One Mechanism, Two Victims. A study into inter-pardigmatic neutralization in the plural

Abstract

This study investigates the relationship between verb agreement and the neutralization of gender in pluralized pronouns. I will present an empirical study of the importance of having or not having rich agreement of the verb, and account for the presumed correlation within the existing theoretical framework. The results of this study bring cross-linguistic complications to the surface. These complications point to the conclusion that even though patterns of neutralization may be observed, it is hard to argue for a bidirectional, inter-paradigmatic correlation between the neutralization patterns in the two domains. The primary goal of this paper was to examine if there is reason to assume that neutralization can inter-paradigmatically target domains in the morphology.