Agreeing against the odds: When clitic clusters trigger agreement
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Abstract This paper investigates split ergativity in Laki (Northwestern Iranian). Present-stem verbs follow the accusative alignment and past-stem verbs follow the ergative alignment. We argue that T and v are two loci of agreement in the ergative alignment. As a result of an Agree relation with v, the φ-features of the external argument are realized as a clitic. However, we argue that obtaining agreement with T depends on the argument type and its accessibility to T. Normally, the objects remain low inside the vP phase and are inaccessible to T (Chomsky’s 2001 Phase Impenetrability Condition). Meanwhile, when the in-situ realization of deficient pronouns violates a clitic cluster restriction, they raise to the edge of the phase. This movement leads to an Agree relation between T and the pronoun. We show that deficient pronouns remain low only when their in-situ realization does not violate the clitic cluster restriction. In this vP-internal position, a deficient pronoun is inaccessible for an Agree relation with T, leading to its realization as a pronominal clitic. We show that agreement in Ardalani Kurdish closely parallels the agreement in Laki, except that it lacks a clitic cluster restriction. Without this restriction, a deficient pronoun remains in situ, and crucially its low realization consistently correlates with the absence of agreement. In line with previous findings (Johns 2000; Deal 2016; Haig 2017; Carrier 2020; Yuan 2022), we conclude that ergativity is not a unitary phenomenon. Rather, it should be characterized as a system resulting from the interaction between various parameters.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.002 | 0.013 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.002 | 0.003 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.004 | 0.004 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.003 |
| Research integrity | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.009 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".