agreement (n.)

A traditional term used in GRAMMATICAL theory and description to refer to a formal relationship between ELEMENTS, whereby a FORM of one WORD requires a corresponding form of another (i.e. the forms agree). In Latin, for example, agreement between elements is of central importance, being one of the main means of expressing grammatical relationships, in the absence of fixed patterns of WORD-ORDER. The term CONCORD has been more widely used in linguistic studies, but in GENERATIVE LINGUISTICS ‘agreement’ resurfaced with a new range of application. In GOVERNMENT-BINDING THEORY, agreement marking (AGR) of person, gender or number in FINITE VERBS plays an important role in BINDING THEORY and CASE theory. In GENERALIZED PHRASE-STRUCTURE GRAMMAR, the control agreement principle (CAP) is a semantically based principle governing the distribution of agreement marking. In the MINIMALIST PROGRAMME, agree allows the CHECKING of features without MOVEMENT – for example, checking the Case feature on an OBJECT DP without moving the object. The checking feature (PROBE) must C-COMMAND the checked feature (GOAL).