Sampang Agreement: Morphology and Syntax

Sampang is a Sino-Tibetan language of the Kiranti branch (see Perry 2026 for a descriptive overview). Like most such languages, it displays agreement with both the subject and the object. This agreement system is not altogether straightforward, however. Sampang agreement shows a number of complications in its realization – we will focus on the issues below:

• A broadly ergative-absolutive agreement pattern cross-cutting a non-isomorphic, but still broadly ergative-absolutive case-system.
• Sensitivity to both syntactic height and participant status of objects.
• Unusual resolved agreement with certain ditransitive verbs (cf. Perry 2024).
• Morphological restrictions on multiple non-singular agreement markers.
• Rampantly mirror-principle violating affix ordering.

This talk will discuss these phenomena in formal terms, making use of a broadly DM-based morphological framework (cf. especially Arregi and Nevins 2012 on Basque) and making use of Deal’s (2023) Interaction-and-Satisfaction model of agreement. Even these do not yield entirely satisfactory results, and some residual issues arising from our approach will be discussed.