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In languages, agreement is a form of cross-reference between different parts of a sentence or phrase. Agreement happens when one word changes in form depending on which other words it is being related to. Image File history File links Question_book-3. ...

For example, one does not say I is in English, because is cannot be used when the subject is I. The word is is said not to agree with the word I. This is why the grammatical form is I am, even though the verb still has the same function and basic meaning.

Functions

Agreement often adds redundancy to languages. In addition, in some languages, agreement allows word order to be varied without resorting to case endings. In Swahili, with its many noun classes, if a verb's arguments have different classes, a word order other than the default SVO can be used because agreement makes it clear which words belong to the subject and which belong to the object(s). Common types of characteristics which may trigger grammatical agreement are: In language, redundancy often takes the form of phrases which repeat a concept with a different word. ... This article is about the language. ... SVO is an acronym for several terms: SVO denotes the sequence Subject Verb Object in Linguistic typology. ...

• Grammatical person: e.g. I am versus He is.
• Grammatical number: e.g. One car versus Two cars, or I am versus We are.
• Grammatical gender: e.g. Jenny loves her cat versus Jimmy loves his cat.
• Grammatical case e.g. I told him versus He told me.

See also Grammatical conjugation, for other agreement categories. For other uses, see Point of view (literature). ... In linguistics, grammatical number is a morphological category characterized by the expression of quantity through inflection or agreement. ... In linguistics, grammatical gender is a morphological category associated with the expression of gender through inflection or agreement. ... In linguistics, declension is the inflection of nouns, pronouns and adjectives to indicate such features as number (typically singular vs. ... In linguistics, conjugation is the creation of derived forms of a verb from its principal parts by inflection (regular alteration according to rules of grammar). ...

Examples

Languages can have no agreement whatsoever, as in Japanese; barely any, as in English; a small amount, as in spoken French; a moderate amount, as in Greek or Latin; or a large amount, as in Hungarian. The English language is a West Germanic language that originates in England. ... Latin was the language originally spoken in the region around Rome called Latium. ...

English

Modern English does not have a particularly large amount of agreement, although it is present.

All regular verbs in English agree in the third-person singular of the present indicative by adding a suffix of either -s or -es. The latter is generally used after stems ending in the sibilants sh, ch, ss or zz (e.g. he rushes, it lurches, she amasses, it buzzes.) In linguistics, many grammars have the concept of grammatical mood, which describes the relationship of a verb with reality and intent. ... Look up affix in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. ... A sibilant is a type of fricative, made by speeding up air through a narrow channel and directing it over the sharp edge of the teeth. ...

Present tense of to love:

There are not many irregularities in this formation:

to have, to go and to do render has, goes and does.

The highly irregular verb to be is the only verb with more agreement than this in the present tense.

Present tense of to be:

Future tense of "to be":

Emphatic future tense of "to be":

Note: the use of shall and the use of the emphatic tense are archaic in Standard English.

In English, defective verbs generally show no agreement for person or number, they include: can, may, shall, will, must, should, ought. In linguistics, a defective verb is a verb with an incomplete conjugation. ...

In Early Modern English agreement existed for the second person singular of all verbs in the present tense, as well as in the past tense of some common verbs. This was usually in the form -est, but -st and -t also occurred. Note that this does not affect the endings for other persons and numbers. Shakespeares writings are universally associated with Early Modern English Early Modern English refers to the stage of the English language used from about the end of the Middle English period (the latter half of the 1400s) to 1650. ...

Example present tense forms: thou wilt, thou shalt, thou art, thou hast, thou canst. Example past tense forms: thou wouldst, thou shouldst, thou wast, thou hadst, thou couldst

Note also the agreement shown by to be even in the subjunctive.

Imperfect subjunctive of to be in Early modern English:

However, for nearly all regular verbs, a separate thou form was no longer commonly used in the past tense. Thus the auxiliary verb to do would be used, e.g. thou didst help, not thou helpedst. For other uses, see Thou (disambiguation). ... For other uses, see Thou (disambiguation). ... In linguistics, an auxiliary (also called helping verb, auxiliary verb, or verbal auxiliary) is a verb functioning to give further semantic or syntactic information about the main or full verb following it. ...

Latin

Compared with English, Latin is an example of a highly inflected language. The consequences for agreement are thus:

Verbs must agree in person and number, and sometimes in gender, with their subjects. Articles and adjectives must agree in case, number and gender with the nouns they modify.

Sample Latin verb: the present indicative active of "porto"

porto - I carry

portas - you [singular] carry

portat - he carries

portamus - we carry

portatis - you [plural] carry

portant - they carry

Note also that the inflectional endings mean it is not necessary to include the subject pronoun, except for emphasis, or to avoid ambiguity in complex sentences. For this reason, Latin is described as a null-subject language. In linguistic typology, a null subject language is a language whose grammar permits an independent clause to lack an explicit subject. ...

French

Spoken French always distinguishes the first person plural and the second person plural from each other and from the rest of the present tense. The other endings that appear in written French are often pronounced the same, except in liaison contexts. Irregular verbs such as être, faire, aller, and avoir possess more distinctly-pronounced agreement forms than regular verbs. Note: This page or section contains IPA phonetic symbols in Unicode. ...

Adjectives agree in gender and number with the nouns they modify in French. As with verbs, forms that are written with different agreement suffixes are sometimes pronounced the same (e.g. joli, jolie), although in many cases the final consonant is pronounced in feminine forms, but silent in masculine forms (e.g. petit vs. petite). Plural forms end in -s, but this consonant is only pronounced in liaison contexts. The participles of verbs agree in gender and number with the subject or object in some instances. Articles also decline for number and gender. In linguistics, a participle is a non-finite verb form that can be used in compound tenses or voices, or it can be used as a modifier. ...

Hungarian

In Hungarian, verbs have polypersonal agreement, which means they agree with more than one of the verb's arguments: not only its subject but also its (accusative) object. Difference is made between the case when there is a definite object and the case when the object is indefinite or there is no object at all. (The adverbs don't affect the form of the verb.) Examples: Szeretek (I love somebody or something unspecified), szeretem (I love him or her or it or them, specifically), szeretlek (I love you); szeret (he or she loves me or us or you or someone or something unspecified), szereti (he or she loves her or him or it or them, specifically). Of course, the exact object may be specified by nouns or pronouns. In short, there is agreement between a verb and the person and number of its subject and the specificness of its object (which often refers to the person more or less exactly). A syntactic verb argument, in linguistics, is a phrase that appears in a relationship with the verb in a proposition. ...

See Definite and indefinite conjugations

The predicate agrees in number with the subject and if it is copulative (i.e., it consists of a noun/adjective and a linking verb), both parts agree in number with the subject. For example: A könyvek érdekesek voltak "The books were interesting" ("a": the, "könyv": book, "érdekes": interesting, "voltak": were): the plural is marked on the subject as well as both the adjectival and the copulative part of the predicate. This page is about verbs in Hungarian grammar. ... In traditional grammar, a predicate is one of the two main parts of a sentence (the other being the subject, which the predicate modifies). ...

Within noun phrases, adjectives don't show agreement with the noun, e.g. a szép könyveitekkel "with your nice books" ("szép": nice): the suffixes of the plural, the possessive "your" and the case-marking "with" are only marked on the noun.

Swahili

Swahili and related languages have numerous noun classes. Verbs must agree in class with their subjects. This article is about the language. ... In linguistics, the term noun class refers to a system of categorizing nouns. ...

See also

• Declension
• Inflection
• Synthetic language
• Redundancy (language)
• Case government

In linguistics, declension is the inflection of nouns, pronouns and adjectives to indicate such features as number (typically singular vs. ... Inflection of the Spanish lexeme for cat, with blue representing the masculine gender, pink representing the feminine gender, grey representing the form used for mixed-gender, and green representing the plural number. ... A synthetic language, in linguistic typology, is a language with a high morpheme-per-word ratio. ... In language, redundancy often takes the form of phrases which repeat a concept with a different word. ... Government is a linguistic term for a kind of influence that one grammatical element exerts on another, and the canonical example of government is case government, when a verb or preposition is said to govern the grammatical case on its noun phrase complement (e. ...

External links

• Agreement Biblio Home Page
• Surrey Database of Agreement, detailed examples from 15 diverse languages

Bibliography

• Corbett, Greville (1994) "Agreement". In R.E. Asher (ed.), The Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Oxford: Pergamon Press. 54--60.
• Corbett, Greville (2006) Agreement. Cambridge Textbooks in Linguistics. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
• Givon, Talmy (1984) Syntax. A Functional Typological Introduction. Vol 1. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Chapter 10.
• Mel'čuk, Igor (2006): Aspects of the theory of morphology. Berlin, New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Chapter 1.
• Moravcsik, Edith A. (1978). "Agreement". In: Joseph Greenberg, (ed.), Universals of Human Language. vol. 4. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 331--374.