SOAS Research Online

Abstract

Maithili (Indo-Aryan; India; Nepal) has a complex agreement system in which many terms and non-terms, including subjects, objects, obliques, extra-clausal ‘deictic referents’, and, crucially, possessors within any of these can potentially control agreement on the verb. Agreement is partly determined by grammatical function and argument structure, but in many instances the functional prominence of the agreement controller—determined by focus and referential features, including respect—overrides syntactic prominence. This is particularly clear when possessors internal to an argument or adjunct can control agreement, even though viable alternatives appear to be available. The functional prominence of the internal possessor also appears to have a syntactic correlate: the possessor that controls agreement may be in a more prominent position within the phrase headed by the possessed nominal, and this is what enables it to participate in clause-level syntactic processes.