Talk:Agreement (linguistics)

The Function section is totally nonsense, and should be dropped. Adding redundancy is correct but there's no useful function. I challenge the author to provide concrete examples to support the claim.

I deleted the section on German language as it was largly incorrect, unclear and incomplete. I removed information on pronouns as diffeent pronouns is not agreement in the sense of this article. Besides, I would suggest to relocate the information on history of the English language to the corresponding article. I also find the Function part partially non-sense. Newydd 10:29, 23 Mai 2007 (UTC)

Japanese does have agreement. Subject and object agreement for honorific vs. plain is grammaticised - 'Huruyama-kun ga kaimasu' vs. 'Huruyama-sensei ga okai-ni-narimasu' and 'Huruyama-san to aimasu' vs. 'Huruyama-sensei to oai-simasu'. Nouns change based on whether you're talking about: for example, your house ('uchi') or someone else's ('otaku') so you say 'watashi no uchi' or 'Huruyama-san no otaku'. This is agreement. It's not exactly the same as what we normally think of as agreement - from a western perspective, it is odd agreement, but that is even more reason for the article to cover it. 128.84.178.229 (talk) 14:49, 28 February 2008 (UTC)

Latin
The article states that Latin verbs sometimes agree with gender. Does anyone have an example? If this is referring to verbal adjectives it's misleading. Virginia-American (talk) 00:41, 25 June 2008 (UTC)

English has no gender!
The example of gender agreement in English (Jenny loves her cat versus Jimmy loves his cat) is utter non-sense, and totally misleading to readers.

English has no grammatical gender so, obviously, it cannot have a gender agreement. In the given examples, her and his depend on the biological sex of the persons called Jenny and Jimmy, not on the grammatical gender of the nouns "Jenny" and "Jimmy".

The example should be turned in languages having gender, such as French, Spanish or Old English itself.

81.120.65.55 (talk) 13:08, 3 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Though I appreciate what you're saying, 3rd person pronouns actually are gendered (one of the vestiges of grammatical gender from older forms of English), and there must be gender agreement otherwise confusing may arise. For example, to say Jenny loves his cat would leave the listener wondering who the as-yet-unmentioned male would be: only if there is gender agreement would the listener realise that Jenny loves her own cat (obviously this leads to ambiguity when you say Jenny loves her cat, but are actually talking about another woman. The same is true of animacy, though English doesn't have any sort of animacy distinction (in any real grammatical sense): to say Jenny loves its cat would confuse the listener as to what "it" is, or possibly they would think you rude for refering to Jenny as it.


 * While gendered pronouns are not limited to English, or langauges that have (or had) a grammatical gender distinction, there must be agreement. Where this clearly stops is inanimates which, having no gender, are always refered to as "it" (whereas in gendered langagues they would (or may) be refered to as "he" or "she").


 * As it is, natural gender agreement is perhaps not worthy of mentioning in this article as it is "natural", though perhaps a distinction should be made for those for other langauges where a 3SG neuter pronoun exists (that can be applied to people of either gender, rather like the English "you"(sg) or "they") 59.100.86.198 (talk) 10:08, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

"go / goes" and "to be"
I don't think "go / goes" counts as an irregularity in agreement. Sure, there are suppletive forms in tenses, but "go => goes" is as regular as "hit => hits" and fits in with the rules outlined above it.

Additionally, perhaps "to be" should also discuss agreement differences in past tense, considering how it is different from other verbs:

to walk: I/you.sg/he,she,it/we/you.pl/they walked

to be: I/he,she,it was | we/you/they were

James Who (talk) 08:08, 13 June 2010 (UTC)

English doesn't have a future tense
The article shouldn't imply that English has a future tense when it doesn't. (English has two tenses, present and preterite.  Most English clauses expressing future time use the present tense and an adverb or PP, not the auxiliary "will".  The distinction shown between auxiliaries "will" and "shall" with respect to 1st/not-1st person exists only in BrE and not in AmE.)  121a0012 (talk) 03:21, 26 April 2012 (UTC)

pars et part
"However, in liaison contexts, the final consonant is pronounced, helping differentiate at least "part" from "pars"

Both those words are phonetically [par], they don't have a latent [z] or [t] sound. So they cannot produce a liaison. It's not a case of "forbiden" liaison, but a case of impossible liaison rather(no sound available).

in the sentences je/tu/il    pars/t         /en ville/à 10h/aux états unis/où ?

in traditional french, the word pars/t is always "chained" with the next vowel i.e. [parã] [para] [paro] [paru]

thence in those sentences only the pronoun can enable the distinction of person

(a glottal stop can however appear, very rarely in traditional speakers, all the time on French TV/movies where almost 99% of the speakers/actors are NOT traditional speakers, but pseudo-native speakers, producing false liaisons and enchainements...)

furthermore, a t liaison : [partãvil] is not possible because it would immediatly be taken for a plural : ils/elles partent en ville

the possibility of a liaison in french is not based on the presence of a letter that you can recognize because it's the "final consonant", but rather on the presence of a latent consonant sound in the word, signaled by a letter(but the actual sound is often different from what the written letter). So the sounds HAVE an associated letter, but no letter can GIVE you any indication of the presence or not of a latent sound!

now compare with the also very common verb mettre: je mets, tu mets, il/elle met

the situation is completely different

(je/tu mets)/(il/elle met) un point d'honneur/une veste/aux enchères

the liaison is possible (not compulsory): /ʒ(œ)mε(z)ynvεst/ /εlmε(t)ozã/ʃɛʀ/

when linked the third person of the singular is not distinguishable from the plural (elles mettent aux enchères), only the context will tell you.

now we can deduce from these observations that the phonological forms of those two verbs at the present singular are:

partir 1,2,3 /par/ mettre 1,2 /mε(z)/ 3 /mε(t)/

now pars-y will be pronounced like vas-y (where the [z] IS a liaison) but it's not a liaison in this case, it's a http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/%C3%89phelcystique phone and it will appear even with a verb not written with a s or a t, thus trempe-z-y [trãpzi], trempe-t-il [trãptil] etc.

S.JOURDAN

Verd
The (monkey,monkeys)are swinging in the tree 49.150.142.229 (talk) 10:52, 4 January 2023 (UTC)