C-agreement or something close to it

Abstract

In this paper we sketch out an account for an until now undiscussed phenomenon in generative syntax, namely the so-called “alls-construction” in Midwestern American English. In this construction, an s-ending is added to all under certain circumstances. We compare and contrast this construction with complementizer agreement in West Germanic. The alls-construction is similar to complementizer agreement in that the s-ending on all, just like the inflection on the complementizer in West Germanic, is sensitive to the agreement features on the embedded subject. Contrasted with complementizer agreement, however, the alls-construction does not allow inflectional morphology to appear on any other constituent than all. Furthermore, inflection on all is only possible when all is introducing an all-pseudo-cleft. We will mainly focus on the construction internal restrictions of the inflection on all. Based on Van Craenenbroeck & Van Koppen (2002), we assert that the alls-construction in Midwestern American English is in structure quite similar to complementizer agreement in West Germanic. We come back to the external restriction on the alls-construction in the final section, where we briefly discuss some issues concerning the pseudo-cleft status of the alls-construction.