Timing-driven derivation of a NOM/ACC agreement pattern

Abstract

This paper reports a case of NOM/ACC alignment in agreement that results from the relative timing of A- movement and φ-agreement, and not from the position of φ-probes or the sensitivity of agreement to case. The NOM/ACC phenomenon discussed here is object agreement in Ndebele, which can be characterized as the systematic inability of Voice to agree with the highest argument, despite c-commanding it. I argue that this pattern follows from a general property of Bantu languages whereby every φ-probe obligatorily co-occurs with an EPP feature. In Voice, EPP probes before φ, removing the highest argument from the probing domain of φ, which gives rise to the unique status of the highest DP in terms of agreement. I explain why the bleeding of agreement by movement cannot be undone by cyclic expansion of the φ-probe and instead leads to a rigid downward agreement pattern. Finally, I conclude that the pervasive cooccurrence of agreement and movement in Bantu languages is the result of parametric cooccurrence of EPP and φ (Baker, 2003; Collins, 2004), and is not an indication that the two operations are triggered by the same feature, nor that Agree is upward in Bantu.