Towards a General Theory of Multi-Valuation

• Applicant: Professorin Katharina Hartmann, Ph.D., since 12/2020
• Subject Area: General and Comparative Linguistics, Experimental Linguistics, Typology, Non-European Languages
• Term: from 2017 to 2022
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 397518191

• Final Report Year: 2023

Final Report Abstract

In minimalist theory, agreement is defined as a feature valuation mechanism where an unvalued feature on a syntactic head (the probe) searches for a feature value on a goal leading to featural agreement. The project addressed the question of how feature valuation proceeds in cases where the relation does not hold between one probe and one goal, as in the standard case, but investigated cases where a probe agrees with multiple goals simultaneously. We refer to this case as “multiple agreement”, and to the process of valuation as “multi-valuation”. Given that cases of multiple agreement deviate from the usual agreement patterns, it promises novel insights into the behavior of agreement in general. The central question of the project concerned those strategies that a language provides for resolving the conflicts created by multiple agreement and what consequences this entails for theories of grammar. In the project, we have dealt with cases where the values of the features match, on the one hand, and cases where a single element receives conflicting values, on the other hand, and have systematically investigated how multiple agreement is resolved for different targets and in different syntactic structures. We directly investigated our research questions in several languages: German, Slovenian, Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian, Russian, English and Khanti. In our edited volumes, our cooperation partners and further international researches investigated the research questions in even more languages. Concerning the constructions where multi-valuation occurs, we investigated number and gener agreement with preverbal and postverbal disjoined subjects, agreement with exclusive disjunctions, multi-valued N and T heads in Right Node Raising Constructions, multi-valuation and object agreement. Our main findings are the following: (i) The results suggest that there is optionality (of agreement) in grammar; (ii) We confirm earlier results that multi-valuation follows from various strategies in grammar (default agreement, first/second conjunct agreement, resolved agreement, etc.); (iii) the choice of the strategy and/or the ranking of the strategies is language dependent and interacts with other grammatical properties of the language; (iv) the agreement strategy depends on the respective agreement feature, even in a single language. In short, our project has contributed to an up-to date topic in linguistic research and has lead to a better understanding of the process of agreement in general, and multi-valuation in particular.

Publications

• Agreement in Nominal Right Node Raising: An experimental approach. The 23rd Seoul International Conference on Generative Grammar (SICOGG 23), Sogang University, South Korea (online).
  Shen, Zheng
  
• Coordinate Structure Constraint and Conjunction Agreement. Agreement in Multivaluation Constructions, Frankfurt, Germany (online).
  Shen, Zheng
  
• Coordinate Structure Constraint Violating Movement and Closest Conjunct Agreement. the 9th International Conference on Formal Linguistics (online).
  Shen, Zheng
  
• On CSC-violating movement in BCS. Talk to be given at the 16th annual meeting of the Slavic Linguistics Society (SLS-16), University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (online).
  Shen, Zheng
  
• Feature resolution, feature conflicts and the structure of either ... or. Paper presented at Resolving Conflicts Across Borders workshop & SinFonIJA 10, Oct. 20 - 24, 2017.
  Hartmann, Katharina, Beata Moskal & Zheng Shen & Peter W. Smith
  
• The multi-valuation agreement hierarchy. Paper presented at Resolving Conflicts Across Borders workshop & SinFonIJA 10, Oct. 20-24, 2017.
  Shen, Zheng
  
• Agreement in Nominal Right Node Raising: an experimental approach. Paper presented at the 11th Conference on Syntax, Phonology and Language Analysis (SinFonIJA 11), Kraków, Poland, Oct. 11-13, 2018.
  Shen, Zheng
  
• Agreement in Nominal Right Node Raising: an experimental approach. Poster presented at the 20th Seoul International Conference on Generative Grammar, Seoul, Aug. 8-10, 2018.
  Shen, Zheng
  
• Feature conflicts, feature resolution, and the structure of ‘either...or’. Jezikoslovlje 18/3: 457–479.
  Smith, Peter, Beata Moskal & Katharina Hartmann & Zheng Shen
  
• Morphological and Semantic Agreement beyond Hybrid Nouns. Poster presented at the 49th Annual Meeting of the North East Linguistics Society (NELS 49), Cornell University, Oct. 5-7, 2018
  Shen, Zheng & Peter W. Smith
  
• Morphological and Semantic Agreement with Multiple Values. Paper presented at Multiple Agreement across Domains 2018, Berlin, Germany, Nov. 8-9, 2018.
  Shen, Zheng & Peter W. Smith
  
• Relative readings of superlatives in full vs. fragment answers: An experimental investigation. Poster presented at Linguistic Evidence 2018, University of Tübingen, Feb. 15-17, 2018. (with Lyn Tieu)
  Shen, Zheng
  
• The agreement hierarchy and multi-valuation. Poster presented at Current Issues in Comparative Syntax, the National University of Singapore, Mar. 1 - 2, 2018.
  Shen, Zheng
  
• Colliding features: two types of closest conjunct agreement. Poster presented at The alphabet of universal grammar, the British Academy, London, the U.K. Jul. 4-5, 2019.
  Shen, Zheng
  
• Coordination in the World’s Languages. Data set. Goethe Universität Frankfurt
  Smith, Peter W. & Nelli Kerezova
  
• Morphological and semantic agreement beyond hybrid nouns. in Proceedings of NELS 49.
  Shen, Zheng & Peter W. Smith
  
• The multi-valuation Agreement Hierarchy. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics, 4(1).
  Shen, Zheng
  
• Agree to Agree. Agreement in the Minimalist Program. Language Science Press
  Smith, Peter W. & Johannes Mursell & Katharina Hartmann
  
• Closest Conjunct Agreement in Right Node Raising as minimized ungrammaticality. Poster presented at the 33rd Annual CUNY Human Sentence Processing Conference, UMass, US (online), Mar. 19-21, 2020.
  Shen, Zheng
  
• Gender Agreement with Exclusive Disjunction in Slovenian. Paper presented at SinFonIJA 13, Budapest, Hungary (online), September 24-26, 2020.
  Marušič, Frank Lanko & Zheng Shen
  
• Gender agreement with exclusive disjunction in Slovenian. Paper presented at the 29 Annual Meeting of Formal Approaches to Slavic Linguistics, University of Washington (online), May 8-10, 2020.
  Marušič, Frank Lanko & Zheng Shen
  
• Object agreement and grammatical functions: A re-evaluation. In: Peter W. Smith et al. (eds.), Agree to Agree. Agreement in the Minimalist Program. Language Science Press. 117–147.
  Smith, Peter W.
  
• Person and Number Agreement with Exclusive Disjunction in German. Paper presented at SICOGG 22, Seoul, South Korea, Aug. 12-14, 2020.
  Shen, Zheng
  
• Some remarks on agreement within the Minimalist Programme. In Peter W. Smith et al. (eds.), Agree to Agree. Agreement in the Minimalist Program. Language Science Press. 1–29.
  Smith, Peter W. & Johannes Mursell & Katharina Hartmann
  
• What we can learn from agreement with exclusive disjunction. Invited talk at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (online). May 12, 2020.
  Shen, Zheng
  
• Agreement in Nominal Right Node Raising: An experimental approach. Proceedings of the 23rd Seoul International Conference on Generative Grammar.
  Shen, Zheng
  
• Agreement with Coordinated Subjects in the World's Languages. Data set. Goethe Universität Frankfurt
  Himmelreich, Anke, Melissa Jeckel & Katharina Hartmann & Johannes Mursell
  
• Agreement with Coordinated Subjects in the World’s Languages. Workshop Agreement in Multivaluation Constructions, Goethe Universität Frankfurt, May 20th, 2021 (online).
  Himmelreich, Anke, Melissa Jeckel, Katharina Hartmann & Johannes Mursell
  
• Agreement with Disjoined Subjects in German. WCCFL 39, Apr. 10th, 2021 (online).
  Himmelreich, Anke & Katharina Hartmann
  
• Agreement with Disjoined Subjects in German. Workshop Agreement in Multivaluation Constructions, Goethe Universität Frankfurt, May 19th, 2021.
  Himmelreich, Anke & Katharina Hartmann
  
• Closest agreement in Slavic languages: linear order or hierarchical structure. Plenary talk at the 5th Asian Junior Linguists Conference, International Christian University (online), Jan. 15-16, 2021.
  Shen, Zheng
  
• Coordinate Structure Constraint and Conjunction Agreement. Poster presented at LSA 2021, Jan. 7-10, 2021.
  Shen, Zheng
  
• Gender agreement with exclusive disjunction in Slovenian. Acta Linguistica Academica, 68(4), 516-535.
  Marušič, Lanko, Franc & Shen, Zheng
  
• Agreement with Coordinated Subjects. SynSem Colloqium Universität Potsdam (June 28th, 2022)
  Himmelreich, Anke
  
• Agreement with disjoined subjects in German. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics, 8(1).
  Himmelreich, Anke & Hartmann, Katharina
  
• Conjunction Agreement and the Coordinate Structure Constraint. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics, 46(1).
  Shen, Zheng
  
• Special Collection: Multivaluation in Agreement. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics
  Shen, Zheng, Johannes Mursell, Anke Himmelreich & Katharina Hartmann