Agreement in Magahi Hindi and BanglaAgreement in Magahi, Hindi and Bangla(A Comparative Study based on Canonicity)

Rit h KRitesh KumarJawaharlal Nehru University

New Delhiriteshkrjnu@gmail.comj @g

Defining Agreement

The term agreement generally refers to “someg g ysystematic covariance between a semantic orformal property of one another”formal property of one another .Agreement is understood in terms of theinteraction of five elements in any utterance orconstruction.

Controller: Element which determines theagreement (like the Subject of the sentence)agreement (like the Subject of the sentence).Target: Element whose form is determined bythe agreementthe agreement.

Defining AgreementDomain: The syntactic environment in which theagreement occurs like clause, phrase or sentence.Features: The agreement features are the respectg pin which the agreement is there like number andgender (each has its own value like number couldbe singular and plural and gender could bemasculine and feminine).Conditions: These are some factors whichaffects agreement but are not directly expressedg y plike the agreement features.

Canonical AgreementCanonical approach to agreement refers to fixing

i f f f hi hup a point of reference from which agreement canbe caliberated cross-linguistically.It requires setting up a 'canon', which need not bethe most frequent feature across languages. Inthe most frequent feature across languages. Infact, there need not be a real instance of thecanonical agreement.canonical agreement.The extent of the canonicity of an agreement isd t i d b th i it f th diff tdetermined by the canonicity of the differentfeatures involved in agreement, which, in turn, isd i d b l i idetermined by several criteria.

Canonical AgreementCanonical Agreementh i l f f h fi l hThe canonical features of the five elements that

interact during agreement may be broadly setup as follows:

Controller: It is present in theController: It is present in thesentence, has overt expressions of features

d i i il f hi ll th tiand agrees in a similar fashion all the time.Target: The agreement marking isg g gobligatory on the target. It should beregular as well as productive. It has boundregular as well as productive. It has boundexpressions of agreement. And the targethas only one controllerhas only one controller.

Canonical Agreement

Domain: The agreement is local andgasymmetric (for example, the gender of theadjective depends on the noun but vice-j pversa is not possible).F t Th f t d t ffFeatures: The feature does not offer anychoice in values and the feature value ofh ll d h h ld hthe controller and the target should match.Conditions: There should not be anyConditions: There should not be anycondition on the agreement and it shouldhappen in all situationshappen in all situations.

Th Th P i i lThe Three Principles

The three general, mutually compatiblei i l ( hi h diff t it i fprinciples (on which different criteria of

canonicity depends) governing thecanonical agreement are:

C i l t i d d t thCanonical agreement is redundant ratherthan informative.It is syntactically simple.The closer the expression of agreement isThe closer the expression of agreement isto inflectional morphology, the more

i l th t icanonical the agreement is.

The Present Paper

The present paper compares the agreementp p p p gsystem of the three Indo-Aryan languages –Magahi, Hindi and Bangla – in terms of theirg , gcanonicity.Th t tt i th th l iThe agreement pattern in the three languages isstudied in the light of the twenty criteria givento measure the canonicity of the five elementsof agreement and finally that of the agreementg y gitself.

Controllers

Criteria 1 states that the presence of the pcontroller is more canonical than its absence.In all the three languages controller isIn all the three languages, controller is present, except in cases of pro-drop, where the

i d d F lpronoun is dropped. For example:rɑm pətnɑ ɡeləi. (Magahi)p ɡ ( g )rɑm pətnɑ ɡəjɑ. (Hindi)

t l (B l )rɑm pɑtnɑ ɡɛlo. (Bangla)

ControllersCriteria 2: Controller having overt expressions ofagreement features is more canonical than that havingagreement features is more canonical than that havingcovert expressions.None of the three languages is canonical according toNone of the three languages is canonical according tothis criteria. In Hindi, gender is generally not marked onthe controller while person and honorificity arethe controller, while person and honorificity aregenerally marked only for the pronominal controllers.For example there is no difference in the controller inFor example, there is no difference in the controller inweh geja and weh geji even though the agreementfeature of gender is there.feature of gender is there.Number is, however, generally marked on bothpronominal and non proper nominalspronominal and non- proper nominals.

Controllers

In Magahi, the agreement feature ofg ghonorificity is generally not marked on thecontrollers. For example, ʊ dekʰəlkəi (-Hon.)p , ̪ ( )and ʊ de̪kʰəlt ̪h in (+Hon.). However, person ismarked on the controller. e.g., ʊ dekʰəlkəi vs.marked on the controller. e.g., ʊ de̪k əlkəi vs.həm de̪kʰli.In Bangla, both honorificity and person aremarked on the controller. e.g., ɑmi de̪kʰlɑm(1P) vs. tʊ̪mi de̪kʰle (2P, -Hon) vs. ɑpnide̪kʰlen (2P, +Hon.).̪ ( , )

Controllers

Criteria 3: A consistent controller is morecanonical than a hybrid controller.A consistent controller is one which controls aA consistent controller is one which controls afixed set of agreement features on all thet t i t th h b id t ll hi htargets, as against the hybrid controllers whichcontrol different features depending on thetarget.According to this criteria all the threeAccording to this criteria, all the threelanguages are canonical, as they have consistentcontrollerscontrollers.

Controllers

Criteria 4: The languages in which theg gcontroller's part of speech is irrelevant is morecanonical than those where there are differentrules depending on the part of speech of thecontrollerscontrollers.According to this criteria, the three languagesare quite non-canonical, as we have seen earlierthat pronouns require different rules ofp qagreement.

Targets

Criteria 5: Inflectional marking for thegagreement features is the most canonicalfollowed by the clitics while free word isfollowed by the clitics while free word isthe least canonical.All the three languages are purelycanonical as in all of these the agreementcanonical as in all of these the agreementfeatures are marked in the form ofinflections (suffixes only) on the target.

Targets

Criteria 6: Canonical agreement is markedgobligatorily.Both Hindi and Bangla agreement is completelyBoth Hindi and Bangla agreement is completelycanonical, as far as this criteria is concerned.However, in Magahi, the marking of agreementfeature for person and honorificity isfeature for person and honorificity isoptional, when the object of the sentence is oneof the controllers Thus both 'həm ʊnkɑof the controllers.Thus both həm ʊnkɑde̪kʰəliəin' and 'həm ʊnkɑ de̪kʰəlio' have thesame meaningsame meaning.

TargetsCriteria 7: The canonical marking is done byregular inflectional morphology as against thatregular inflectional morphology as against thatby suppletion.The three languages seem to be quitecanonical, when judged by this criteria.j g yCriteria 8: The productive marking of agreementis more canonical than the sporadic markingis more canonical than the sporadic marking.Again the three languages are canonical as theg g gmarking is highly productive in all the threelanguages.g g

TargetsCriteria 9: Alliterative agreement is more canonicalthan opaque.Alliterative implies that the same agreement markerAlliterative implies that the same agreement markeris used across different targets, irrespective of itspart of speech.part of speech.Hindi is quite alliterative as far as gender and

b t i d i d d fnumber agreement is used, as -i and -e are used forfeminine and plural, generally. However, in severalother cases it is q ite opaq eother cases it is quite opaque.Magahi and Bangla are also quite opaque languages.

Targets

Criteria 10: When the target agrees only ing g ythe absence of the controller, it is a non-canonical agreement in comparison to thecanonical agreement in comparison to thecases where targets always agree.As we have seen earlier, in case of theselanguages the targets alwayslanguages, the targets alwaysagree, irrespective of the presence orabsence of the controller and so they fallunder the canon.under the canon.

Targets

Criteria 11: Target agreeing with one controllerg g gis canonical while its agreeing with multiplecontrollers is not.Hindi and Bangla, again presents a very

i l i t ith b th l h icanonical picture, with both languages havingonly one controller at a time.However, in Magahi, under someconditions there is simultaneous agreement ofconditions, there is simultaneous agreement ofthe honorificity and person of the object as wellas the subjectas the subject.

Targets

Criteria 12: The cases where target has nogchoice of controllers are more canonical thanwhere targets have choices.gHindi and Bangla are, again, quite canonicalf th i t f i f thi it ifrom the point of view of this criteria.But Magahi, as I have illustrated above, have aBut Magahi, as I have illustrated above, have achoice of agreeing with the object, thus, makingit non-canonical according to this criteriait non-canonical according to this criteria.

Targets

Criteria 13: The languages in which the target'sg g gpart of speech is irrelevant is more canonicalthan those where there are different rulesdepending on the part of speech of the targets.It i i il t it i 4 ( li bl fIt is similar to criteria 4 (applicable forcontrollers) but according to this criteria, thethree languages are canonical, as opposed to theconclusion according the criteria 4.g

Domains

Criteria 14: The asymmetric agreement is morey gcanonical than the symmetric agreement.It implies that the target stands in a particularIt implies that the target stands in a particularform because of the properties of the controller

d it i t th th t b th t d i thand it is not the case that both stand in thesimilar form because of the same externalreason.Clearly the three languages are quite canonicalClearly the three languages are quite canonicalin nature

DomainsCriteria 15: Agreement in local domain is morecanonical than that in the non-local domain.It implies that in order for the agreement to beIt implies that in order for the agreement to becanonical, the distance between the controller and thetarget should be as small as possible.g pHindi is a mixture of both local (adjective-nounagreement) and non-local (subject-verb) agreementagreement) and non-local (subject-verb) agreement.However, in both Bangla and Magahi, we rarely findl l h i l hlocal agreement; so they are more non-canonical thanHindi.

DomainsCriteria 16: In canonical cases, a given domain will bea member of a set of domains, following a generalrather than specific syntactic rule.Thus a situation like that of Hindi where informationconcerning a particular controller (like the gender andg p ( gnumber of a subject) is expressed more than once (likeattributive modifier agreeing with head noun, relativewith antecedent, verb with subject, etc.) in differentdomains is more canonical than that of Magahi andBangla where the information is expressed only once(subject/object-verb agreement).

FeaturesCriteria 17: Lexical feature is more canonical than thenon-lexical one.Thus features which are based on formal assignmentThus features which are based on formal assignmentfor agreement are more canonical than those whereagreement is more semantically based.g yHindi is a more canonical language as far as genderagreement is concerned since it has formal assignmentagreement is concerned since it has formal assignmentand not based on semantics.H M hi d B l i bHowever Magahi and Bangla again seems to be non-canonical according to this criteria.

Features

Criteria 18: In a situation, where given the, gsame controller, target, domain and featurespecifications of the controller if there is aspecifications of the controller, if there is achoice of giving different feature value foragreement then it is non canonicalagreement then it is non-canonicalagreement.All the three languages of my study arecanonical in this sense since the featurecanonical in this sense since the featurevalues are fixed given a particular controller

d d iand domain.

Features

C it i 19 F t h i t hiCriteria 19: Features having matching values on both the controllers and the targets are more canonical than those having non-matching valueshaving non-matching values.Again the three languages –g g gMagahi, Bangla and Hindi – are typically canonical according to this criteriacanonical according to this criteria.

C di iConditionsCriteria 20: There should not be any furthercondition on the agreement for it to be canonical.It implies that after the controller, target, domainand features for a particular agreementand features for a particular agreementconstruction have been specified, that shouldconstitute the full specification and no furtherconstitute the full specification and no furthercondition should alter it.In Hindi, Bangla and Magahi, I did not comeacross any such conditions and so they arey ycanonical in this regard too.

A Comparative SummaryCriteria Magahi Bangla HindiControllersControllersC-1 C C CC-2 NC NC NCC-3 C C CC-4 NC NC NCT tTargetsC-5 C C CC-6 NC C CC-6 NC C CC-7 C C CC-8 C C C

C-9 NC C C

C 10 C C CC-10 C C C

A Comparative SummaryCriteria Magahi Bangla HindiC-11 NC C CC 11 NC C CC-12 NC C CC-13 C C CDomainsC-14 C C CC 15 C C NCC-15 C C NCC-16 NC NC CFeaturesFeaturesC-17 NC NC CC-18 C C C

C-19 C C C

ConditionsConditionsC-20 C C C

A Comparative ChartNon-Canonical Canonical

1617

12

8

43

M hi B l Hi diMagahi Bangla Hindi

The Non-Canonicity ChartMagahi Bangla Hindi

4

2 2 2

1 11 11

00 00 0 0

C t ll T t D i F t C ditiControllers Targets Domains Features Conditions

InferencesIn 13 out of 20 criteria, Hindi, Bangla and Magahi aresimilar, as far as canonical agreement is concerned.Magahi agreement is non-canonical according to 8Magahi agreement is non canonical according to 8criteria (2 in controllers, 4 in targets and 1 each indomains and features).)Bangla agreement is non-canonical according to 4criteria (2 in controllers and 1 each in domains andcriteria (2 in controllers, and 1 each in domains andfeatures).Hi di i i l i l 3 i i (2Hindi agreement is non-canonical in only 3 criteria (2in controllers, and 1 in domains).

InferencesThus we can conclude that Magahi has the most non-canonical agreement system among the threelanguages, followed by Bangla and Hindi.The three languages are identical as far as controllersare concerned.Bangla and Magahi are identical in all aspects exceptthat in target which is in accordance with what isthat in target, which is in accordance with what isexpected.Th Hi di b h di i lThus, Hindi turns out to be the most distinct languagefrom the canonical agreement point of view.

Open toOpen to Questions!Questions!