Okuzeka
Linguistics & Grammar vocabulary · Syntax

Agreement

Meaning in linguistics & grammar, with examples

/əˈɡriːmənt/nounCommon term

In linguistics & grammar, agreement means: A rule that makes words in a sentence match each other in features such as number, person or gender, as when a singular subject takes a singular verb.

In Turkish: uyum, uygunluk

How it is used

In English the most important case is subject-verb agreement (she works, they work); pronouns also agree with the nouns they refer to. British grammars also use the word concord.

Example sentences

  1. 'The list of names are long' breaks subject-verb agreement, because the head noun is 'list'.

  2. Turkish verbs show person agreement in every tense, but English agreement appears mainly in the third person singular -s.

Common collocations

  • subject-verb agreement
  • number agreement
  • agreement error
  • concord
  • subjectThe part of a clause that usually names who or what does the action or is described, and that the verb agrees with, such as 'my sister' in 'My sister works here'.
  • verbA word that shows an action, event or state, such as run, become or know; in English it changes its form to show tense and agreement.
  • inflectionA change in the form of a word, usually by adding an ending, to show grammatical information such as tense, number, person or case, without making a new word.
  • noun phraseA group of words built around a noun or pronoun that works as one unit, often as subject or object, such as 'the tall man in the blue coat'.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Syntax

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