Agreement restrictions through feature gluttony
This talk investigates agreement restrictions in: (i) Icelandic DAT–NOM configurations; (ii) copular clauses in German and Hindi-Urdu; and (iii) multiple-object constructions in object-agreement languages like Kanien’kéha and Oji-Cree, and illustrates how a constrained probe mechanism for Agree combined with the feature gluttony system laid out in Coon & Keine 2021 can account for a wide range of complex phenomena. In all of these cases, problems arise not because agreement fails, but rather because Agree is successful with more than one goal. A probe which has participated in Agree with more than one goal may then create problems down the line for morphological realization. Drawing on evidence from syncretism patterns and ellipsis, I show that this system makes correct predictions about where agreement restrictions do and do not occur, and how they might be obviated in a given language.