Description:
AbstractGrammatical agreement in features such as person, number, and gender presents several puzzles that are of ongoing interest to the linguist. What is the nature of the grammatical mechanism responsible for agreement, and how does it relate to other aspects of syntax? The two main alternative approaches, lexicalist and derivational, will be contrasted. A second question is whether agreement is determined by the form or the meaning of the subject or other phrase that triggers agreement. The answer seems to vary between these two options, and so we must explain how the grammar negotiates between them. Finally, we consider the phenomenon of agreement mismatches, in which conflicting features appear in the same sentence. We consider how to explain these cases, and what they tell us about normal agreement.