Agreement in specificational sentences in Faroese

Abstract

This paper examines the patterns of agreement found in Faroese in sentences where there are two noun phrases with which the verb could potentially agree, a situation that arises in “specificational” or “inverse” copular sentences of the type The problem is/are your parents. It is well-known that in some languages (for example English) agreement is obligatorily with the first noun phrase, while in others (for example Italian) it is obligatorily with the second. Here we show that Faroese robustly exhibits both patterns, and that their distribution is strongly affected by other aspects of the syntax of the sentences in which they occur.