Agreement (linguistics)

In linguistics, agreement or concord (abbreviated ) occurs when a word changes form depending on the other words to which it relates. It is an instance of inflection, and usually involves making the value of some grammatical category (such as gender or person) "agree" between varied words or parts of the sentence.

For example, in Standard English, one may say I am or he is, but not "I is" or "he am". This is because English grammar requires that the verb and its subject agree in person. The pronouns I and he are first and third person respectively, as are the verb forms am and is. The verb form must be selected so that it has the same person as the subject in contrast to notional agreement, which is based on meaning.

By category

Agreement generally involves matching the value of some grammatical category between different constituents of a sentence (or sometimes between sentences, as in some cases where a pronoun is required to agree with its antecedent or referent). Some categories that commonly trigger grammatical agreement are noted below.

Person

Agreement based on grammatical person is found mostly between verb and subject. An example from English (I am vs. he is) has been given in the introduction to this article.

Agreement between pronoun (or corresponding possessive adjective) and antecedent also requires the selection of the correct person. For example, if the antecedent is the first person noun phrase Mary and I, then a first person pronoun (we/us/our) is required; however, most noun phrases (the dog, my cats, Jack and Jill, etc.) are third person, and are replaced by a third person pronoun (he/she/it/they etc.).

Number

Agreement based on grammatical number can occur between verb and subject, as in the case of grammatical person discussed above. In fact the two categories are often conflated within verb conjugation patterns: there are specific verb forms for first person singular, second person plural and so on. Some examples:

I really am (1st pers. singular) vs. We really are (1st pers. plural)
The boy sings (3rd pers. singular) vs. The boys sing (3rd pers. plural)

Again as with person, there is agreement in number between pronouns (or their corresponding possessives) and antecedents:

The girl did her job vs. The girls did their job

Agreement also occurs between nouns and their specifier and modifiers, in some situations. This is common in languages such as French and Spanish, where articles, determiners and adjectives (both attributive and predicative) agree in number with the nouns they qualify:

() vs. ()
() vs. ()

In English this is not such a common feature, although there are certain determiners that occur specifically with singular or plural nouns only:

One big car vs. Two big cars
Much great work vs. Many great works

Gender

In languages in which grammatical gender plays a significant role, there is often agreement in gender between a noun and its modifiers. For example, in French:

(; is masculine) vs. (; is feminine)

Such agreement is also found with predicate adjectives: () vs. (). However, in some languages, such as German, this is not the case; only attributive modifiers show agreement:

(, with inflection) vs. (, without)

In the case of verbs, gender agreement is less common, although it may still occur, for example in Arabic verbs where the second and third persons take different inflections for masculine and feminine subjects. In the French compound past tense, the past participle – formally an adjective – agrees in certain circumstances with the subject or with an object (see for details). In Russian and most other Slavic languages, the form of the past tense agrees in gender with the subject, again due to derivation from an earlier adjectival construction.

There is also agreement in gender between pronouns and their antecedents. Examples of this can be found in English (although English pronouns principally follow natural gender rather than grammatical gender):

The man reached his destination vs. The ship reached her/its destination

For more detail see Gender in English.

Case

In languages that have a system of cases, there is often agreement by case between a noun and its modifiers. For example, in German:

(, nominative case) vs. (, genitive case)

In fact, the modifiers of nouns in languages such as German and Latin agree with their nouns in number, gender and case; all three categories are conflated together in paradigms of declension.

Case agreement is not a significant feature of English (only personal pronouns and the pronoun who have any case marking). Agreement between such pronouns can sometimes be observed:

Who came first – he or his brother? vs. Whom did you see – him or his brother?

Alliterative agreement

A rare type of agreement that phonologically copies parts of the head rather than agreeing with a grammatical category. For example, in Bainouk:

In this example, what is copied is not a prefix, but rather the initial syllable of the head .

By language

Languages can have no conventional agreement whatsoever, as in Japanese or Malay; barely any, as in English; a small amount, as in spoken French; a moderate amount, as in Greek or Latin; or a large amount, as in Swahili.

English

Modern English does not have a particularly large amount of agreement, although it is present.

Apart from verbs, the main examples are the determiners this and that, which become these and those respectively when the following noun is plural:

: this woman — these women

: that dog — those dogs

All regular verbs (and nearly all irregular ones) in English agree in the third-person singular of the present indicative by adding a suffix of either -s or -es. The latter is generally used after stems ending in the sibilants sh, ch, ss, or zz (e.g. he rushes, it lurches, she amasses, it buzzes.)

Present tense of to love:

{| class="wikitable"

! rowspan="2"| Person

! colspan="2"| Number

! Singular !! Plural

! First

| I love|| we love

! Second

| you love|| you love

! Third

| he/she/it loves|| they love

In the present tense (indicative mood), the following verbs have irregular conjugations for the third-person singular:

to have: has
to do: does
to say: says

There is a distinction between irregular verb conjugations in the spoken language and irregular spellings of words in the written language. Linguistics generally concerns itself with the natural, spoken language, and not with spelling conventions in the written language. The verb to go is often given as an example of a verb with an irregular present tense conjugation, on account of adding "-es" instead of just "-s" for the third person singular conjugation. However, this is merely an arbitrary spelling convention. In the spoken language, the present tense conjugation of to go is entirely regular. If we were to classify to go as irregular based on the spelling of goes, then by the same reasoning, we would have to include other regular verbs with irregular spelling conventions such as to veto/vetoes, to echo/echoes, to carry/carries, to hurry/hurries, etc. In contrast, the verb to do is actually irregular in its spoken third-person singular conjugation, in addition to having a somewhat irregular spelling. While the verb do rhymes with shoe, its conjugation does does not rhyme with shoes; the verb does rhymes with fuzz.

Conversely, the verb to say, while it may appear to be regular based on its spelling, is in fact irregular in its third person singular present tense conjugation: Say is pronounced , but says is pronounced . Say rhymes with pay, but says does not rhyme with pays.

The highly irregular verb to be is the only verb with more agreement than this in the present tense.

Present tense of to be:

{| class="wikitable"

! rowspan="2"| Person

! colspan="2"| Number

! Singular !! Plural

! First

| I am|| we are

! Second

| you are|| you are

! Third

| he/she/it is|| they are

In English, defective verbs generally show no agreement for person or number, they include the modal verbs: can, may, shall, will, must, should, ought.

In Early Modern English agreement existed for the second person singular of all verbs in the present tense, as well as in the past tense of some common verbs. This was usually in the form -est, but -st and -t also occurred. This does not affect the endings for other persons and numbers.

Example present tense forms: thou wilt, thou shalt, thou art, thou hast, thou canst.

Example past tense forms: thou wouldst, thou shouldst, thou wast, thou hadst, thou couldst

Note also the agreement shown by to be even in the subjunctive mood.

{| class="wikitable"

|+Imperfect subjunctive of to be in Early modern English

! rowspan="2"| Person

! colspan="2"| Number

! Singular !! Plural

! First

| (if) I was|| (if) we were

! Second

| (if) thou wert|| (if) you were

! Third

| (if) he/she/it was|| (if) they were

However, for nearly all regular verbs, a separate thou form was no longer commonly used in the past tense. Thus the auxiliary verb to do is used, e.g. thou didst help, not *thou helpedst.

Here are some special cases for subject–verb agreement in English:

Always singular

Indefinite pronouns like one, all, everyone, everything, everybody, nothing, nobody, anyone, anything, anybody, another, etc. are treated as singular (at least in formal written English).

"All's well that ends well."
"One sows, another reaps."
"Together Everyone Achieves More–that's why we're a TEAM."
"If wealth is lost, nothing is lost. If health is lost, something is lost. If the character is lost, everything is lost."
"Nothing succeeds like success."

Exceptions: None is construed in the singular or plural as the sense may require, though the plural is commonly used.

"None so deaf as those who don't hear."
"None prosper by begging."

The pronouns neither and either are singular although they seem to be referring to two things.

Words after each, every, and many a are treated as singular.

From the Washington Post: "India wins cricket World Cup for 1st time in 28 years."

Phrases like more than one, majority of are singular or plural based on the noun it modifies.

"There's more than one way to skin a cat."

Pains and means can be singular or plural but the construction must be consistent. In the sense of wealth, means always takes a plural verb.