Title: Agreement in Iranian ergative languages: the competition of affixes and clitics
Abstract: This paper presents a minimalist analysis of two agreement patterns of variation in Iranian ergative languages. On the one hand, there are languages in which the ergative subject is marked ergative/oblique morphologically and in which the ergative (past transitive) verb displays full agreement with the nominative object. On the other, languages are found where the transitive subject is doubled by an oblique clitic, but where the transitive verb fails to show agreement with the nominative object. Descriptively speaking, where there is a (doubling) clitic, there is no (agreement) affix (on the verb) and vice versa. To account for this complementarity, it will be argued that the verb-object agreement is a reflex of T°(ense)-object agree, when no intervener impedes the agree relation between the two. However, it will be argued that when a clitic doubles a transitive subject, it constitutes a case of defective intervention and causes the T°-object agree to break down. Thus analyzed, the competition of clitics and affixes in cross-referencing arguments in Iranian ergative languages amounts to the (un)availability of the agree relation within clausal domain, which is independently derivable from the tenets of the Minimalist Program.
Publication Year: 2012
Publication Date: 2012-12-15
Language: en
Type: article
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