Agreement (linguistics)

A grammatical dependency in which one expression’s form covaries with person, number, gender, case or another feature of a related controller.

Version

v2 · 2026-09-19 · History

Domain-specific #

3232

Domain group

Humanities

Origin domain

Linguistics & Semiotics

Subdomain

Morphosyntax → Linguistics & Semiotics

Aliases

Concord

Core Idea

Agreement may be syntactic, semantic or default, can target verbs, adjectives, determiners or pronouns and differs from government because the controller supplies a matching value rather than merely assigning a fixed form. A controller bears or determines grammatical features, dependency and locality rules identify a target and morphology realizes corresponding feature values, with resolution rules handling coordination and mismatches. The abstraction is therefore identified by a declared carrier, a transformation or constraint over that carrier, and an invariant that tells an analyst whether the named structure is genuinely present.

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Matching Words

When we talk, some words have to match each other. You say the dog runs but the dogs run, because run changes to match whether there is one dog or many. That matching between words is called agreement.

Words That Must Match

In grammar, agreement means one word changes its form to match a feature of another word. In English, a verb matches its subject: she walks, but they walk. In many languages, adjectives and words like the also match the noun in things like number (one or many) or gender. The word that decides the feature is the controller, and the word that changes to match is the target. Sometimes the matching goes by meaning instead of grammar, like the team are winning in British English, and sometimes there are special rules when things are joined with and.

Controller–Target Feature Matching

Agreement is a grammatical relationship where one element, the target, shows a form that matches features of another element, the controller. Features can include number, person, gender or case. Targets can be verbs, adjectives, determiners or pronouns, depending on the language. Agreement is different from government: in government, one word simply requires another to take a fixed form (like a preposition requiring a particular case), while in agreement the controller supplies a value that the target copies. Agreement can be syntactic (matching grammatical form), semantic (matching meaning, as with collective nouns), or a default form when there's no clear controller. Special rules decide what happens with coordinated subjects like 'you and I' or when features don't line up.

 

Agreement is a morphosyntactic relation in which a controller bears or determines grammatical features and a target, identified by dependency and locality rules, realizes corresponding feature values through its morphology. Targets include verbs, adjectives, determiners and pronouns. Agreement may be syntactic, semantic (notional) or default, and resolution rules handle coordinated controllers and feature mismatches. It differs from government: a governor assigns a fixed form irrespective of its own features, whereas in agreement the controller supplies a matching value. A proper analysis states the language and construction, the controller and target, the syntactic relation and domain, the feature and its possible values, the overt exponents, the direction and locality of the dependency, default and resolution rules, semantic or notional exceptions, and the corpus or elicited evidence. Without these, superficial co-occurrence of similar forms can be mistaken for agreement.

Scope of Application

Agreement (linguistics) belongs to morphosyntax and is useful where the analyst can specify the typed morphosyntax carrier, including objects, relations, parameters, conventions, evidence, boundaries, and comparison targets, then evaluate the language and construction, controller and target, syntactic relation and domain, agreement feature and possible values, overt exponents, direction and locality, default or resolution rules, semantic or notional exceptions and corpus or elicited evidence are explicit. The scope is broad within that domain but bounded by the need for the language and construction, controller and target, syntactic relation and domain, agreement feature and possible values, overt exponents, direction and locality, default or resolution rules, semantic or notional exceptions and corpus or elicited evidence are explicit.

Clarity

The abstraction clarifies a crowded vocabulary by making the language and construction, controller and target, syntactic relation and domain, agreement feature and possible values, overt exponents, direction and locality, default or resolution rules, semantic or notional exceptions and corpus or elicited evidence are explicit the center of the account. A claim should name the carrier, the governing operation or relation, the applicable assumptions, and the recognition test.

Manages Complexity

Without the abstraction, an analyst must reason directly over many local details: the carrier roles, admissibility assumptions, competing conventions, derived invariants, boundary cases, and proof or validation obligations specific to Agreement (linguistics). Agreement (linguistics) compresses them into the roles in the structural signature. That compression permits comparison across instances without erasing the variables that determine validity. It also exposes which details may be varied safely and which are constitutive.

Abstract Reasoning

1. Identify the carrier. State what the elements, states, objects, or observations are: the typed morphosyntax carrier, including objects, relations, parameters, conventions, evidence, boundaries, and comparison targets. Reject examples whose alleged carrier belongs to a different problem.
2. Lock the constitutive rule. Express the language and construction, controller and target, syntactic relation and domain, agreement feature and possible values, overt exponents, direction and locality, default or resolution rules, semantic or notional exceptions and corpus or elicited evidence are explicit independently of one notation or implementation.

Knowledge Transfer

Knowledge transfers strongly among subfields of morphosyntax because they reuse the typed morphosyntax carrier, including objects, relations, parameters, conventions, evidence, boundaries, and comparison targets, A controller bears or determines grammatical features, dependency and locality rules identify a target and morphology realizes corresponding feature values, with resolution rules handling coordination and mismatches., and type the carrier, state every parameter and convention in the definition, test that the language and construction, controller and target, syntactic relation and domain, agreement feature and possible values, overt exponents, direction and locality, default or resolution rules, semantic or notional exceptions and corpus or elicited evidence are explicit, compare the nearest accepted identity, and report counterexamples, uncertainty, and limiting cases.

Relationships to Other Abstractions

Current abstraction Agreement (linguistics) Domain-specific

Parents (1) — outgoing typed relations

• Agreement (linguistics) is a kind of Dependency Prime

  It remains its own entry because its identity is fixed by the language and construction, controller and target, syntactic relation and domain, agreement feature and possible values, overt exponents, direction and locality, default or resolution rules, semantic or notional exceptions and corpus or elicited evidence.

Hierarchy path (1) — routes to 1 parentless root

• Agreement (linguistics) → is a kind of Dependency

Neighborhood in Abstraction Space

Agreement (linguistics) sits in a crowded region of the domain-specific corpus (9^th percentile for distinctiveness): several abstractions share nearly its structure, so a description that fits it tends to fit its neighbors too.

Family — Grammatical Case & Syntactic Structure (18 abstractions)

Nearest neighbors

• Polypersonal agreement — 0.96
• Morphological parsing — 0.93
• Morpheme — 0.92
• Grammatical person — 0.92
• Word order — 0.91

Computed from structural-signature embeddings · 2026-10-25