Icelandic Verbal Agreement and Pronoun-Antecedent Relations

Abstract

Abstract The primary goal of this chapter is to refine our understanding of the role of finite-verb agreement in pronoun-antecedent relations. It turns out that plural imposters such as “the undersigned and John” trigger first person agreement more easily than singular imposters such as “the undersigned,” and that finite verb agreement plays a surprising role in constraining pronoun-antecedent relations. If an imposter such as “the undersigned and John” triggers third person agreement, it can antecede a first or a third person pronoun in an embedded clause; but if that same imposter triggers first person agreement, then it can only antecede a first person pronoun. This state of affairs suggests that pronouns have a syntactic relation with their antecedent, a relation that is proposed to be mediated by one or more silent functional heads, such as the “context linkers” proposed in H.Á. Sigurðsson (2004, 2010, 2011).