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Agreement Is Found Inside Noun Phrases and
Agreement Is Found Inside Noun Phrases and
The nouns in (2) are still in the nominative case and can still function as
the subjects of clauses, but they are plural and have different suffixes, and the
adjectives too have different suffixes. Whether, for example, the stem magn- takes
the suffixes -us, -a, -i or -ae depends on what type of noun it modifies, what case
the noun is in and whether the noun is singular or plural. That is, the noun is the
controlling word but both noun and adjective change shape, that is, change their
suffixes; this is why the term ‘agreement’ is used. The traditional formula is that
adjectives agree with nouns in number and case (and also in gender, which is
discussed below.) In spite of the traditional formula, we can view the noun as
governing the adjective in case and number. Old English had similar patterns of
agreement between the head noun in a noun phrase and adjectives that modified it.
Consider the examples in (3).
(3) Old English
a. go¯d cyning (good king)
b. go¯du cwe¯n (good queen)
c. go¯d scip (good ship)
1. Government
Consider now the examples in (5).
(5) Latin
a. Servus magnum regem occidit
slave great king killed
‘A/the slave killed a/the great king’
In (7b), the object noun cwe  ̄ ne, with the suffix -e, is modified by the adjective
go  ̄ de, with the suffixe -e. This contrasts with the subject noun cwe  ̄ n in (3b)
with no suffix and modified by the adjective go  ̄ du, with the suffix -u. In (7a),
the noun cyning has no suffix but the adjective does have a special suffix, namely
-ne as in go ̄dne. There is no contrast in the suffixes added to subject and object
plural nouns. The patterns of suffixes are summed up by saying that slo  ̄ g
requires its object noun to be in the accusative case. Other verbs require their noun
to be in a different case; andwyrdan ‘answer’, for instance, requires its object
noun to take dative suffixes, as shown in (8)
(8) se eorl andwyrde go¯dum cyninge
that warrior answered (a)-good king
Cyninge in (8) has the dative case suffix -e and go  ̄ dum has the dative suffix -
um. The verb bı  ̄ dan ‘wait for’ requires its object noun to take a genitive suffix,
as in (9).
(9) se eorl ba¯d go¯des cyninges
that warrior waited-for (a)-good king
In (9), cyninges has the genitive suffix -es and the adjective go ̄des has the same
suffix.
Prepositions in Latin also assign case to their complement nouns. Ad (to)
governs nouns in the accusative case, and de (from) governs nouns in the ablative
case.
The nominative case was thought of as the case that was used when
speakers were using nouns to name entities. The theory was, and indeed still is,
that speakers pick out and name an entity and then say something about it. (See
Chapter 8 on grammatical functions.) ‘Accusative’ looks as though it should have
something to do with accusing; this does not make much sense but results from a
mistranslation into Latin of a Greek term meaning ‘what is effected or brought
about’. It seems that the central examples of accusative case were taken to be the
Classical Greek equivalents of ‘She built a house’. ‘Ablative’ derives from a Latin
word meaning ‘taking away’ and occurs with prepositions expressing movement
from or off something, as in (10b).
a. ad hortum
to garden ‘to the garden’
b. e horto
out-of garden ‘out of the garden’
The above Latin examples show that different case-number suffixes are
added to nouns and adjectives and that which suffix is chosen in a particular
clause depends on the noun. Latin nouns fall into a number of different classes,
known as genders. Gender will not be discussed here but will be examined in
Chapter 12 on grammar and semantics.
Prepositions in Old English also require their complement nouns to have
particular case suffixes. For example, to  ̄ ‘to’ governs its complement noun in
the dative case (like most prepositions), but †urh ‘by means of ’ governs its
complement noun in the accusative case. The distinction is exemplified in (11).
a. to¯ tæ¯m cyninge (to that king)
b. turh tone cyning (by-means-of that king)
In (11a), †a  ̄ m is the dative form of se ‘that’ and cyninge has the dative
suffix -e. In (11b), †one is the accusative form of se but cyning has no suffix.
2. Number and Person Linkage
We turn now to the final strand of syntactic linkage in Latin, the
relationship between subject nouns and verbs. Consider (12).
(12) Latin
a. reks legit (the-king is-reading)
b. reges legunt (the-kings are-reading)
In (12a), reks is singular and the verb leg- (read) has the suffix -it, which is
singular. In (12b), reges is plural and leg- has the suffix -unt, which is plural. The
traditional formula is that the verb agrees with the subject noun in number (and
person). This analysis accords with the view that the subject noun (phrase) is more
important than the other nouns in a clause because speakers use subject nouns to
name the entity they want to talk about. At various places in this introduction,
however, we have seen that there are good reasons to consider the verb the head
of a given clause, controlling all the other words and phrases in it. From the
perspective of dependency relations (Chapter 1) and the lexicon (Chapter 5), the
relation between the verb and subject noun is no different from the relations
between the verb and other nouns in clauses.
Whichever analysis readers favour, the term ‘agreement in number’ is not
accurate. Either the subject noun imposes a given number on the verb or the verb
imposes a given number of the noun. That is, both analyses recognise a
controlling word, and where there is a controlling word we are dealing with
government.
Verbs in Latin signal more than just number. Other suffixes are added to verb
stems in Latin, as shown in (13).
(13) Latin
a) epistolam lego
letter I-am-reading ‘I am reading the/a letter’
b) epistolam legis
letter you (sg)-are-reading
‘You (singular) are reading the/a letter’
c) epistolam legimus
letter we-are-reading ‘We are reading the/a letter’
The contrast between lego in (13a) and legis in (13b) has to do with who is
presented as reading, the speaker or the addressee. The speaker is considered the
central participant in a conversation, the first person. The addressee is the second
in importance, that is, is the second person. The speaker and others can be
presented as jointly doing something, as in (13c). Lego is described as being in the
first person singular, legimus as being in the first person plural and legis as being
in the second person singular. In (12a, b), the speaker presents the action as being
performed by neither the speaker nor the hearer but by a third person in (12a) and
by third persons in (12b). Legit is said to be in the third person singular, and
legunt is described as being in the third person plural. Latin has pronouns, but
they were not used unless for emphasis.
4. Number in English
The person-number relationship between subject verb and noun in English
is simple compared with the large number of suffixes in Latin, yet the English
system is not straightforward. One complexity is that while we are here focusing
on the verb system in standard English, most of the population of the UK speak
some non-standard variety. Many nonstandard varieties differ from the standard
one; in some, speakers have generalised the -s suffix to all persons – We sits
quietly in the classroom, you knows what I’m talking about, while in others the
speakers have removed the -s suffix – She live in that street.
Even speakers of standard English itself disagree over whether a singular
or plural verb should be used with certain nouns. For instance, committee is a
singular noun but is used to refer to groups of more than one person. Many
speakers and writers use either a singular or a plural verb depending on whether
they view a particular committee as several people or as a single unit. The
committee are discussing this proposal today presents the committee as several
individuals who have to discuss the matter and work out a decision. The
committee is discussing the proposal today presents the committee in a more
impersonal manner, as a single unit. Every generation, however, appears to
contain speakers who believe that if a noun is singular the verb should always be
singular. Such speakers are becoming rarer.
5. Gender in English
Nouns in English do not fall into different grammatical classes of the sort
found in Latin. As we have seen in the discussion in Chapter 5 on the lexicon,
English nouns do split up into classes, but the split is not unrelated to the meaning
and is not reflected in syntactic linkage. Consider the examples in (18).
a. My sister phoned. She said that the children were back at school.
b. Your brother went out. He said he was going to the bank.
c. The car is ready. It just needed new points.
The pronoun she is used in reference to a female, he in reference to a male
and it in reference to an entity that is neither male nor female. In contrast, there is
no obvious reason why the Latin noun mensa (table) is said to have feminine
gender, nor why hortus (garden) is labelled ‘masculine’ and oppidum (town) is
labelled ‘neuter’. Despite the simplicity of the (typical) examples in (18), English
usage is not without its subtleties. It is said that some speakers of English refer to
cars and boats as though they were female, as in She’s a wonderful car, but this
usage appears to be falling into disuse.
Reference to babies and animals varies. Parents of a baby and owners of,
in particular, cats and dogs, know the sex of their child or animal and use he or
she. Speakers who do not know the identity of a particular baby often refer to the
baby by it (indeed I was about to write ‘often refer to it’). The choice of it is
usually caused by lack of knowledge; once particular babies have been introduced
as Selena or Rachel, Angus or Torquil, they will thereafter be referred to by he or
she as appropriate. But just to demonstrate that context is important, parents can
be observed referring to their baby by it, a usage that typically expresses love for
the baby. Similarly, the choice of pronouns for animals is affected by the use of
proper names. Example (19a) is perfectly normal, (19b) is peculiar.
a. The dog slunk under the table. It had eaten the sandwiches.
b. Towser slunk under the table. He (??it) had eaten the sandwiches.
We close this chapter with a reminder that the relations implicated in
syntactic linkage are dependency relations holding between heads and modifiers.
Some relations cross clause boundaries (especially the boundaries of relative
clauses), but mostly they hold within single clauses.