Abstract

This paper contrasts two different linguistic models of agreement in natural language. The first is an account of agreement commonly given in complex-feature, "unification-based" theories of Grammar (UBG), where agreeing categories impose constraints on some shared agreement value, and the construction is well-formed only if these constraints are satisfiable or mutually consistent. The second is a simple theory of agreement inspired by Lambek Categorial Grammar (LCG) presented in Bayer and Johnson (1995). In this theory agreement phenomena are modelled in terms of the requirement that arguments must be subsumed by, or logically imply, the corresponding argument specification of a predicate or functor category. We will see that this model, when embedded in the logic of LCG, makes a number of interesting and linguistically correct predictions that are not made by the UBG account. 2 Agreement in UBGs

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