We don’t agree (only) upward

Author(s):
Bárány, A. (0000-0003-2356-4338); Wal, G.J. van der (0000-0003-1136-5884)
Published
2022
Publication type
Article / Letter to editor

Abstract

This project has received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie grant agreement No 707404” LEaDing Fellows

For Bjorkman and Zeijlstra (2019), Agree consists of two operations: checking and valuation. Checking involves (a) probing, always upward from an uninterpretable feature [uF] to an interpretable feature [iF] c-commanding it, and (b) [iF]’s checking [uF]. Valuation generally happens downward, with the valuer c-commanding the valuee. Upward valuation, in which the probe c-commands the goal, is exceptional and only occurs if downward valuation has failed. In this reply, we argue that this approach is not supported empirically. We present data from Matengo, German, Serbo-Croatian, Sambaa, Liko, and Nez Perce, arguing that upward valuation must be available more generally than Bjorkman and Zeijlstra suggest.

Upward Agreecheckingsubject agreementobject agreementcomplementizer agreementmorphosyntax
Date issued
2022
Language
English
Is part of
Linguistic Inquiry (2022), Vol. 53, no. 3, p. 501-521
hdl
1887/3210337
doi
10.1162/ling_a_00418
URL
https://direct.mit.edu/ling/article/doi/10.1162/ling_a_00418/97466/We-Don-t-Agree-Only-Upward

Funding

Sponsorship
Horizon 2020(H2020)
Grant number
707404