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Share Paper 3763

Allocutive and Object Agreement Complementarity: The FinP in Maithili
Preeti Kumari, Miok Pak, and Pritha Chandra
333-342 (complete paper or proceedings contents)

Abstract

This paper analyses the interaction between allocutive and subject/object honorificity agreement in Maithili. Maithili allows allocutive agreement and subject agreement to co-occur, whereas object agreement is always blocked by allocutive agreement. This paper shows that allocutive and object agreement are hosted on the Fin head. Fin prefers probing upward for agreement with the speech addressee, resulting in allocutivity, and only when the addressee is not present, it looks down and probes for the object. The interaction between allocutive and object agreement shows Maithili prefers Upward Agree over Downward Agree. As for subject agreement, it is hosted on the T head, which allows it to co-occur with allocutive or object agreement.

Published in

Proceedings of the 41st West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics
edited by Nikolas Webster, Yağmur Kiper, Richard Wang, and Sichen Larry Lyu
Table of contents
Printed edition: $545.00