Syntactic Changes in Verbal Agreement

This entry discusses changes in verbal agreement, a central aspect of the diachronic relation between morphology and syntax. In particular, verbal agreement is often part of a well‐known grammaticalization process, or linguistic cycle, where pronominal markers become increasingly absorbed into verbal morphology. During this process their function in terms of argument realization changes, from syntactically representing a (pronominal) argument to only agreeing with a nominal argument, which needs to be encoded through a different nominal form. Correspondingly, pronominal markers are typically linked to syntactic topics, while agreement markers are linked to syntactic arguments such as subjects and objects. The entry discusses the details and intricacies of this overall process, drawing on two case studies from Bantu and Western Austronesian languages.