Agreement configurations: in defense of “Spec head”

Abstract

This paper argues that “Spec head” agreement, construed as agreement under left to right Merge is not only a possible agreement configuration, but probably the only agreement configuration, contra Agree (Chomsky 2001).The first part addresses DP internal agreement in Maasai and English. The attested agreement patterns within the Maasai DP fall out from Spec head agreement (Koopman 2003a, 2003b). Attested and unattested agreement patterns fall out from the syntactic hierarchy and the derivation. English long distance agreement in the DP does not support Agree, as agreement can be triggered early in the derivation. The second part of the paper discusses individual cases that have been taken to provide support for Agree. I will show how each case is in fact consistent with Spec head, where the following play an important role: agreement can be triggered under pied-piping, accounting for long distance in Tsez (Polinsky and Potsdam 2001) and agreement can be triggered low in the derivation, as in English existential constructions. A case study of nominative objects in Icelandic implements a Spec head account, and argues on the basis of morphological evidence that these constructions should be analyzed as double nominative constructions, with the verb agreeing with two nominatives. The analysis bears on the nature of inherent case (an argument is presented that inherent case must be decomposed), the structural location of nominative case, clausal structure, silent expletives, default agreement, double agreement and intervention effects. The latter are shown not to bear on Agree.

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