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Case and agreement Conclusion

المؤلف:  PAUL R. KROEGER

المصدر:  Analyzing Grammar An Introduction

الجزء والصفحة:  P119-C7

2025-12-29

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Case and agreement Conclusion

Case and agreement are two of the most important devices that languages use to identify Grammatical Relations within a clause. Case may also be used to identify the semantic role of oblique arguments or adjuncts; we refer to this as SEMANTIC CASE. Grammatical case systems (those that mark Grammatical Relations) tend to follow one of two major patterns: the ACCUSATIVE pattern, in which S and A get the same marking while P gets a distinct marking; or the ERGATIVE pattern, in which S and P get the same marking while A gets a distinct marking. In some languages both patterns of case marking can be found; this situation is referred to as SPLIT ERGATIVITY.

 

Verbs normally agree only with term arguments. If the verb agrees with only one argument, it is normally the subject; if with two arguments, they will normally be the subject and primary object. However, verb agreement may also follow an ergative–absolutive pattern. Another very common type of agreement is between the head of a noun phrase and its modifiers and/or determiners. In this pattern the dependents are marked to agree with features of the head, whereas in verb agreement the head is marked to agree with features of its dependents (since the verb is the head of the clause).

 

Possessor agreement and preposition agreement (which we have not discussed here) are less common; both patterns involve heads agreeing with NPs. The most common type of agreement pattern, found in every human language (as far as we know), is the agreement between a pronoun and its antecedent.