The exploration of syntactic links: subject-verb agreement defilement in Sesotho

Abstract

The article explores the violation of grammatical agreement in Sesotho. Grammatical agreement is a significant characteristic in sentence construction. There should be covariance relations between the noun phrase (NP) subject and the device that links it with the verb phrase. However, I have observed that language users violate this agreement relation in their daily conversation. Using the Minimalist Program, sentences collected from native speakers casual conversations were analysed to identify the type of NPs that are commonly associated with the non-corresponding agreement device. The collected sentences were further examined to investigate factors that contribute to the phenomenon. The analysed data reveal that NPs that comprise titles and metaphoric nouns are the ones mostly used in sentences that violate the agreement relation, while lack of knowledge of syntactic rules, semanticity of noun classification and negligence are the contributing factors.