Preminger 2014 — Agreement and Its Failures @cite{preminger-2014} #

@cite{bejar-rezac-2003} @cite{halle-marantz-1993} @cite{harley-ritter-2002} @cite{stiebels-2006} @cite{halpert-2012}

@cite{preminger-2014}, Agreement and Its Failures (MIT Press, LI Monographs 68), applies @cite{bejar-rezac-2003}'s relativized-probing mechanism (with the Person Licensing Condition) to the Kichean Agent Focus construction (Ch. 4) and uses the resulting failure cases to argue for an "obligatory operations" model of φ-Agree (Ch. 5). The fragment in Fragments/Mayan/Kaqchikel/Agreement.lean carries the typology-neutral data (paradigm exponents, person-number cells, argument positions, the empirical AF table); this file adds the analytical apparatus.

Attribution discipline #

Per Preminger's own framing:

The feature geometry [φ] → [PERSON] → [participant] → [author] traces to @cite{harley-ritter-2002}; @cite{preminger-2014} adopts it.
The relativized-probing mechanism and the Person Licensing Condition (PLC) are @cite{bejar-rezac-2003}'s; Preminger §4.1 is titled "Background: The Person Case Constraint, and Béjar and Rezac's (2003) Account of It" and §4.4 is "Applying Béjar and Rezac's (2003) Account to Kichean".
DM Vocabulary insertion for setAVocab/setBVocab follows @cite{halle-marantz-1993}'s Distributed Morphology framework.
What is distinctively Preminger 2014:
- Application of @cite{bejar-rezac-2003} to Kichean AF specifically (Ch 4), with a Kichean-specific structural priority of π⁰ over #⁰ deriving the surface "overflow" pattern.
- Arguments against direct salience-hierarchy primitives (Ch 7), targeted at @cite{stiebels-2006} and similar accounts.
- The "obligatory operations" model of φ-Agree (Ch 5): φ-Agree is obligatory but failure-tolerant; failed Agree surfaces as the Elsewhere (3SG ∅) entry rather than crashing the derivation.

Two-probe relativized probing #

§4.4 derives the Kichean AF agreement target from two independently relativized probes:

π⁰ seeks [participant]: targets 1st/2nd person DPs, skips 3rd.
#⁰ seeks [plural]: targets plural DPs, skips singulars.

The single AF marker reflects π⁰'s output if it succeeds (clitic doubling of the [participant]-bearing argument); otherwise #⁰'s output (the 3PL marker e- by direct exponence); otherwise the Elsewhere (3SG ∅) entry. Person and number probes are applied independently — there is no salience scale.

Why not a hierarchy #

A surface-equivalent hierarchy [+participant] > [+plural] > default would predict the same outputs on the table-(22) cells, but Ch 7 provides five arguments against it (§7.3 summary, p. 127):

Restrictedness (§7.1, p. 124): "salience" effects surface nowhere else in the language — cognitive salience would predict them in regular transitives too.
K'ichee' formal addressee la (p. 124–125): a 2nd-person pronoun that behaves morphosyntactically as 3rd person under AF, contrary to a hierarchy that ranks 2nd ≫ 3rd.
AF person restriction asymmetry (p. 125): hierarchies don't predict why two 1st/2nd persons are blocked but two 3rd plurals are licit.
Morphophonological 1st/2nd vs 3rd asymmetry ("perhaps strongest", §3.4 + p. 125–126, table (148)): 1st/2nd ABS markers stand in the relation <agreement marker> = <strong pronoun> – <initial approximant> (eq. 149) — a clitic-doubling signature. 3rd-person markers don't. A hierarchy can't capture this.
Zulu cross-linguistic parallel (§7.2, p. 127): @cite{halpert-2012}'s analysis of Zulu augmentless nominals uses the same machinery, but operating over augmented/augmentless instead of person/number — substantively different categories that have no plausible "salience" interpretation. The same logic applying to a salience-irrelevant feature contrast undermines the cognitive-salience grounding entirely.

Theorems below verify (3) on the fragment data; (4) is encoded as a smoke check (the fragment carries ABS markers but not strong pronouns, so the genuine eq.-149 relation cannot be verified without extending the fragment); (1), (2), (5) are documented in prose and would require additional fragment data (regular transitives + K'ichee' fragment + Zulu fragment) to formalize.

Cross-references #

Theories/Syntax/Minimalist/PersonGeometry.lean — the substrate: decomposePerson, probeResolutionRank, multi-cited (@cite{harley-ritter-2002}, @cite{bejar-rezac-2003}, @cite{preminger-2014}, @cite{pancheva-zubizarreta-2018}).
Theories/Morphology/DM/VocabSimple.lean — the substrate: Vocabulary, VocabEntry, makePersonVocab.
Phenomena/Agreement/Studies/Scott2023.lean — parallel application of the same DM/Agree machinery to Mam (where Infl's φ-probe is blocked in transitives).
Phenomena/Ergativity/Studies/CoonMateoPedroPreminger2014.lean — Voice/case-flavor side of the same author cluster's Mayan work.