Agreement or concord happens when a word
changes form depending on the other
words to which it relates. It is an
instance of inflection, and usually
involves making the value of some
grammatical category "agree" between
varied words or parts of the sentence.
For example, in Standard English, one
may say I am or he is, but not "I is" or
"he am". This is because the grammar of
the language requires that the verb and
its subject agree in person. The
pronouns I and he are first and third
person respectively, as are the verb
forms am and is. The verb form must be
selected so that it has the same person
as the subject.
The agreement based on overt grammatical
categories as above is formal agreement,
in contrast to notional agreement, which
is based on meaning. For instance, in
American English the phrase The United
Nations is treated as singular for
purposes of agreement even though it is
formally plural.
By category 
Agreement generally involves matching
the value of some grammatical category
between different constituents of a
sentence. Some categories that commonly
trigger grammatical agreement are noted
below.
= Person =
Agreement based on grammatical person is
found mostly between verb and subject.
An example from English has been given
in the introduction to this article.
Agreement between pronoun and antecedent
also requires the selection of the
correct person. For example, if the
antecedent is the first person noun
phrase Mary and I, then a first person
pronoun is required; however, most noun
phrases are third person, and are
replaced by a third person pronoun.
= Number =
Agreement based on grammatical number
can occur between verb and subject, as
in the case of grammatical person
discussed above. In fact the two
categories are often conflated within
verb conjugation patterns: there are
specific verb forms for first person
singular, second person plural and so
on. Some examples:
I really am vs. We really are
The boy sings vs. The boys sing
Again as with person, there is agreement
in number between pronouns and
antecedents:
The girl did her job vs. The girls did
their job
Agreement also occurs between nouns and
their modifiers, in some situations.
This is common in languages such as
French, where articles, determiners and
adjectives agree in number with the
nouns they qualify:
le grand homme vs. les grands hommes
In English this is not such a common
feature, although there are certain
determiners that occur specifically with
singular or plural nouns only:
One big car vs. Two big cars
Much great work vs. Many great works
= Gender =
In languages in which grammatical gender
plays a significant role, there is often
agreement in gender between a noun and
its modifiers. For example, in French:
le grand homme vs. la grande chaise
Such agreement is also found with
predicate adjectives: l'homme est grand
vs. la chaise est grande.
In the case of verbs, gender agreement
is less common, although it may still
occur. For example, in the French
compound past tense, the past participle
agrees in certain circumstances with the
subject or with an object. In Russian
and most other Slavic languages, the
form of the past tense agrees in gender
with the subject.
There is also agreement in gender
between pronouns and antecedents.
Examples of this can be found in
English:
The man reached his destination vs. The
ship reached her/its destination
For more detail see Gender in English.
= Case =
In languages that have a system of
cases, there is often agreement by case
between a noun and its modifiers. For
example, in German:
der gute Mann vs. des guten Mann(e)s
In fact the modifiers of nouns in
languages such as German and Latin agree
with their nouns in number, gender and
case; all three categories are conflated
together in paradigms of declension.
Case agreement is not a significant
feature of English. Agreement between
such pronouns can sometimes be observed:
Who came first – he or his brother? vs.
Whom did you see – him or his brother?
By language 
Languages can have no conventional
agreement whatsoever, as in Japanese or
Malay; barely any, as in English; a
small amount, as in spoken French; a
moderate amount, as in Greek or Latin;
or a large amount, as in Swahili.
= English =
Modern English does not have a
particularly large amount of agreement,
although it is present.
All regular verbs in English agree in
the third-person singular of the present
indicative by adding a suffix of either
-s or -es. The latter is generally used
after stems ending in the sibilants sh,
ch, ss or zz
Present tense of to love:
There are not many irregularities in
this formation:
to have, to go and to do render has,
goes and does.
The highly irregular verb to be is the
only verb with more agreement than this
in the present tense.
Present tense of to be:
Future tense of "to be":
Emphatic future tense of "to be":
Note: the use of shall and the use of
the emphatic tense are rare in Standard
English.
In English, defective verbs generally
show no agreement for person or number,
they include the modal verbs: can, may,
shall, will, must, should, ought.
In Early Modern English agreement
existed for the second person singular
of all verbs in the present tense, as
well as in the past tense of some common
verbs. This was usually in the form
-est, but -st and -t also occurred. Note
that this does not affect the endings
for other persons and numbers.
Example present tense forms: thou wilt,
thou shalt, thou art, thou hast, thou
canst. Example past tense forms: thou
wouldst, thou shouldst, thou wast, thou
hadst, thou couldst
Note also the agreement shown by to be
even in the subjunctive mood.
However, for nearly all regular verbs, a
separate thou form was no longer
commonly used in the past tense. Thus
the auxiliary verb to do is used, e.g.
thou didst help, not thou helpedst.
= Latin =
Compared with English, Latin is an
example of a highly inflected language.
The consequences for agreement are thus:
Verbs must agree in person and number,
and sometimes in gender, with their
subjects. Articles and adjectives must
agree in case, number and gender with
the nouns they modify.
Sample Latin verb: the present
indicative active of portare, to carry:
porto - I carry
portas - you [singular] carry
portat - he carries
portamus - we carry
portatis - you [plural] carry
portant, - they carry
Note also that the inflectional endings
mean it is not necessary to include the
subject pronoun, except for emphasis, or
to avoid ambiguity in complex sentences.
For this reason, Latin is described as a
null-subject language.
= French =
Spoken French always distinguishes the
second person plural, and the first
person plural in formal speech, from
each other and from the rest of the
present tense in all verbs in the first
conjugation other than aller. The first
person plural form and pronoun are now
usually replaced by the pronoun on and a
third person singular verb form in
Modern French. Thus, nous travaillons
becomes on travaille. In most verbs from
the other conjugations, each person in
the plural can be distinguished among
themselves and from the singular forms,
again, when using the traditional first
person plural. The other endings that
appear in written French are often
pronounced the same, except in liaison
contexts. Irregular verbs such as être,
faire, aller, and avoir possess more
distinctly pronounced agreement forms
than regular verbs.
An example of this is the verb
travailler, which goes as follows:
je travaille
tu travailles
il travaille
nous travaillons, or on travaille
vous travaillez
ils travaillent
On the other hand, a verb like partir
has:
je pars
tu pars
il part
nous partons, or on part
vous partez
ils partent
The final S or T is silent, and the
other three forms sound differently from
one another and from the singular forms.
Adjectives agree in gender and number
with the nouns that they modify in
French. As with verbs, the agreements
are sometimes only shown in spelling
since forms that are written with
different agreement suffixes are
sometimes pronounced the same; although
in many cases the final consonant is
pronounced in feminine forms, but silent
in masculine forms. Most plural forms
end in -s, but this consonant is only
pronounced in liaison contexts, and it
is determinants that help understand if
the singular or plural is meant. The
participles of verbs agree in gender and
number with the subject or object in
some instances.
Articles, possessives and other
determinants also decline for number and
for gender, with plural determinants
being the same for both genders. This
normally produces three forms: one for
masculine singular nouns, one for
feminine singular nouns, and another for
plural nouns of either gender:
Definite article: le, la, les
Indefinite article: un, une, des
Partitive article: du, de la, des
Possessives: mon, ma, mes
Demonstratives: ce, cette, ces
Notice that some of the above also
change if the following word begins with
a vowel: le and la become l′, du and de
la become de l′, ma becomes mon and ce
becomes cet.
= Hungarian =
In Hungarian, verbs have polypersonal
agreement, which means they agree with
more than one of the verb's arguments:
not only its subject but also its
object. Difference is made between the
case when there is a definite object and
the case when the object is indefinite
or there is no object at all. Examples:
Szeretek, szeretem, szeretlek; szeret,
szereti. Of course, nouns or pronouns
may specify the exact object. In short,
there is agreement between a verb and
the person and number of its subject and
the specificity of its object.
See Definite and indefinite conjugations
The predicate agrees in number with the
subject and if it is copulative, both
parts agree in number with the subject.
For example: A könyvek érdekesek voltak
"The books were interesting": the plural
is marked on the subject as well as both
the adjectival and the copulative part
of the predicate.
Within noun phrases, adjectives do not
show agreement with the noun, e.g. a
szép könyveitekkel "with your nice
books": the suffixes of the plural, the
possessive "your" and the case marking
"with" are only marked on the noun.
= Scandinavian languages =
In Scandinavian languages, adjectives
are declined according to the gender,
number, and definiteness of the noun
they modify. In some cases, predicative
adjectives appear to disagree with their
subjects. This phenomenon is referred to
as Pancake sentences.
= Slavic languages =
Most Slavic languages are highly
inflected, except for Bulgarian and
Macedonian. The agreement is similar to
Latin, for instance between adjectives
and nouns in gender, number, case and
animacy. The following examples are from
Serbian:
živim u malom stanu "I live in a small
apartment"
živim u maloj kući "I live in a small
house"
imam mali stan "I have a small
apartment"
imam malu kuću "I have a small house"
imam malog psa "I have a small dog"
Verbs have 6 different forms in the
present tense, for three persons in
singular and plural. As in Latin,
subject is frequently dropped.
Another characteristic is agreement in
participles, which have different forms
for different genders:
ja sam jela "I was eating"
ja sam jeo "I was eating"
= Swahili =
Swahili, like all other Bantu languages,
has numerous noun classes. Verbs must
agree in class with their subjects and
objects, and adjectives with the nouns
that they qualify. For example: Kitabu
kimoja kitatosha, Mchungwa mmoja
utatosha, Chungwa moja litatosha.
There is also agreement in number. For
example: Vitabu viwili vitatosha,
Michungwa miwili itatosha, Machungwa
mawili yatatosha.
Class and number are indicated with
prefixes, which are not always the same
for nouns, adjectives and verbs, as
illustrated by the examples.
See also 
Case government
Declension
Inflection
Redundancy
Sequence of tenses — sometimes called
agreement of tenses
Synthetic language
References 
Further reading 
Corbett, Greville G.. "Agreement". In
Asher, R. E. The Encyclopedia of
Language and Linguistic. Oxford:
Pergamon Press. p. 54–60. 
Corbett, Greville G.. Agreement.
Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
ISBN 9780521001700. 
Givón, Talmy. Syntax. A Functional
Typological Introduction. Vol 1.
Amsterdam: John Benjamins.  Chapter 10.
Mel'čuk, Igor. Aspects of the theory of
morphology. Berlin; New York: Mouton de
Gruyter.  Chapter 1.
Moravcsik, Edith A.. "Agreement". In
Greenberg, Joseph. Universals of Human
Language. Vol 4. Stanford, CA.: Stanford
University Press. p. 331–374. 
External links 
Agreement: A bibliography
Tiberius, Carole; Dunstan Brown;
Greville G. Corbett. Surrey Database of
Agreement. University of Surrey.
doi:10.151261.
