Inflected intensifiers: the structure dependence of parasitic agreement.

Abstract

This article examines parasitic agreement in Dutch, that is, the appearance of an inflection whose existence is dependent on the presence of a "real" inflection. Specifically, an intensifying degree word (optionally) carries an inflection that is associated with a gradable attributive adjective. The article lays bare various properties of, and constraints on, the phenomenon of parasitic agreement. An important conclusion that follows from the analysis of parasitic agreement is that this phenomenon is structure dependent, just like the parasitic gap phenomenon. The structural configuration that is claimed to be at the basis of parasitic agreement is the Spec-head relationship.