Lash, Elliott and Griffith, Aaron (2018) Coordinate Subjects, Expletives, and the EPP in Early Irish. Journal of Celtic Linguistics, 19. pp. 87-156. ISSN 0962-1377
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Abstract
This paper examines subject-verb agreement in Early-Irish sentences with
coordinate subjects. We claim that Early Irish (Old and Middle Irish) is a ‘variable
agreement’ language, which exhibits both singular and plural agreement with
coordinate subjects. The type of agreement depends on adjacency between
subject and verb and the valency of the verb. In particular, unaccusative and
passive verbs exhibit both singular and plural agreement more frequently than
transitive verbs. We argue that this is due to the availability of a default third
person singular null locative expletive item, which controls singular agreement.
Moreover, unaccusative and passive verbs also allow locative inversion with
other PPs, leading to the same singular agreement. Furthermore, we suggest
that, in contrast to Modern Irish, which lacks such an expletive, Early Irish could
license its presence in intransitive/passive sentences because that stage of
the language exhibited EPP-effects
Item Type: | Article |
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Keywords: | Subject-Verb Agreement; Variable Agreement; null expletive; locative-inversion; EPP; |
Academic Unit: | Faculty of Arts,Celtic Studies and Philosophy > School of Celtic Studies > Early Irish (Sean Ghaeilge) |
Item ID: | 13223 |
Identification Number: | 10.16922/jcl.19.5 |
Depositing User: | Elliott Lash |
Date Deposited: | 14 Sep 2020 13:48 |
Journal or Publication Title: | Journal of Celtic Linguistics |
Publisher: | University of Wales Press |
Refereed: | Yes |
Related URLs: | |
URI: | https://mu.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/13223 |
Use Licence: | This item is available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial Share Alike Licence (CC BY-NC-SA). Details of this licence are available here |
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