In the sentence 'The cats walk,' which syntactic element acts as the probe in the Agree operation, and which acts as the goal?
AThe verb 'walk' is the probe; 'the cats' is the goal — the verb searches upward for phi-features to copy
BT (the Tense head, which hosts agreement morphology) is the probe; the DP 'the cats' is the goal — T searches its c-command domain for interpretable phi-features
CThe subject 'the cats' is the probe; T is the goal — the subject's interpretable features attract the functional head
DBoth T and the verb serve as probes simultaneously — agreement is a symmetric relation
In minimalist syntax, T (Tense) carries uninterpretable phi-features (person, number) that must be valued and deleted. It is the probe and searches its c-command domain for a goal with matching interpretable phi-features. The subject DP 'the cats' has interpretable number (plural) and person (third) features — it is the goal. The Agree operation values T's uninterpretable features from the goal and deletes them. The morphological agreement on the verb ('walk' not 'walks' for plural) is the surface reflex of this operation. Agree is asymmetric and directional — probes search, goals are found.
Question 2 Multiple Choice
A language has no overt verbal agreement morphology — verbs never change form based on subject number or person. According to the minimalist Agree framework, what does this most likely imply?
AThe language has no syntactic agreement at all and features are never checked
BThe language may still have Agree operations, but the phi-features on T may be absent or the uninterpretable features may be deleted without any morphological spell-out
CSubjects in this language must always be adjacent to the verb, since Agree requires strict adjacency
DThis language cannot be analyzed within the minimalist program
Morphological realization is distinct from the syntactic Agree operation. A language without agreement morphology may still perform Agree internally — features are valued and deleted without any overt phonological consequence, or those features simply are not part of that language's functional vocabulary. Chinese, for example, lacks agreement morphology but remains analyzable within minimalism. Overt agreement morphology is one possible surface reflex of Agree, not its definition. Option C is wrong: Agree is bounded by c-command and locality conditions, not adjacency.
Question 3 True / False
In the minimalist framework, uninterpretable features must be valued and deleted before transfer to the semantic interface because they contribute nothing to meaning.
TTrue
FFalse
Answer: True
This is the core motivation for Agree. Interpretable features (like number on a noun) contribute to semantic interpretation — they encode whether one or many entities are being discussed. Uninterpretable features (like number on a verb) are purely morphological: a verb being 'singular' has no semantic content. If uninterpretable features reach the semantic interface, the derivation crashes because the interface cannot interpret them. This 'full interpretation' requirement is why feature valuation and deletion are syntactically obligatory — agreement is not stylistic but driven by survival to the interfaces.
Question 4 True / False
Syntactic movement in the minimalist program is triggered by the need to satisfy phrase structure rules, independently of feature-checking requirements.
TTrue
FFalse
Answer: False
In the minimalist program, movement is feature-driven: an element moves only because a feature must be checked that cannot be valued in situ due to locality constraints. When a probe cannot reach its goal within its c-command domain, the goal must move to a position where Agree can apply. There are no movement rules for their own sake — every displacement has a feature-theoretic motivation. This is what unifies wh-movement, subject raising, object shift, and other transformations under a single mechanism (Agree + feature requirements), replacing the earlier stipulated movement rules of GB theory.
Question 5 Short Answer
Explain the distinction between interpretable and uninterpretable features, and why this distinction explains why agreement is obligatory rather than optional in languages that have it.
Think about your answer, then reveal below.
Model answer: Interpretable features contribute to meaning at the semantic interface (e.g., plural on a noun encodes multiplicity). Uninterpretable features have no semantic content (e.g., plural on a verb does not characterize the event) and cannot survive to the semantic interface without crashing the derivation. Because the Agree operation that values and deletes uninterpretable features must complete successfully, agreement is obligatory in any language whose functional heads carry such features.
This reframes agreement from a descriptive morphological pattern to a computationally necessary operation. Languages that 'have agreement' have uninterpretable phi-features on functional heads like T; those features must be valued by Agree or the derivation fails at the semantic interface. Languages without agreement morphology either lack those uninterpretable features or have them with no phonological spell-out. The minimalist insight is that the morphological surface pattern (verb changes form) is secondary — the primary phenomenon is the feature-checking requirement, and morphology is just how some languages make it visible.