented here, or a head just aboveNumber but below D. This is very different from the structureproposed by Ionin and Matushansky(2004), where numerals are noun heads in the main spine: Ns taking NP complements. I will returnto discussion of the analyses after presenting the data, butfirst, I must define some terminology.

When I reference “to the right” or “below” numerals, I am referring to elements that are con-tained in the complement of the functional head. Under the Zabbal analysis, these elements arenot complements of the numeral, so for this reason, I will notrefer to them as complements. WhenI reference elements “to the left” or “above” numerals, I will refer to material that is structurallyhigher— anything that c-commands or dominates FP. I intend “to the left” and “to the right” to re-fer only to elements contained within the NumDP, even thoughthe actual words “to the left/right”do not indicate any such distinction. I will return to a more thorough discussion of analyses afterpresenting the data.

5.1.1 Case Assignment in NumDPs

There are usually two ways in which agreement in NumDPs can differ from agreement in DPswithout Numerals. First, in some languages, the presence ofa numeral can condition the appear-ance of different features on the head noun. This is exemplified for Estonian in (42) and Russianin (43):

(42) a. uksone.NOM.SG

huvitavinteresting.NOM.SG

raamatbook.NOM.SG

‘one interesting book’

b. kakstwo.NOM.SG

huvitava-tinteresting-PAR.SG

raamatu-tbook-PAR.SG

‘two interesting books’

(43) a. cetyrefour

knigibook.GEN.SG

‘four books’ (Ionin and Matushansky, 2004)

b. pjat’five

knigbook.GEN.PL

‘five books’ (Adapted from Ionin and Matushansky 2004)

In (42) we can see that the adjective and noun followinguks ‘one’ surface in nominative case,while the adjective and numeral followingkaks ‘two’ surface in partitive case. In Russian, wesee a similar situation, wherecetyre‘four’ conditions what looks like [GEN.SG], andpjat’ ‘five’conditions [GEN.PL].12

Another example of feature mismatch we see in NumDPs is that numeral phrases appear tohave their own processes of case assignment that happen internal to the numeral phrase. In numeral

12This is apparently true for nearly every form in the language, but there are a few words whose [GEN.SG] form(e.g., for possession) is distinct from the form after numerals like cetyre. For this reason, some authors (e.g., Franks(1994)) argue that this is actually a special case (paucal case), and that this form has become syncretic with [GEN.SG]for nearly every word in the language.

26

phrases like ‘four thousand’ or ‘five thousand’ in Russian, ‘four’/‘five’ assign case to ‘thousand’—the very same case they assign to ‘book’ in (43). We can see this below in (44):

(43) a. cetyrefour

knigibook.GEN.SG


b. pjat’five

knigbook.GEN.PL


(44) a. cetyrefour

tysjacithousand.GEN.SG

knigbook.GEN.PL

‘four thousand books’ (Ionin and Matushansky, 2004)

b. pjat’five

tysjacthousand.GEN.PL

knigbook.GEN.PL

‘five thousand books’ (Ionin and Matushansky, 2004)

5.1.2 Possible Analyses

As far as I know, there are two predominant views on the structure of NumDPs. As I mentionedat the beginning of this section, the view that I ultimately adopt is that numerals are in specifierposition of a functional projection (Zabbal, 2005). Another view is that of Ionin and Matushansky(2004) (I&M), where numerals are heads in the main spine. Theanalyses that I will discuss here areconcerned not only with analyzing the morphosyntax of numerals, but analyzing the semantics ofthem as well. Specifically, they aim to provide an analysis ofnumeral semantics that explains whenmultiplication is used (in numerals like ‘two hundred’) andwhen addition is used (in numerals like‘twenty-two’). I will only concern myself with how the analyses explain the morphosyntactic factswe have seen (and a few we have yet to see). However, in addition to having different semantics,both authors also propose different syntactic structures to the multiplicative and additive numerals,and this will allow us to distinguish them.

5.1.2.1 Ionin and Matushansky (2004): numerals as heads in the main spine

Specifically, I&M argue that numerals are Ns that take NP complements, as depicted below:

(45) NP

N

four

NP

N

books

In multiplicative numerals, each the structure just involves recursive NPs as below. Additive nu-merals are slightly more complicated. I&M argue that additive numerals involve coordination,and for semantic reasons, they argue that there is a copy of the head (i.e., non-numeral) noun in

27

each conjunct. The reason that only one is pronounced is thatthey undergo (obligatory) right-noderaising

(46) NP

N

four

NP

N

thousand

NP

N

books

(47) XP

NP NP

N

booksNP & NP

N

four

NP

N

books

N

forty

NP

N

books

The main morphosyntactic motivation for nouns taking NP complements seems to be caseassignment (in Russian). If numerals are specifiers, then they cannot actually assign case to theelements on their right under standard assumptions. However, it is certainly possible for a headto assign case to its complement. A prediction of this approach is that, in a NumDP like ‘fourthousand books’, the case assigned to ‘thousand’ should be identical to the case assigned to ‘book’in ‘four books’. This is because ‘four’ will assign case to its complement, which is ‘thousandbooks’ in (45) and ‘books’ in (46). We have already seen that this is true in examples (43) and(44), repeated below.

(43) a. cetyrefour

knigibook.GEN.SG


b. pjat’five

knigbook.GEN.PL


(44) a. cetyrefour


knigbook.GEN.PL

28


b. pjat’five


knigbook.GEN.PL


The other case assignment puzzle to deal with is that it is therightmost numeral that determinescase assignment to the noun. That is to say, the case assignment in ‘twenty-two’ is the same as thecase assignment for ‘two’. In multiplicative numerals, this is predicted because it is the rightmostnumeral that actually takes the noun as a complement, so it isthe rightmost numeral that assignscase. In additive numerals, recall that I&M’s proposed structure involves right-node raising. Theway that they account for the case assignment is to say that itis the case assigned by the rightmostnumeral that determines the case of the right-node raised noun. We can see examples of this below:

(48) Russian: Rightmost numeral determines case

a. dvetwo.NOM

knigibook.GEN.SG

‘two books’ (Ionin and Matushansky, 2004)

b. dvadcat’twenty.NOM

dvetwo.NOM

knigibook.GEN.SG

‘twenty-two books’ (Ionin and Matushansky, 2004)

Interestingly, the case assignment facts in Estonian are slightly different from what we have seenfor Russian. Unlike Russian, in Estonian, partitive case isassigned by all numerals greater thanone, including something like ‘41’ (see (49)):

(49) Estonian: Numeral as a whole determines case

a. uksone.CMi

rohelin-egreen-CMi

raamatbook.NOM.SGi

‘one green book’

b. nelikummendforty.NOM

uksone.NOM

raske-theavy-CMi

raamatu-tbook-PAR.SGi

‘41 heavy books’

c. sada100.NOM

uksone.NOM

suur-tbig-cmri


‘101 big books’

I&M observe similar facts from Inari Sami, and they account for it by assuming that it is the leftconjunct which determines case of the right-node raised element, whereas it is the right conjunctin Russian. As I&M note, right node raising is usually forbidden in situations where there is caseconflict between conjuncts. That is to say, if the raised NP isassigned a different case in eachconjunct, then right node raising is typically ungrammatical. Clearly, this is at odds with theiranalysis of numerals as involving right node raising, giventhat thereis case conflict (that is, thenumerals in each conjunct can assign different cases to their complements). They leave this matteras an open question.

A further problem that they do not address comes from numerals involving multiplication.Recall that in Russian numerals like ‘four thousand’ and ‘five thousand’, ‘thousand’ bears the case

29

that a normal noun would if it appeared after ‘four’ or ‘five’ (examples repeated below). This isnot true for Estonian, askaks‘two’ does not assign partitive case totuhat ‘thousand’ in a numerallike ‘two thousand’. We can see this in (50). If the analysis that I&M propose is right, the lack ofcase assignment in Estonian numerals is completely mysterious.

(44) a. cetyrefour


knigbook.GEN.PL


b. pjat’five


knigbook.GEN.PL


(50) a. kakstwo.NOM

tuhatthousand.NOM


‘two thousand books’

b. * kakstwo.NOM

tuhatu-tthousand-PAR.SG


The two differences discussed here seem very closely related. In Russian, each individual com-ponent of the complex numeral retains its idiosyncratic properties, and there does not seem to be asense in which the entire complex numeral has an identity separate from the identities of its com-ponent parts (e.g., no special case assignment for ‘five thousand’, but simply the case assignmentfrom ‘five’ and from ‘thousand’). In Estonian, the individual components of the complex numerallosetheir idiosyncratic properties in favor of behaving like a unit. Since the I&M analysis is builton Russian, it predicts the “selfish” behavior of numerals inRussian perfectly, but as far as I cantell, it cannot adequately account for the “group mentality” of numerals in Finno-Ugric withoutmajor modification.

5.1.2.2 Zabbal (2005): numerals as specifiers

The approach that I adopt here is one where numerals are merged specifiers of a functionalprojection, as proposed by Zabbal (2005). In the Zabbal analysis, “low numerals” (e.g., two, three,seven, ten) are adjectival and “high numerals” (e.g., hundred, thousand) are nominal. Multiplica-tive structures are formed when a low numeral merges with a high numeral, and additive structuresresult from conjunction of two adjectival numerals. The result is that complex numerals are alsoadjectival.13

(51) a. A

A

four

N

hundred

b. A

A

twenty

&

(and)

A

two

13Zabbal is unfortunately vague with respect to the syntacticstructures he assumes. He never distinguishes anyphrasal levels in his trees, so I assume he is simply adoptingBare Phrase Structure. This causes some trees (e.g., (51a)to be ambiguous between head adjunction structures and head+ complement structures, but I will simply replicatestructures as he presents them in the paper.

30

In Zabbal’s analysis, the case assignment facts are handledin the following way. Inside com-plex numerals, A’s assign structural case to their complement N’s. As for the NP, the numeral itselfdoes not assign case, as it is in specifier position. Instead,it is the functional projection hosting thenumeral that assigns case to the NP complement, indicated bythe double arrow.

(52) NumP

NumeralP Num′

Num NP

N

case

Of course, this misses an important generalization about case assignment in e.g., Russian: the casethat ‘four’ assigns to ‘hundred’ is the same as the case assigned by a numeral ending in ‘four’ to itsNP complement. Since case assignment to the noun is handled by a functional projection, whereascase assignment within numerals is handled by the numeral itself, it is essentially an accidentthat the facts fall out as they do for Russian. To cash it out formally, we would have to makethe functional projection somehow sensitive to the identity of the rightmost numeral in the entirecomplex numeral.

Taking this one step further, we expect to see languages where the case assigned by the func-tional head is not sensitive to the internal structure of thenumeral at all. This is almost what wesee in Estonian, where it is not the identity of the rightmostnumeral which matters for case as-signment, but the identity of the complex numeral as a whole.The functional head must be at leastpartially sensitive to the numeral in its specifier, as it fails to assign partitive case just when thenumeraluksis in its specifier.14

Estonian also seems to suggest that thereis a difference between the case assignment internalto complex numerals and the case assignment from numerals tonouns, as in Estonian, there is noevidence of case assignment within complex numerals. Whilethe loss of generalization about caseassignment numeral-internally and externally may still bea problem for Russian, I set it aside fornow. The treatment of numerals as whole units (as in Estonian) versus treating them as composedof smaller parts (as in Russian) seems like a potential area where languages differ, and thus it maybe that we need more than one possible analysis of numerals. For concreteness, I adopt Zabbal’sanalysis of numerals as specifiers of a functional projection, and it is that functional projection thatis responsible for assigning partitive case.

14A suggestion pointed out to me by Ruth Kramer (p.c.) is that the uksactually behaves like an adjective and nota numeral. It certainly does seem to behave like an adjective. However, we would still need case assignment to besensitive to the identity of the numeral to account for the related language Inari Sami. The system of case assignmentin NumDPs in Inari Sami is like a slightly more complicated version of what is found in Estonian: the numerals ‘two’through ‘six’ result in accusative case being assigned to the noun. Any numeral that is greater than or equal to ‘seven’(including numerals ending in ‘two’ through ‘six’) assignspartitive case (see Nelson and Toivonen (2000)).

31

5.1.3 Discussion

Regardless of the analysis we adopt, the facts from Estonian(and Russian) seem to suggest thatcase (or at least, morphological case) is not only assigned based on a relationship between DPsand elements outside of DPs (e.g., between V/v and DP, T and DP, or P and DP), because there issomething internal to a DP that is assigning case within the DP. This is important for the theoriesof concord advanced here, because gender, number, and case features are all “collected” in oneplace and then distributed throughout the elements of the entire DP as a group.

This analysis is not simply operating under the assumption that case is only assigned to entireDPs, it predicts that all elements bearing case within a DP should bear the same case. We canclearly see that this prediction is not borne out.

One possibility is that the problem lies in treating gender,number, and case as a unit in concord.Under the analyses proposed thus far, the features are all dependent on each other or, rather, theyare not independent. Of course, the reason for proposing this was that, in the general case, thefeatures pattern together, suggesting that they are not independent. In contrast, the behavior ofcase in NumDPs suggests that case has more of an independent status than features of gender andnumber.

We can do this by assuming that values for case are not distributed in the same way as genderand number. One proposal about how case is distributed comesfrom Matushansky (2008), whoargues that case is assigned from heads to their complements, and that the case feature is passedon to all elements that the complement dominates, includingheads. A similar proposal, suggestedby Kayne (2005) and argued for by Brattico (2008) and Brattico and Leinonen (2009) based onevidence from Finnish is that case is not a property of phrases, but of lexical items only. Underthis proposal, valuation relations are independently established between each lexical element andthe case assigner. Brattico’s (2009) formulation is given below:

(53) For all wordlike elements inside of the DP, structural case is valued by the closest c-commanding valuator. (Brattico,2008)

These proposals are more or less equivalent: both attempt toaccount for how a case featurethat seems to be assigned by a head to its complement could findits way to the various heads inthat complement. Adopting such a view of case distribution allows us to account for DP-internalcase mismatch in a very straightforward way. If there is a case assigner inside of a DP, then weexpect that anything structurally lower than that case assigner will bear one case (i.e., whichevercase that head assigns), and anything structurally higher will bear a different case. We can see thisschematized in the structure below from Brattico and Leinonen (2009).15

15Brattico and Leinonen (2009) assumes Numerals are heads in the main spine of the tree, an idea which he attributes(erroneously) to Ritter (1991).

32

(54) vP

v DP

D

[ACC]

QP

Q

[ACC]

NumP

Num(eral) NP

AP

[PAR]

NP

N

[PAR]

However, the generalization in (53) is too strong for Finnish, as the authors admit. This isbecause if the entire DP is valued a different case, then the numeral’s ability to assign partitivecase disappears, and every element in the DP agrees in case once more. We can see this forEstonian in (55):

(55) a. kakstwo.NOM

huvitava-tinteresting-PAR.SG



b. kahe-letwo-ALL

huvitava-leinteresting-ALL .SG

raamatu-lebook–ALL .SG

‘onto two interesting books’

Brattico deals with these facts in Finnish by appealing to a case hierarchy, which allows higherranking cases to overwrite the case-assigning abilities oflower heads only if those heads assign alower ranking case. It is plain to see that this is nothing more than giving a name to a problem.Brattico acknowledges that it would be ideal if one could derive the case hierarchy from indepen-dent principles but sets the issue aside. Since the nature ofthe case hierarchy is surely an entirepaper on its own, I must do the same for now.

There are deeper issues that arise from the complete separation of case from gender and num-ber. First, the pattern we see in Icelandic, where there is noDP-internal feature mismatch (exclud-ing partitives, which could plausibly have two separate DPs), cannot be because all three featuresare copied from the same source. Since case values are distributed differently, the generalizationthat an element agrees in case if and only if it agrees in gender and number is formally an accident.There is no longer anything in the theory that would prevent alanguage like the one in (56) wheresome heads agree in case, some in gender/number, and some in both. There is also nothing pre-

33

venting a language withϕ-concord but with case marked only once (either on the N or as aheadin the main spine). This is schematized in (57).

(56) Language X: case concord andϕ-concord marked on different elementsQP

Q[

NUM

GEM

]

DP

D[

CASE]

NP

AP

CASE

NUM

GEN

NP

N[

NUM

GEN

]

(57) Language Y:ϕ-concord but case marking without concordKP

KCASE

DP

D[

NUM

GEN

]

NP

AP[

NUM

GEN

]

NP

N[

NUM

GEN

]

To my knowledge, no such languages exist. While we do see situations where case concord patternsdifferently fromϕ-concord, the only way that it seems to pattern different is in featurevalues, notin locations where feature values are expressed. That is to say, there are situations within DPswhere two elements can bear the sameϕ-feature values and different case feature values, but everyelement that is showing concord at all must bear features forall features participating in the concordrelation. If it is true that Language X and Language Y do not exist, then the real generalization isthat case concord andϕ-concord pattern together in terms of the features that are expressed, butthey can pull apart in terms of the values of those features.

While I have nothing to say about Language Y here, I do have a tentative proposal that wouldrule out Language X. Suppose that case is assigned to a maximal projection, and that the value ispassed down the extended projection, but only to the projections, not to the heads (I will explainwhy momentarily). When Feature Copying occurs, instead of copying features from the highestprojection in the EP, let us assume that features are copied from the nearest projection in the EPinstead. This version of Feature Copying is given below in (58):

34

(58) Feature Copying (EP-approach), take two: The featuresof a projection XP are copied ontoanAGR node ZAGR that it dominates iff...

a. XP dominates ZAGR

b. XP is a part of the nominal extended projection (i.e., it is[+N]),

c. There is no YP such that YP a part of the nominal extended projection, YP dominatesZAGR, and XP dominates YP (i.e., no interveners)

Thus, instead of copying from the highest projection, features are copied from the closest projec-tion that is part of the EP.

In the general case, the downward percolation of case will proceed until it reaches the bottomof the EP. This will give us the situation where all elements within a single DP agree in case.When case values pull apart, we could suggest that downward percolation of case features cannotoverwrite values of case that have already been assigned.16 This is represented below:

(59) DP

[NOM]

D NumP

[NOM]

Numeral

kaks

Num′

[NOM]

Number NP

[PAR]

AP

huvitavat

NP

[PAR]

N

raamatut

Xblocked: cannot overwrite

Under this approach to case concord, the distribution of features to the actual heads that expresscase is the same for both case andϕ-features: it is Feature Copying. The difference then lies inhow the feature values are shared (or spread) among the various projections in an EP. Under the

16Of course, we have already seen that higher case valuesdo override lower case values in some situations (see(55b). At present, I am not sure how to reconcile those facts with the partitive case assignment facts. One possibilityis that case is never overwritten, but projections can have more than value for case and the decision about which oneto express is made in the morphology (see, for example, Matushansky 2008). I will leave formalization of this idea tofuture work.

35

original formulation of the EP, case values are not shared among the members of the EP. Instead,case is assigned to the EP as a whole, and the constraints of Feature Copying ensure that thosevalues are copied onto the heads showing concord. The adjustment made here is that case valuesare, in fact, shared by the various projections. However, because both case andϕ-features arecopied from same places via Feature Copying, we predict thatcase concord andϕ-concord mustpattern together: an element inflects for case if and only if it inflects forϕ-features. Crucially,this account does not spread case features to heads. Such an approach would allow heads that donot showϕ-concord to bear case features (at least in the syntax), and thus, we would expect alanguage to have a pattern like the one shown for Language X, where heads exponing case featuresare possibly different from those exponingϕ-features. It is worth pointing out, then, that if wefind a language like Language X, there only need to be one minormodification made in order toaccount for it.

5.2 Number Mismatch in NumDPs

The modification of the Feature Copying restrictions in (58)also allow us to understand caseswhere there is mismatch inϕ-features within a single DP. One place we see this is in NumDPs inEstonian (and Finnish). As we have seen, nouns and adjectives in Estonian NumDPs are singular(see (42), repeated below). However, when a higher demonstrative is merged, it must be plural, asseen in (60):17

(42) a. uksone.CMi

huvitavinteresting.CMi

raamatbook.NOM.SGi

‘one interesting book’

b. kakstwo.NOM.SG

huvitava-tinteresting-CMi



(60) a. seethis.CMi

uksone.CMi

huvitavinteresting.CMi

raamatbook.NOM.SGi

‘this one interesting book’

b. needthese.NOM.PL

kakstwo.NOM.SG



‘these two interesting books’

c. * seethis.NOM.SG

kakstwo.NOM.SG



Given that the numeral, adjective, and noun are all grammatically singular, it seems mysteriousthat the demonstrative would be plural. I would like to suggest that this erroneous plural valueis agreement (in a sense) with the semantic value for number.That is to say, because the entitydescribed by a NumDP likekaks huvitavat raamatut“two interesting book” describes a set ofentities (rather than a single entity), it is semantically plural. The morphosyntactic instantiation of

17In Finnish, certain adjectives can also surface to the left of numerals in NumDPs, and their agreement patternswith demonstratives: they are not assigned partitive case,and they show plural marking.

36

this semantic agreement is a demonstrative that is born witha value for number. Thus, after thedemonstrative merges, we have the structure below.18

(61) DemP

[??]

Dem

[PL]

need

DP

[SG]

D NumP

[SG]

NumeralP

kaks

Num′

[SG]

Num

[SG]

NP

N

raamatut

The way that the EP approach is formulated, we would expect this [PL] value to be passed on tothe projection, but that projection already has a value for number. Presumably, they do not bothproject (that is to say, the resulting DemP is not both singular and plural), so the question to askis which one projects. Based on facts from verbal agreement with NumDPs in Finnish, it seemsthat it is the feature on the demonstrative that projects. Although the demonstrative must be plural,verb agreement with a NumDP must be singular, as in (62):

(62) a. Yhdeksan9

omenaaapple.PAR.SG

putosifell.3SG

maahanto.earth

‘9 apples fell to the ground.’ (Nelson and Toivonen, 2000)

b. * Yhdeksan9

omenaaapple.PAR.SG

putosivatfell.3PL

maahanto.earth

‘9 apples fell to the ground.’ (Nelson and Toivonen, 2000)

In other languages, it is certainly possible for verbs to show a kind of semantic agreement (e.g.,‘the committee were...’ in some varieties of English), but this option does not seem possible for

18In (61), I am simply representing demonstratives as Dem heads. Demonstratives can co-occur with possessors inEstonian, and the preferred order is Dem-Poss, although Poss-Dem is available at times for some speakers (Hiietam, Inprep.). Here, I assume that the (surface) location of possessors is Spec,DP, which is why demonstratives are generatedhigher. Careful investigation of the internal syntax of nominals in Estonian is a task that I plan to address in futurework.

37

agreement with NumDPs in Finnish.19 Returning to the issue at hand, when the demonstrativemerges, if it is the value of the demonstrative ([PL]) that projects, then we expect plural verbalagreement with a NumDP containing a demonstrative. If it is the value of the rest of the DP ([SG]),then we expect singular verbal agreement. Some examples aregiven in (63) and (64), and we cansee that the verb is clearly plural:

(63) Nuothose.PL

yhdeksan9

omenaaapple.PAR.SG

putosivatfell.PL

maahan.to.ground

‘Those 9 apples fell to the ground.’

(64) Nuothose.PL

viisi5

varistacrow.PAR.SG

istuvatsit.3PL

siellathere

yha.still

‘Those 5 crows are still sitting there.’

Thus, when there is no demonstrative, the entire NumDP is singular, and so the verb is marked forsingular agreement. When there is a demonstrative, the entire DP is plural, and thus the verb ismarked for plural agreement.

The idea that a semantic value for aϕ-feature can override the grammatical value in con-cord/agreement has been proposed before. In fact, this is one of the parts of the algorithm thatMatushansky 2009 provides to account for gender agreement in Russian. Her proposal is that hav-ing a semantic value for a particular feature (e.g., [FEMALE]) results in a morphosyntactic featureof the same kind. If something with a semantic feature mergeswith something that has the a gram-matical version of the same feature, it is the semantic feature that projects. Furthermore, after this“semantic agreement” occurs once, it is not possible to return to grammatical agreement (see (65)and (66)).

(65) etathis.F

vracdoctor.M

this (female) doctor (Matushansky, 2009)

(66) * etotthis.M

xorosajagood.F

vracdoctor.M

Intended:this good (female) doctor. (Matushansky, 2009)

The current proposal can also be extended to account for these facts. Once the semantic value isintroduced, it is that value that continues to project, and thus, we expect the return to grammaticalagreement (as in (66)) to be ungrammatical.20

5.3 DP-Internal Feature Mismatch: Summary and Discussion

As stated, the theories of concord developed in §3 and §4 clearly predict that all elements within asingle DP will have the same value for gender, number, and case. In this section, I presented several

19I am at present still waiting to hear from informants about the agreement facts for Estonian.20Although, the fact that an adjective can project a semantic feature, as is apparently the case in (66) is unexplained

under the current proposal. The behavior of adjectives in concord is very head-like— or, rather, the behavior ofadjectives is not distinct from the behavior of heads like D.Indeed, it is for this reason that Norris 2011 proposes ananalysis of concord as a global phenomenon. This behavior isparticularly head-like, though, and it might suggest thatour assumptions about adjectives may need to be revisited.

38

cases of DP-internal feature mismatch, showing that this prediction is too strong. We saw that, insome languages, numerals appear to assign case to the elements they modify. Furthermore, wesaw that semantic values of number (and gender (Matushansky, 2009)) can override grammaticalvalues for those features. To account for these facts, we modified our assumptions in three ways.First, we said that values assigned by case assignment percolate just asϕ-features do (although,they percolate down instead of up). Second, we said that whenan element enters the syntax withan inherent value for a feature, it is this new value that projects, not the existing value of theprojection. This iscontra the GPSG/HPSG notion of feature unification, which requiresmergingtwo elements with incompatible features (e.g., for number or gender) to result in a crash. Finally,we said that feature distribution is not done globally, but locally. Instead of distributing featurevalues from one location, distribution features are distributed to particular heads by the closestnominal projection that dominates them.

These modifications are much less straightforward in the AGREE-approach. In that approach,features are collected in a K head, the highest head in the nominal phrase. Since K can only haveone value for each particular feature, feature mismatch is impossible. In fact, the higher featurevalue should intervene when K probes, such that theentire DPwould bear the semantic value forthe feature rather than just the elements that are structurally higher. We could modify the AGREE-approach and suggest that there are (at least) two heads in every DP doing the collecting— onehigh and one low, but I believe that still misses the point.

It is not that there are two domains of concord within the DP. The values that each elementin the DP bears are independent, and the only reason that there appears to be agreement betweenseveral elements within a DP is that there is often only one available value for gender, number, andcase. For example, it is only under special circumstances that a head other than N can introducea gender feature, and it is in those cases that we see elementswithin a single DP disagreeing ingender. The view of concord that the EP-approach gives us is one where the commonality betweenall the elements within a DP is that they must express GNC feature values. These values do notnecessarily need to agree, but they will unless there is morethan one available value in a particularDP.

The EP-approach also has the virtue of providing a formal characterization of concord thatis distinct from A-P agreement. This allows us to understandwhy possessor agreement, whichI have argued is A-P agreement in the nominal domain, patterns differently from concord, andfurthermore, how both possessor agreement and concord could exist in the same DP. Let us turn tothese issues now.

6 Possessor agreement

As previously mentioned, there is another common form of agreement visible in nominal phrasesthat is calledpossessor agreement. In possessor agreement, possessum nouns bear suffixes ex-pressing the person and number of possessor DPs. The examples from §2.2.1 are repeated below:

(9) Possessor agreement in Finnish

a. (minu-n)I-GEN

kirja-nibook-POSS.1SG

‘my book’ (Adapted from Karlsson, 1999)

39

b. (teidan)you.PL.GEN

auto-nnecar-POSS.2PL

‘your (pl.) car’ (Adapted from Karlsson, 1999)

(10) Possessor agreement in Azerbaijani

a. biz-imwe-GEN

dovsan-ımızrabbit-POSS.1PL

‘our rabbit’ (Anie Thompson, p.c.)

b. s@n-inyou-GEN

alma-napple-POSS.2PL

‘your apple’ (Anie Thompson, p.c.)

While there are some analyses of possessor agreement (e.g.,Abney (1987), Aissen (1996), Coon(2010), among others), to my knowledge, there are no attempts to provide an account for the co-occurrence of possessor agreement and concord. The goal of this section is to make one suchproposal, analyzing concord as feature sharing in extendedprojections (i.e., the EP-approach) andpossessor agreement as an AGREE relationship. The relevant examples are repeated below.

(11) Finnish: both possessor agreement and concord

a. iso-ssabig-INE

talo-ssa-nihouse-INE-POSS.1SG

‘in my big house’ (Daniel Karvonen, p.c.)

b. * iso-ssa-ni talo-ssa-ni (Daniel Karvonen, p.c.)

c. punaise-ssared-INE

auto-ssa-nicar-INE-POSS.1SG

‘in my red car’

d. * punaise-ssa-ni auto-ssa-ni

To my mind, there are two core issues that face a formal account of concord and possessoragreement. One issue is their difference in distribution. Concord surfaces on many heads in thenominal, but possessor agreement only surfaces on one: the head N. Obviously, the account ofconcord and possessor agreement must explain why that is. The second issue is that concord andpossessor agreement appear to be independent of each other.That is to say, the features of concorddo not interfere with the features of possessor agreement, and vice versa. First, let us look at thefollowing example:

(67) iso-i-ssabig-PL-INE

auto-i-ssa-mmecar-PL-INE-POSS.1PL

‘in our big cars’

In (67), there is both a plural noun and a plural possessor. Ifpossessor agreement and concordcould interfere with each other, we might expect this DP to beambiguous in the following ways.If possessor agreement could interfere with concord, we might expect the plural value of the pos-sessor to bleed into concord, such that this example would beambiguous between “in our bigcars” and “in our big car.” If concord could interfere with possessor agreement, then we mightexpect it to be ambiguous between “in our big cars” and “in my big car.” However, (67) is not

40

ambiguous, because possessor agreement and concord do not interfere with each other in Finnish.Obviously, since the two phenomena can independently co-exist from an empirical standpoint, theformal analysis of the two (or the individual formal analysis of each) needs to force them to betotally independent. Before discussing how they interact,we must adopt an analysis of possessoragreement, which I turn to now.

6.1 Possessor Agreement: Abney’s (1987) Analysis

One of the goals of Abney’s (1987) seminal work in the structure of nominal phrases was to drawparallels between the clausal and nominal domains, and one area he investigated was possessoragreement. The hypothesis that Abney pursued was that D was the nominal phrase equivalentof INFL in that it assigned case to its specifier (the possessor), and it agreed with the possessor(see Figure 2). The agreement between D and the possessor is presumably cashed out via Spec-

DP

DPposs D′

D

AGR

NP

case

IP

DPsubj I′

I

AGR

VP

case

Figure 2: (Abney, 1987): Parallel structure of DP and IP

Head agreement, and D assigns case to its specifier. In Germanic and Finnic languages (as inEnglish), the case assigned in this position is genitive.21 In the modern theory of agreement built onAGREE, case assignment and agreement are no longer established ina specifier-head relationship.AGREE separates the fact that the subject DP is in specifier position (of TP) from the fact thatT agrees with the subject DP and the DP is case-marked. The relationship between T and DP isestablished under c-command, and it is only when the features on T bear theEPPproperty that theDP actually moves to the specifier of TP.

Extending the parallelism of subject agreement and possessor agreement, we expect that pos-sessors should actually start lower in the tree than Spec,DP. Then, just as in the clausal domain,D enters into an agreement relationship with the possessor,and if the agreement features on the Dhave theEPPproperty, then that possessor is rasied to Spec,DP. This is represented below:22

21Abney (1987) discusses several examples of languages that do not assign genitive to the possessor, but the samecase that is assigned to (transitive) subjects instead (e.g., ergative case is assigned to possessors in Yup’ik and nomi-native case is assigned to possessors in Hungarian). Obviously, the value of the case assigned by D to the possessorcan be different than the case assigned by T to the subject, but it need not be.

22Just as with subjects in the clausal domain, we expect that some possessors will remainin situ and will not moveto Spec,DP. This could give us an explanation for why possessors in Icelandic are low: in Icelandic, D simply lackstheEPPproperty. Since this is tangential to the issue at hand, I will not speculate on it further.

41

(68) DP

PossDP D′

D

[EPP]

[2SG]

NumP

Num

[PL]

NP

PossDP

[GEN.2SG]

N′

N

1

2

3

The arrow marked ‘1’ indicates the AGREErelationship, which values D’s [uϕ] features. The arrowmarked ‘2’ indicates case valuation or assignment, which also happens via the AGREE relation.Finally, the arrow marked ‘3’ indicates the subsequent movement of the possessor to Spec,DP thatoccurs as a result of the [EPP] feature of D.

I will adopt this AGREE-based characterization of possessor agreement. In Minimalist terms,D in these languages bears uninterpretableϕ-features ([uϕ]), and D probes into its c-commanddomain until it finds the possessor DP. It establishes an AGREE relation, acquiring theϕ-feature ofthe DP. Then, depending on whether or not this D has theEPPproperty, the possessor DP raises (ordoes not raise) to Spec,DP.23 The actual position of possessors appears to be somewhat variablein Finnish (Brattico, 2008; Brattico and Leinonen, 2009). What is crucial for us is not the actualidentity of their surface position, but the fact that they trigger possessor agreement. It seemsreasonable to assume that possessor agreement is the instantiation of some head, and it also seemsreasonable to assume that possessor agreement is structurally higher than N and Num, given that itsurfaces on the outside of the nominal’s other morphology, i.e., case and number (Karlsson, 1999).For concreteness, I will assume in what follows that the surface position of possessors is, in fact,Spec,DP.

6.2 Possessor Agreement and Concord

By treating concord and A-P agreement in different ways, we make the prediction that both concordand possessor agreement could occur in the same language, and that prediction is borne out inFinnish. In this section, I will show how the analysis of possessor agreement as AGREEand the EP-approach to concord function independently of one another in Finnish. The result suggests a model

23One major issue that this characterization faces is what happens in a DP without a possessor. Generally speaking,every clause must have a subject, so it is not problematic to assume that T always has [uϕ]. There will (almost) alwaysbe a potential goal for T, but this is not so for D, as there are obviously plenty of examples of DPs with no possessor.The problem is that under standard assumptions, if D probes and fails to find a goal, the derivation should crash. Wecould simply stipulate that D only has [uϕ] when thereis a possessor in the DP, but obviously this answer is notrevealing. This is an issue that I will have to leave to futurework.

42

syntactic computation where merging and projection of a newlabel happensbeforeAGREE ratherthan at the same time as AGREE.

In the EP-approach, features of the various heads in the nominal extended projection percolateup to the maximal projection of the EP. In §5.2, I suggested, following Matushansky (2009), thathigher feature values in the tree could “overwrite” the lower values in the tree. This allows us toaccount for situations of feature mismatch within DPs wherethe “semantic” value for a particularϕ-feature seems to overwrite the grammatical value such thathigher elements within the DP agreewith the semantic value instead of the grammatical value. This is represented below for semanticnumber agreement in Estonian (though I assume the same structure applies in Finnish):

(69) Inherent feature on Dem “overrides” feature on DP:DemP

[PL]

Dem

[PL]

need

DP

[SG]

kaks raamatut

X

To restate the generalization, a feature value will projectuntil some head with a new value for thatfeature is merged, and then it is the new value that will project instead.

If the characterization that possessor agreement is markedon a D head (or some other head inthe nominal projection) is right, then we might expect features of D, which are acquired throughpossessor agreement, to override the features of the nominal domain in the same way. This hypo-thetical and unattested (in Finnish) operation is depictedbelow:

(70) Hypothetical: possessor agreement features of D override number feature of possessumD′

[PL]

D

[2PL]

-nne

NumP

[SG]

auto

X

Empirically, this is not what happens. The features involved in possessor agreement are com-pletely independent of those involved in concord. Formally, the distinction between the numberfeature on D and the number feature on Dem is that Dem’s features are inherent, but D’s featuresare acquired.

We can think of this puzzle as a matter of timing. Suppose that, when two elements merge,the features of the new node are a unification of the features of the heads. When each elementhas a different value for a particular feature (e.g.,NUMBER), this incompatibility is solved by

43

choosing the value of the head (rather than producing a crash, contra Gazdar et al. (1985)). Thisis the understanding of semantic agreement that I have takenhere. What makes D different fromDem is that D’s number feature is not valued when it merges with NumP. Presumably, unifying anunvalued feature with a valued feature does not lead to any conflict at all— the new label adopts theonly available value. Crucially, I assume that D does not acquire feature values via AGREE untilmerge is complete. By the time D acquires feature values frompossessor agreement, it will be toolate for those values to project. To see how this works, let usconsider a derivation.

(71) Step 1: Merge D and NumP, project D

D′

D

[EPP]

[uϕ]

NumP

[NUM : SG]

teidan auto

(72) Step 2: Unify features of D and NumP

D′

[NUM : SG]

D

[EPP]

[uϕ]

NumP

[NUM : SG]

teidan auto

In steps 1 and 2, D merges with NumP and their features unify. Because D’s number featurehas no value, the only available value for the new label is thevalue that NumP has, and so D′ isvalued [SG].

(73) Step 3: D establishesAGREE with ‘teidan’, values D’s [uϕ], assigns case to teidan.D′

[NUM : SG]

D

[EPP]

[2PL]

NumP

[NUM : SG]

teidan auto

By the time that D acquires features fromteidan via AGREE, it is too late for those features toproject to the label. If AGREE happened simultaneously with MERGE, then we would have to saysomething different about why the features of D do not project.24

24Perhaps the answer would be that theϕ-features of D are deleted once they are checked. If we assume, as I do here,that these features are not spelled out until after the syntax, then deleting the features necessary to determine spell-outseems problematic. This seems like the kind of question to consider in order to argue for or against simultaneousMERGEand AGREE, but I will set that debate aside for now.

44

(74) Step 4: Internal merge of ‘teidan’,project D

DP

[NUM : SG]

DP

[2PL]

teidan

D′

[NUM : SG]

D

[EPP]

[2PL]

-nne

NumP

[NUM : SG]

teidan auto

(75) Step 5: Unify features of DP and D′

DP

[NUM : SG]

DP

[2PL]

teidan

D′

[NUM : SG]

D

[2PL]

-nne

NumP

[NUM : SG]

teidan auto

X

In the final two steps, the [EPP] on D causesteidan to move to D’s specifier. When the featuresof this DP and D′ are unified, there is a conflict, and the winner should be the features of the head,which I assume is D′. Thus, the number feature shared via concord remains [SG], while the numberfeature marked on possessor agreement is [PL].

The reason that thesemanticfeatures can overwrite the grammatical features would be becausethose features areinherentin the head. These features are present when the head merges,so whenthe features are unified in the new projection, those of the head (i.e., Dem) are chosen instead ofthose of the complement. This is what we saw in (69).

6.2.1 Possessor Agreement and the AGREE-Approach

In the AGREE-approach to concord, I argued that the highest head in a nominal projection hasunvalued features for gender and number, and it probes into its c-command domain to find valuesfor those features. If we assume that head is K, then by the time K has merged, D should havealready established an AGREE relationship with the possessor, and thus D should haveϕ-features.This is represented in the structure below:

45

(76) KP

K

[uϕ]

DP

DPposs

[ϕ]

D′

D

[ϕ]

...

N

[ϕ]

When K probes, it should find the values on D (or DP) first, and thus enter into an AGREE relation-ship with D. Of course, we know empirically that this is not what happens. We could perhaps ruleout D as a potential goal by appealing to the notion of Activity– since D(P) presumably no longerhas any uninterpretable features, it is not a suitable goal for K. If we appealed to Activity, then,we would have to carefully incorporate the notion of activity into the concord relationship, whichprevious authors have shown to be difficult (Carstens, 2000,2011).

7 Conclusions

In this paper, I compared two possible analyses of concord: the AGREE-approach developed inNorris (2011, To Appear b), and the EP-approach, which I developed here. Both proposals hadstrengths and weaknesses, but it seems clear to me that the weaknesses facing the AGREE-approachare more damaging than the one facing the EP-approach. We sawthat the EP-approach has dif-ficulty accounting for agreement in Icelandic partitives, but it fares much better in accounting forfeature mismatch inside DPs. It also provides a way to formally distinguish between possessoragreement and concord. This is important given the fact thatthey co-occur in a single DP. Whilethere are many fine-grained details of the EP-approach that remain to be worked out (most impor-tantly, considering how we might incorporate the assumptions of Grimshaw’s theory into a moremodern framework), it is certainly on the right track.

A promising way to further probe into the properties of concord would be to investigate agree-ment in partitives and pseudopartitives in other languages. In Icelandic, partitives seem to beambiguous in terms of extended projections. Morphosyntactically, they seem so be composed oftwo separate DPs and thus two EPs. However, the elements (can) agree with each other as thoughthey are only one EP. In Danish pseudopartitives (see Hankamer and Mikkelsen (2008)), the factssuggest that they constitute only one EP, but agreement still pulls apart. This makes sense underthe proposal here, as once then is merged, its gender feature takes over.

(77) a. enone.CG

smulelittle.bit(CG)

varm-twarm-NEUT

vandwater(NEUT)

‘a little bit of warm water’ (Line Mikkelsen, p.c.)

46

b. DP

[CG]

D

en

nP

[CG]

n

[CG]

NP

[NEUT]

AP

varmt

NP

[NEUT]

N

[NEUT]

vand

Probing the agreement patterns of these structures in otherlanguages is something that I intend todo in future work.

A remaining issue that has come up in discussion of the EP-approach is how to treat adjectives.One notion that is particularly problematic is the fact thatunder Grimshaw’s (2005) assumptions,adjectives and nouns form their own EPs. Given that feature percolation and Feature Copying areconstrained to the domain of a single EP, it seems we would need to give an explanation to thefact that adjectives bear features from concord. In fact, not only do adjectives agree, but cross-linguistically, it is adjectives that most frequently showconcord with the head N (Corbett, 2006).The behavior of adjectives in concord seems to fly in the face of the facts that cause linguists to treatadjectives in the nominal as being very special in some sense(i.e., they are traditionally analyzedas being adjuncts or specifiers). I expect that further investigations into concord will lead us to adeeper understanding of the behavior of adjectives. An arearelated to concord that will no doubthelp shed some light on this phenomena is so-called definiteness concord, where elements (usuallyadjectives, as far as I know) reflect the definiteness of the DPthey are contained in addition toGNC features.

Another issue intimately related to the concord facts presented here is the nature of morpho-logical case. Recall that in §5.1.3, I discussed two concordpatterns that are unattested as far asI know. In one language (Language X), we see bothϕ-concord and case concord, but they targetdifferent elements. In another language (Language Y), we seeϕ-concord, but case is only markedone time (either peripherally or on the N). I gave a proposal to rule out Language X, but I setLanguage Y aside. One hypothesis we might make is that the difference between languages thatshow case concord and languages that mark case only once liesin the fact that one language hasconcord in general and the other does not. In other words, case concord is a direct result of theco-existence of case marking in nominals (crucially, non-pronominals) and concord in nominals.

47

If it turns out that there is no Language Y, that would be strong support in favor of this idea.While in Icelandic it appears that all elements within a single DP must agree in gender, number,

and case, the cross-linguistic view of concord that I developed here is one where this global agree-ment is epiphenomenal. Perhaps concord is better thought ofas the requirement of heads in an EPto express particular features– in this case, nominal features. In the typical case, there is only oneavailable value for each feature in a given DP, so the result is apparent global agreement: every-thing in one DP bearing the same value. It is only when more than one feature value is available(as in NumDPs in Finnish/Estonian) that we see the emergenceof locality in concord.

References

Abney, Steven Paul. 1987. The English noun phrase in its sentential aspect. Doctoral Dissertation,Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Aissen, Judith. 1996. Pied-piping, abstract agreement, and functional projections in Tzotzil.Nat-ural Language & Linguistic Theory14:447–491.

Brattico, Pauli. 2008. Kayne’s model of Case and Finnish nominal phrases.Nordic Journal ofLinguistics31:135–160.

Brattico, Pauli, and Alina Leinonen. 2009. Case Distribution and Nominalization: Evidence fromFinnish.Syntax12:1–31.

Carstens, Vicki. 1991. The morphology and syntax of determiner phrases in kiswahili. DoctoralDissertation, University of California, Los Angeles.

Carstens, Vicki. 2000. Concord in minimalist theory.Linguistic Inquiry31:319–355.

Carstens, Vicki. 2011. Hyperactivity and hyperagreement in Bantu.Lingua.

Chomsky, Noam. 2000. Minimalist inquiries: the framework.In Step by step: Essays on mini-malism in honor of Howard Lasnik, ed. Roger Martin, David Michaels, and Juan Uriagereka,89–156. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Chomsky, Noam. 2001. Derivation by Phase. InKen Hale: A Life in Language, ed. MichaelKenstowicz, 1–52. Cambridge: MIT Press.

Cinque, Guglielmo. 1994. On the evidence for partial N-movement in the Romance DP.PathsTowards Universal Grammar.

Coon, Jessica. 2010. VOS as predicate fronting in Chol.Lingua120:354–378.

Corbett, Greville. 2006.Agreement. Cambridge: CUP.

Embick, David. 2010.Localism versus globalism in morphology and phonology. MIT Press.

Franks, Steven. 1994. Parametric properties of numeral phrases in Slavic.Natural Language andLinguistic Theory12:597–674.

48

Gazdar, Gerald, Ewan Klein, Geoffrey Pullum, and Ivan Sag. 1985. Generalized phrase structuregrammar. Harvard University Press: Cambridge, MA.

Grimshaw, Jane. 2005.Words and structure. CSLI Publications.

Halle, M. 1990. An approach to morphology. InProceedings of NELS 20, 150–184. University ofMassachusetts, Amherst: GLSA.

Halle, Morris, and Alec Marantz. 1993. Distributed Morphology and the Pieces of Inflection. InThe View from Building 20: Essays in Linguistics in Honor of Sylvain Bromberger, ed. K. Haleand S. J. Keyser, 111–176. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Hankamer, Jorge, and Line Mikkelsen. 2008. Definiteness marking and the structure of Danishpseudopartitives.Journal of Linguistics44:317–346.

Hiietam, Katrin. In prep.The Estonian noun-phrase: grammatical relations, topicality, and defi-niteness.

Ionin, Tania, and Ora Matushansky. 2004. A Singular Plural.In Proceedings of the West CoastConference on Formal Linguistics, volume 23.

Julien, Marit. 2005.Nominal phrases from a Scandinavian perspective. John Benjamins PublishingCompany.

Karlsson, Fred. 1999.Finnish: An essential grammar. Routledge: New York, NY.

Kayne, Richard. 2005.Movement and Silence. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Kramer, Ruth. 2009. Definite markers, phi-features, and agreement: a morphosyntactic investiga-tion of the Amharic DP. Doctoral Dissertation, University of California, Santa Cruz.

Kramer, Ruth. 2010. The Amharic definite marker and the syntax-morphology interface.Syntax13:196–240.

LaCara, Nicholas. To Appear. A Definite Problem. InMorphology at Santa Cruz, ed. NicholasLaCara, Anie Thompson, and Matthew Tucker. Santa Cruz, CA: Linguistics Research Center.

Matushansky, Ora. 2008. A case study of predication. InStudies in formal slavic linguistics:Contributions from formal description of slavic languages6.5, ed. F. Marusic and R.Zauver,213–239. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang.

Matushansky, Ora. 2009. Gender confusion: It’s not (just) about sex. Handout of a talk given atDiagnosing Syntax, January 29–31, 2009.

Nelson, Diane, and Ida Toivonen. 2000. Counting and the grammar: case and numerals in InariSami 8:179–192.

Norris, Mark. 2011. Agreement in the nominal domain: a view from Icelandic. ms, University ofCalifornia, Santa Cruz.

49

Norris, Mark. To Appear a. Extraposition and Definiteness Effects in Icelandic DPs. InMorphol-ogy at Santa Cruz, ed. Nicholas LaCara, Anie Thompson, and Matthew Tucker. Santa Cruz, CA:Linguistics Research Center.

Norris, Mark. To Appear b. Towards an analysis of Concord (inIcelandic). InProceedings of the29th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics.

Ritter, Elizabeth. 1991. Two functional categories in Modern Hebrew noun phrases.Syntax andSemantics25:37–60.

Sigurksson, HalldorArmann. 1993. The structure of the Icelandic NP.Studia Linguistica47:177–197.

Sigurksson, HalldorArmann. 2006. The Icelandic noun phrase: Central traits.Arkiv for nordiskfilologi 121:193–236.

Zabbal, Youri. 2005. The syntax of numeral expressions. ms., University of Massachusetts,Amherst.

50

the emergence of locality in concordhank/mrg.readings/norris.concord.qe.pdf · with the nouns they...

Documents