Agreement, case and licensing: Evidence from Tatar
Agreement, case and licensing: Evidence from Tatar

Summary/Abstract: The paper presents a study of case assignment and agreement phenomena in Tatar. Although these processes overlap to the great extent, I argue that they are brought about by two distinct mechanisms. Case can be viewed as a morphological exponent of Vergnaud-licensing — structural licensing of argument DPs by governing heads. Person-number agreement in Tatar is a morphological reflex of a separate process, person licensing, that applies to 1st / 2nd person pronouns exclusively. The only structural configuration where 3rd person nominals can enter into agreement relation is a subject-predicate configuration where number agreement is available. This asymmetry reflects the contrast of obligatory licensers, which every finite clause contains, and secondary licensers, which are merged only when needed for convergence. The data presented in this paper provide a strong evidence for divorcing agreement from structural licensing, but against elimination of syntactic case from the system of licensing conditions governing well-formedness of syntactic representations.

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