Whamit!

The Weekly Newsletter of MIT Linguistics

Syntax Square 11/19 — Norvin Richards

Speaker: Norvin Richards (MIT)
Title: Agreement by proxy, improper movement, and Passamaquoddy long-distance agreement
Time: Tuesday, November 19, 1pm – 2pm
Location: 32-D461

Abstract: A substantial literature (Butt 1993, 1995, Bhatt 2005, Legate 2005, Baker and Willie 2010…) entertains the idea that in some cases in which two heads in the clausal spine (call them X and Y) bear agreement morphology with a single DP (call it Z), what is happening is not that X and Y both Agree with Z, but rather than Y Agrees with Z, and X Agrees with Y. The relevant cases typically involve structures in which plausible conditions on the locality of Agree would ban Agree between X and Z, but would allow Agree between X and Y and between Y and Z.

Legate (2005) names this phenomenon Cyclic Agreement, but since this is uncomfortably close to Cyclic Agree (Rezac 2003, etc) I will rename it Agreement by Proxy. In the talk, I’ll suggest some other kinds of phenomena that can be explained via an appeal to Agreement by Proxy, including “phase unlocking”, improper movement, and some of the conditions on long-distance agreement in Passamaquoddy.