Upward agreement and syntactic counterfeeding in Lubukusu

Abstract

What are the constraints on agreement, and how does it interact with other syntactic operations? Recent studies suggest that syntactic dependencies are tier-based strictly local (TSL) over Minimalist Grammar derivation trees, a computationally restrictive model which closely fits many aspects of the formal typology (Graf 2022, Hanson 2025). Using this framework, I provide an analysis of upward complementizer agreement in Lubukusu (Diercks 2013), and show that it correctly predicts lack of agreement with hyperraised subjects without any additional assumptions. I argue further that the phenomenon should be understood as a kind of syntactic counterfeeding, which together with the existence of feeding, bleeding, and counterbleeding, suggests the need for a syntactic framework which can handle variable operation ordering.