Concordance markers: the left is in control

Marta Scherre & Anthony Naro

Sat. 9-10:40 C

The rules of concord of morphological markers of plurality in Brazilian Portuguese are highly variable in the spoken language and also exhibit certain areas of variation in the standard written language. It is our goal to establish a generalization with respect to the variable control and spread of formal agreement markers. The question we ask is: which part of the clause, phrase, or other unit is it that most often controls marking and where does it spread to most easily? In particular, we will be interested in determining how concordance functions under conditions in which the relationship between the controlling and the controlled elements is obscured or masked by the occurrence of structural complexities or intervening material.

In the case of plural concord within the noun phrase in the spoken language, we demonstrate that the plural markers occur most frequently on markable elements of the noun phrase that occur before, or to the left of, the head and least frequently on elements to the right of the head, independently of linear position. The head itself is most frequently marked when it is in left-most position. Using a different sort of analysis in which each noun phrase is treated as a single datum we show that noun phrases that occur to the left of the verb are more highly marked than elements to the right of the verb.

In the standard written language, there are certain pockets of variation in the use of agreement rules despite the fact that agreement with the head is considered obligatory under most circumstances. One such area of variation is when there are one or more complements following the head noun and the head differs in grammatical number from the complement. Detailed quantitative analysis shows that the left-most phrase, i.e. the head, usually controls agreement, but that when it fails to do so, control passes to the first complement to the right of the head. Any other complement, which may be physically closer to the verb, has no significant effect. In terms of tree configuration, however, the next complement to the right of the head is structurally closer to the verb than the complement physically closest to it. Finally, we present data suggesting that the same mechanism governs agreement in the modern spoken language of Brazil and in 14th - 15th century texts from Portugal, although the data are too scarce to permit a quantitative analysis.

A general principle emerges from all of our results: leftward positioning favors control and presence of marking. When the furthest left position loses priority, control and marking shift to the next left most position available. Thus, left is the most favored position. This is in accord with the principle of salience since left is a position of prominence where topicalized elements are placed.