Abstract

SAAB, Andrés. UNAGREEMENT AND SYNCRETISM IN SPANISH. Lingüística [online]. 2013, vol.29, n.2, pp.191-229. ISSN 2079-312X.

In this paper, the so-called unagreement effects in Spanish (e.g., Los estudiantes defendemos la universidad pública.) are seen as an epiphenomenon resulting from the syntax-morphology interaction. Concretely, adopting the architecture of the grammar proposed in the Distributed Morphology framework, I propose that the Vocabulary Items that realize the abstract node D are underspecified for the person features that occur in that node actively. The result of this underspecification is a systematic pattern of syncretism that makes subject-verb agreement opaque. I show that this analysis is empirically superior to the analyses that try to derive the same paradigm from the putative interpretable nature of agreement in languages that license unagreement effects

Keywords : unagreement; syncretism; Spanish.

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