Reviewed by Wolfgang Schulze, University of Munich
The phenomenon of agreement has been examined primarily in functionally and typologically oriented studies, whereas generative approaches to language have only hesitatingly taken up this issue. Therefore, this volume, edited by Cedric Boeckx, will be welcomed by those interested in how agreement features are discussed within a formal generative framework. In his introduction (1–12), Boeckx briefly reports on the most burning issues in agreement studies from a generative point of view and provides short summaries of the eleven papers included in the volume.
The individual papers are arranged in alphabetical order of the authors. In the first contribution, ‘Are we in agreement?’ (13–39), Gabriela Alboiu discusses the interaction of case valuation and agreement, arguing for an analysis of case checking ‘as a property of phrasal domains rather than of agreement’ (13). Alboiu uses Romanian data to elaborate this thought-provoking hypothesis. The typologically well-known problem of person splits is addressed by Artemis Alexiadou and Elena Anagnostopoulou in ‘From hierarchies to features: Person splits and direct-inverse alternations’ (41–62), which focuses on data from Lummi and Passamaquoddy.
Using data from Turkish, Tuvan, Kazakh, and a number of European languages, in ‘Finiteness and the relation between agreement and nominative case’ (63–98), Gülşat Aygen discusses issues of finiteness, suggesting that ‘agreement on [complementizer] C is involved in licensing Nominative subjects only in the presence of Epistemic Modality’ (63). In ‘Case and agreement with genitive of quantification in Russian’ (99–120), Željko Bošković investigates the interesting hypothesis that ‘Russian morphological case is a direct reflection of abstract Case [just as…] Russian morphological agreement is a direct reflection of abstract agree(ment)’ (113).
John Frampton and Sam Gutmann turn to ‘How sentences grow in the mind: Agreement and selection in efficient minimalist syntax’ (121–57). ‘Agreement configurations: In defense of “Spec head”’ (159–99) are discussed by Hilda Koopman, and Halldór Ármann Sigurđsson explores ‘Agree in syntax, agreement in signs’ (202–37). Usama Soltan contributes ‘Standard Arabic subject-verb agreement asymmetry revisited in an agree-based minimalist syntax’ (239–65), and instances of null-case are touched upon in Juan Uriagereka’s ‘Complete and partial Infl’ (267–98). In ‘Case-agreement mismatches’ (299–316), Ellen Woolford addresses the question of why languages with ergative case and accusative agreement seem not to exist. Finally, In ‘Local agreement’ (317–39), Jan-Wouter Zwart explores the hypothesis that agreement ‘is always a relation between phrases, never a relation between a head and a phrase’ (317).
Most of the papers are highly technical and call for a profound knowledge in formal syntax and its descriptive apparatus. However, once the reader has adopted this perspective, both the theoretical sections and the wealth of illustrating examples taken from a variety of languages will be enormously beneficial. In this sense, the volume will also be especially interesting for researchers attempting to add aspects of language theory to their typological findings.