"Agreement" as a perspectivizing device in discourse
The view from French
The description of agreement brings into play a number of different components
and levels of analysis. This chapter’s goal is to show how stating certain
agreement facts requires reference to each of the levels and components available
within the Functional Discourse Grammar model. Agreement’s raison
d’être in discourse concerns the (re)identification and establishment of referents.
Its manifestation depends on the assumed properties of the intended referent
as conceptualised by users, as well as on what is being predicated of it. Thus
agreement is not purely redundant, semantically empty and grammatically
predictable (as is often claimed), but may perform several key functions at the
level of discourse, the chief one of which is the superimposition of a referential
perspective on the intended referent.