Agreement in Tsez

Tsez, like most languages of the Nakh-Daghestanian language family to which it belongs, has agreement in terms of noun class. Tsez distinguishes four classes in the singular, but these are collapsed to two in the plural; agreement is shown on most vowel-initial verbs, on some vowel-initial adjectives and adverbs, on some vowel-initial particles, and on some pronouns and numerals. After presenting the basic system, we investigate a number of more complex instances. Under conjunction, Tsez sometimes uses a resolution rule, sometimes adjacency, with interesting differences between and'- and or'-conjunction. Personification in Tsez does not lead to change in noun class, even in cases of agreement with first or second person pronouns. Finally, Tsez allows the possibility of long distance agreement, whereby certain matrix verbs can agree with a noun phrase in a lower clause. We show that this phenomenon is intimately connected with the information structure of the clause, in particular that long distance agreement is required when the noun phrase in the lower clause is topic of that clause; indeed, under certain circumstances long distance agreement can serve distinctively to mark the topic status of a noun phrase in the lower clause