Features and Agreement

TL;DR

This paper compares two theoretical accounts of agreement in grammar, demonstrating that an extended Lambek Categorial Grammar can handle problematic constructions better than traditional unification-based approaches.

Contribution

It introduces a feature extension to Lambek Categorial Grammar that improves its ability to model agreement phenomena.

Findings

LCG with feature extension accounts for problematic agreement constructions

Unification-based grammars face limitations with certain agreement phenomena

The extended LCG provides a more comprehensive framework for agreement analysis

Abstract

This paper compares the consistency-based account of agreement phenomena in `unification-based' grammars with an implication-based account based on a simple feature extension to Lambek Categorial Grammar (LCG). We show that the LCG treatment accounts for constructions that have been recognized as problematic for `unification-based' treatments.