The Unmarkedness of Subject-Verb Agreement in Contemporary English.

Subject-verb agreement in contemporary English has always been regarded as an operation morphologically marked, especially through the bound morpheme -s on the verb/auxiliary.3SG1 in the present tense. However, that agreement is not marked neither on the verb/auxiliary.3SG in the past tense nor on m...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Publicado en:Annals of Philosophy, Social & Human Disciplines Vol. 2; pp. 49 - 66
Autor principal: AMADOU, Ali Kouamé
Formato: Artículo
Publicado: Suceava: "Stefan cel Mare" University 2020
Materias:
Acceso en línea:Ver este registro en EBSCOhost
fields @attributes:
  recordID: 1
pdfLink:
plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=148295200&site=ehost-live
header:
  @attributes:
    shortDbName: hlh
    uiTerm: 148295200
    longDbName: Humanities International Complete
    uiTag: AN
  controlInfo:
    bkinfo:
    jinfo:
      jid:
        20694008
        FIAT
      jtl: Annals of Philosophy, Social & Human Disciplines
      issn: 20694008
      maglogo: N
    pubinfo:
      dt: 2020
      vid: 2
      pid: 58683
      pub: Suceava: "Stefan cel Mare" University
    artinfo:
      ui: 148295200
      ppf: 49
      ppct: 17
      formats:
        fmt:
          @attributes:
            type: P
            size: 1.7MB
      tig:
        atl: The Unmarkedness of Subject-Verb Agreement in Contemporary English.
      aug:
        au: AMADOU, Ali Kouamé
        affil: Department of English F.H.B University of Cocody Abidjan, Côte d'Ivoire
      su:
        Agreement (Grammar)
        Inflection (Grammar)
        Morphemics
        Nouns
      sug:
        subj:
          Agreement (Grammar)
          Inflection (Grammar)
          Morphemics
          Nouns
      keyword:
        feature [3SG]
        morpheme -s
        referential defectivity
        Strong Minimalist Thesis
        Subject-verb agreement
        topic feature
      ab: Subject-verb agreement in contemporary English has always been regarded as an operation morphologically marked, especially through the bound morpheme -s on the verb/auxiliary.3SG1 in the present tense. However, that agreement is not marked neither on the verb/auxiliary.3SG in the past tense nor on modal auxiliaries. It is worth noting that this is surprising for a language where subject-verb agreement is viewed as morphologically visible. Things are supposed to be so due to the poverty of the English inflectional morphology (Cf. Roberts, 1985; Pollock, 1989; Chomsky, 1991; 1993; Fernández-Pena, 2014; 2017; inter alia). Thus, since subject-verb agreement in contemporary English is said to be visible only through the occurrence of the bound morpheme -s on the verb/auxiliary.3SG in the present tense, this morpheme is consequently taken as the symbol of subject-verb agreement markedness (Cf. Kayne, 1989; 1994). And yet, when considering some non-assertive constructions and sentences having a collective noun as grammatical subject, there are reasons to postulate that subject-verb agreement in contemporary English is not morphologically marked. This paper is then intended to show that subject-verb agreement in contemporary English is not morphologically marked, that the bound morpheme realized on the verb/auxiliary.3SG in the present tense appears to be the realization of a pragmatic/discursive feature, and that this morphemic realization is triggered by legibility conditions as proposed by the Strong Minimalist Thesis (Chomsky, 1995).
      pubtype: Academic Journal
      doctype: Article
      src: R
    language: English
    refInfo:
    copyright:
      @attributes:
        flag: Y
      custom: Copyright of Annals of Philosophy, Social & Human Disciplines is the property of Suceava: "Stefan cel Mare" University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites without the copyright holder's express written permission. Additionally, content may not be used with any artificial intelligence tools or machine learning technologies. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use.
      item: Annals of Philosophy, Social & Human Disciplines
      holder: Suceava: "Stefan cel Mare" University
      dt:
        @attributes:
          year: 2020
    holdings:
      @attributes:
        islocal: N