We are delighted to announce the publication in Glossa of (dissertating student) Peter Grishin’s paper “Omnivorous third person agreement in Algonquian”. Congratulations Peter!! Here’s the abstract:
I argue that third person is not underspecified: there must be a distinct third person feature. I add to the existing body of morphological arguments for this conclusion (Nevins 2007; Trommer 2008, a.o.) a syntactic argument: I show that there is omnivorous third person agreement in Algonquian languages. I focus here on two, Blackfoot (Plains Algonquian) and Plains Cree (Central Algonquian), demonstrating that they have an agreement suffix (the peripheral suffix, analyzed as a probe in C) that indexes the number, animacy, and obviation of the structurally-highest third person argument, skipping over first and second person if it has to. I argue that alternative analyses of this agreement pattern in terms of animacy, obviation, and the categorial feature [D] do not work; thus, third person must be specified even in the syntax (contra Preminger 2019).
Glossa is an open-access journal so everyone can access the paper here: https://www.glossa-journal.org/article/id/8874/