The goal of this discussion note is to argue that the complex facts of hybrid agreement in Serbo-Croatian can and should be accounted for by assuming that only two sets of features are relevant to agreement: a syntactic set and a semantic set. This is in opposition to existing proposals that claim that two distinct sets of syntactic features are required in addition to the set of semantic features in order to account for those agreement facts (Wechsler & Zlatić 2000, 2003). The proposal defended here with two sets of agreement features is shown to be superior to the alternative with three feature sets because it not only is simpler and accounts for the facts just as well, but it also does not make some incorrect predictions that the alternative makes when crucial facts are considered.

The status of subject clitics in French has been heavily debated (Kayne 1975, Rizzi 1986, Roberge 1990, Auger 1994b, Miller & Sag 1997, De Cat 2007b, and many others). Distributional properties of French subject clitics have led Kayne (1975), Rizzi (1986), and others to analyze them as argument-bearing elements occupying canonical subject position, cliticizing to the verb only at the level of the phonology. While this hypothesis enjoys a wide following, a growing body of evidence suggests that it fails to capture patterns of subject-clitic use in colloquial French dialects/registers (Roberge 1990, Auger 1994b, Zribi-Hertz 1994, Miller & Sag 1997). Using new evidence from prosodic and corpus analyses, speaker judgments, and crosslinguistic typology, this article argues that (i) European Colloquial French exhibits differences from Standard French that impact how subject clitics are best analyzed, and more specifically (ii) subject clitics in European Colloquial French are affixal agreement markers, not phonological clitic arguments.

This article reexamines a controversial construction in Acehnese (Lawler 1977 versus Durie 1988). I demonstrate that the construction is a passive, even though a verbal prefix bears the features of the agent rather than the surface subject. I analyze the prefix as a morphological realization of the functional head that introduces the external argument; the features borne by this head are not agreement, but rather interpretable features that restrict the external argument position. Important consequences are that Acehnese does not counterexemplify the universality of grammatical relations (contra Durie 1988 and subsequent), and that Acehnese provides clear morphological evidence for the presence in passives of the functional head that introduces the external argument.

Kerinci is a group of grammatically diverse Malayic varieties spoken in Jambi Province, Sumatra, Indonesia. This article focuses on a previously undescribed dialect of Kerinci, spoken in the village of Tanjung Pauh Mudik (TPM). Many Kerinci dialects have developed a morphological alternation in root-final syllables as a result of stress-related diachronic changes. In TPM, as in Sungai Penuh Kerinci (described by Steinhauer and Usman (1978), inter alia), lexical roots surface in two forms, termed ‘absolute’ and ‘oblique’, which differ in the phonological shape of their final syllable. These forms exhibit a wide array of grammatical properties that differ considerably between dialects. We focus on the function of this unique marking in the verbal domain, and argue that the oblique form marks agreement with a nominal complement. Our analysis explains why TPM, a language that retains the morphological properties of the traditional Malay voice system, unexpectedly appears to permit the extraction of nonsubject arguments from active clauses, contradicting the predictions of theories that causally link symmetrical voice morphology and a ban on nonsubject extraction from vP (e.g. Keenan 1972, 1979, Rackowski & Richards 2005, Cole et al. 2008). We argue that apparent cases of nonsubject extraction do not involve movement, but that the apparently moved argument is generated outside of vP and binds a phonologically null pronoun licensed by the oblique morphology; thus, we are able to relate TPM's unexpected syntactic behavior to the availability of the absolute/oblique marking. This analysis has broader consequences for the theory of pro-drop. Neeleman and Szendrői's (2007) theory of radical pro-drop is unable to differentiate between syntactically projected pronouns (like null objects in TPM) and nonobject pro-dropped arguments in TPM that lack the behavior of a syntactically projected argument. In light of this inadequacy, we put forward an alternative proposal regarding the universal typology of pro-drop.

Collins et al. 2008 offers a principles-and-parameters-based analysis of an AAVE construction first described in Spears 1998, in which nominal phrases such as John's ass appear to have exactly the same denotation, and behavior with respect to familiar conditions on anaphora, as the possessor [John, and similarly for pronominal possessors. Agreement, however, reflects not the properties of the possessor, but of the possessed nominal ass, which belongs to a small, closed class of lexical items that behave in parallel fashion and which the authors call ‘mask’ nominals. Collins and colleagues convincingly argue that the class of NPs consisting of possessors attached to mask nominals have the same syntactic structure as ordinary NPs displaying (pro)nominal possessors. In order to account for the split between anaphora and agreement, however, they are apparently forced to invoke a very complex derivational mechanism that includes a lowering rule, along with a number of other highly stipulative components, in order to encompass certain related constructions. I offer a far simpler and empirically more comprehensive alternative treatment in which mask nominals are nothing more than semantically parasitic heads, based on Kathol's (1999) dichotomy between AGR(eement) and INDEX specifications within head-driven phrase structure grammar representations. Collins and colleagues adduce what they take to be empirical arguments against such an approach, but these arguments are, as I show, all predicated on a basic technical misinterpretation of the nature of indices in the HPSG syntax/semantics interface, and thus have no force.

Comparison of the two approaches is interesting not only in the context of the phenomenon described by Spears, but also in terms of broader, cross-framework issues—in particular, the question of whether or not movement and feature matching are merely two alternative, interconvertible ways of expressing linkages between structurally distant categories.

Surface anthropometric measures are commonly used to assess body composition in trained individuals. Standardised pre-test guidelines (morning, fasted) present logistical concerns. The impact of daily activities on skinfold (SKF) assessment has been established in males; however, there is a lack of research examining females. The aim of this study was to assess the within-day agreement between standardised and non-standardised surface anthropometric measures in trained females. Measures including body mass, eight SKF and six circumferences were collected by an International Society for the Advancement of Kinanthropometry level 1 anthropometrist on forty trained females (twenty naturally menstruating and twenty using a contraceptive) under standardised conditions (morning, fasted, rested and hydrated) and non-standardised conditions (9–10 h later after free-living) on the same day. The menstrual or contraceptive pill phase was not controlled for. The intra-class correlation coefficient and typical error were calculated to assess reliability. Overall group means were compared to assess if a significant change occurred. The sum of eight SKF sites (∑8 SKF) displayed excellent reliability, and no significant difference was noted between conditions. Greater levels of disagreement were represented by those with ∑8 SKF > 136 mm. Significant differences in group means were recorded for body mass and waist circumference. All other five circumference sites remained unchanged throughout the day. Findings suggest that if accuracy is required, body mass and waist circumference should be collected in a standardised state. SKF and all five other circumferences can be collected in trained females at any time of day without considering pre-test standard guidelines.

This study explores which governance practices nonprofit leaders consider necessary to avoid organizational crises. Further, it explores whether these leadership mental models of crisis resistance depend on the organizational context. This helps determine whether practical learning points are organization specific or can be applied broadly. With a multilevel sample of 304 leaders from 44 Belgian nongovernmental development organizations, an exploratory path analysis reveals that nonprofit leaders consider continuous improvement, as a governance practice, particularly relevant for effective organizational crisis resistance. A multilevel analysis also shows that variations in leadership mental models cannot be explained by the organizational variables used in this study (organizational size, leadership group size, operational activities, and languages in the leadership group). This article concludes with a discussion of consequences for further research.

Although the Inuit language is generally characterized as ergative, it has been observed that the ergative case patterning is relatively weaker in certain Eastern Canadian varieties, resulting in a more accusative appearance (e.g. Johns 2001, 2006, Carrier 2017). This article presents a systematic comparison of ergativity in three Inuit varieties, as a lens into the properties of case alignment and clause structure in Inuit more broadly. Building on the previous insight that ergativity in Inuit is tied to object movement to a structurally high position (Bittner 1994, Bittner & Hale 1996a,b, Woolford 2017), I demonstrate that the relative robustness of the ergative patterning across Inuit is tightly correlated with the permissibility of object movement—and not determined by the morphosyntactic properties of ERG subjects, which are uniform across Inuit. I additionally relate this correlation to another point of variation across Inuit concerning the status of object agreement as affixes vs. pronominal clitics (Yuan 2021). These connections offer testable predictions for the status of ergativity across the entire Inuit dialect continuum and yield crosslinguistic implications for the typology of case alignment, especially in how it interacts with the syntactic position of nominals.

Indicating verbs can be directed toward locations in space associated with their arguments. The primary debate about these verbs is whether this directionality is akin to grammatical agreement or whether it represents a fusion of both morphemic and gestural elements. To move the debate forward, more empirical evidence is needed. We consider linguistic and social factors in 1,436 indicating-verb tokens from the BSL Corpus. Results reveal that modification is not obligatory and that patient modification is conditioned by several factors, such as constructed action. We argue that our results provide some support for the claim that indicating verbs represent a fusion of morphemic and gestural elements.

The lexicon divides into parts of speech (or lexical categories), and there are cross-cutting regularities (features). These two dimensions of analysis take us a long way, but several phenomena elude us. For these the term ‘split’ is used extensively (‘case split’, ‘split agreement’, and more), but in confusingly different ways. Yet there is a unifying notion here. I show that a split is an ADDITIONAL PARTITION, whether in the part-of-speech inventory or in the feature system. On this base an elegant typology can be constructed, using minimal machinery. The typology starts from four external relations (government, agreement, selection, and anti-government), and it specifies four types of split within each (sixteen possibilities in all). This typology (i) highlights less familiar splits, from diverse languages, and fits them into the larger picture; (ii) introduces a new relation, anti-government, and documents it; (iii) elucidates the complexities of multiple splits; and (iv) clarifies what exactly is split, which leads to a sharpening of our analyses and applies across different traditions.

We investigate a noncanonical agreement pattern in American English in which a fronted WH-phrase appears to control agreement on an inflected auxiliary, as in Which flowers are the gardener planting? (Kimball & Aissen 1971). We explore this phenomenon with five acceptability- judgment experiments and interpret the resulting data with the aid of a quantitative model of the judgment process. Our study suggests that fronted WH-phrases interfere with agreement primarily as a function of their linear and structural position, and that this effect is not significantly modulated by overt case or thematic cues in off-line judgments. We suggest that our findings support a model of agreement processing in which syntactic phrases compete to control agreement on the basis of their structural and linear position with respect to the inflected verb.

This research article examines the licensing of complementizer agreement with nominals (namely thematic subjects and objects) in the left periphery, focusing on data from Jordanian Arabic (JA). It demonstrates that obligatory complementizer agreement with A-bar elements is evident in JA grammar due to the effects of the Agree Identification Condition, which enforces an agreement inflection on the probe when the goal is not phonologically overt (e.g., a pro). This enforcement also applies when the probe agrees with a chain consisting of two silent links (e.g., when the complementizer agrees with a wh- or a focused element). This finding supports the proposal that the morphological realization of Agree dependencies is ruled by interface conditions, which are also proven to be responsible for the presence of an obligatorily overt complementizer when extraction of the embedded nominal takes place.

Recent research has shown that 6-month-olds relate novel words suffixed with -s, like babs, that are embedded in passages, with just the stem bab, demonstrating an early sensitivity to morphological relatedness. This study builds on these findings by investigating the role of allomorphy in early morphological acquisition. We tested whether infants relate novel words suffixed with [-z] and [-s] allomorphs of the -s suffix and their stems. We find that English-learning 6-month-olds relate novel words suffixed with the [-z], but not [-s], allomorph with stems, providing evidence for an acquisition trajectory where infants discover morphemes one allomorph at a time.