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  8. 2016

Ling Lunch: Zorica Puškar "Interactions of gender and number agreement: Evidence from Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian" | Thursday 25 February 2016

25 February 2016

Time: 8:59am
Venue: Arts One 3.16

 

Zorica Puškar (University of Leipzig/UCL)

Title: Interactions of gender and number agreement: Evidence from Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian

Event location: Arts One 3.16 [building #37 on the map attached]

 

Abstract: 

Class II split hybrid nouns in Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian display two sets of interesting properties: they can bear both natural and grammatical gender, and which gender participates in agreement depends on the number of the noun. While in the singular they invariably trigger natural (masculine) agreement, alternation between masculine and (grammatical) feminine obtains in the plural. The problem for theories of such nouns comprises two challenges: the Agree mechanism needs to be able to operate on two kinds of gender, and the mechanism needs to allow gender agreement to interact with number. Previous accounts (e.g. Wechsler and Zlatic 2000) propose complex mapping between semantic, syntactic and class features, but ultimately cannot derive the obligatoriness of natural agreement in the singular and optionality in the plural in an unified way. A Minimalist account of such nouns has not yet been proposed, and the existing accounts of hybrid agreement cannot capture this particular pattern. I provide a Minimalist analysis of hybrid nouns’ agreement combining the formal tools of feature hierarchies and relativised probing, deriving the obligatoriness of natural gender in the singular, and cyclic Agree, with different orders of application of Agree operations, which derives plural alternations as intervention effects.

See the campus map attached.

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