C-Agree is local subject-verb agreement in Kipsigis

• Published in: Natural language and linguistic theory Vol. 43; no. 1; pp. 223 - 272
• Main Authors: Driemel, Imke, Kouneli, Maria
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Dordrecht Springer Netherlands 01.02.2025; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Complementizers; Field study; Grammatical agreement; Language; Linguistics; Natural Language Processing (NLP); Nilotic languages; Philosophy of Language; Semantic analysis; Semantics; Social Sciences; Verbs; Complementizer agreement; Attitude semantics; Nilotic; Kipsigis; Complementation; ‘Say’-based complementizers
• ISSN: 0167-806X; 1573-0859
• DOI: 10.1007/s11049-024-09622-8

Upwards-oriented complementizer agreement raises questions about the directionality and locality of agreement. Based on novel data from original fieldwork, we argue that what has been described as an agreeing ‘say’-based complementizer in Kipsigis (Diercks and Rao 2019 ; Diercks et al. 2020 ) is the lexical verb ‘say,’ and what looks like C-Agree is in fact agreement between this verb and its locally introduced (often covert) subject. Our analysis highlights that ‘say’-based complementizers might be of category V, not C, in more languages than previously thought (Koopman 1984 ; Major 2021 ), which means that some instances of what has been described as C-Agree may instantiate standard verbal agreement. Furthermore, we provide a semantic analysis of ‘say’-based complementation in Kipsigis along the lines of contentful eventualities (Hacquard 2006 ; Kratzer 2013a ).