Pronoun Strength and Agreement Shift in Assamese

Abstract

In this paper, an attempt has been made to show how Assamese, an IA language marks de se (conscious self-reference of the attitude holder) by using agreement shift (where first person Agreement on the embedded verb agrees with the third person subject of the matrix clause). It is seen only in the presence of the quotative complementizer buli. The paper discusses the interaction of Agreement shift with the two complementizers and the strength of pronouns which raises problems for previous analyses. The analysis is done using the LogP mechanism and we conclude that the [±LOG] feature of the pronouns is responsible for Agreement shift.