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Article published In:
Studies in Language
Vol. 43:3 (2019) ► pp.585–627

Syntactic and semantic agreement in Eegimaa (Banjal)

An account of lexical hybrids in an African noun class system

| University of York

Typological research on agreement systems recognises syntactic and semantic agreement as the two main types of agreement, with the former considered to be more canonical. An examination of different manifestations of semantic agreement found in the Gújjolaay Eegimaa [1] 1 noun class (non sex based gender) system is proposed in this paper from the perspective of Canonical Typology, and the findings are related to the Agreement Hierarchy predictions. The results show that Eegimaa has hybrid nouns and constructional mismatches which trigger semantically based agreement mismatches, both in gender and number between controller nouns and certain targets. This paper shows that Eegimaa has two main subtypes of semantic agreement: human semantic agreement and locative semantic agreement. The data and the analysis proposed here reveal novel results according to which these two types of semantic agreement behave differently in relation to the Agreement Hierarchy.

Keywords: agreement mismatches, noun class, canonical typology, Jóola, Atlantic, Niger-Congo
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Definition of terms
    • 2.1A working definition of agreement
    • 2.2Canonical typology
  • 3.Summary of the Eegimaa noun class system
    • 3.1The noun class system
    • 3.2Syntactic agreement in Eegimaa
  • 4.Hybrid nouns in Eegimaa
    • 4.1Lexical hybrids
      • 4.1.1One full lexical hybrid
      • 4.1.2Hybrids in the plural only
    • 4.2Genre-specific mismatches: Proverbs, songs and generic propositions
  • 5.Constructional mismatches
    • 5.1Locatives in Eegimaa
    • 5.2Human collectivity nouns
    • 5.3Pure location nouns
      • 5.3.1Pure location nouns describing human collectivities
      • 5.3.2Pure location nouns with no human referents
      • 5.3.3Agreement with nouns denoting containers
      • 5.3.4Time location nouns
    • 5.4Conjoined noun phrases
  • 6.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 18 November 2019
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.14023.sag
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