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Glite Dictionary
person agreement

person agreement

7.7
Matching words like I, you, or he with the correct verb form in a sentence
  • noun
  • /ˈpɜrsən əˈɡrimənt/
  • Specialized
translation icon : concordancia de persona
  • In English, person agreement requires that 'I' is followed by 'am' and not 'is'.

Examples

  • Spanish verbs have more complex person agreement than English verbs.

  • Errors in person agreement are common among learners of foreign languages.

  • The person agreement in this sentence is incorrect.

  • Can you explain person agreement in grammar?

  • In English, person agreement requires that 'I' is followed by 'am' and not 'is'.

  • Errors in person agreement are common among learners of foreign languages.

  • Spanish verbs have more complex person agreement than English verbs.

Surface Forms

person agreement singular
person agreements plural

Morphology

person + agreement

The meaning is directly compositional: 'person' (grammatical category for speaker/addressee/other) combined with 'agreement' (matching of forms) yields 'agreement of person'—i.e., correspondence of person features between sentence elements. This is a common, cross-linguistic grammatical concept (e.g. concordancia de persona / accord de personne) and follows standard noun + noun composition, so a B1 learner who knows both constituents should be able to infer the meaning.

Etymology

Person agreement comes from the idea of two parts 'agreeing' like two people: the person (words like 'I', 'you', 'he') and the verb form must match. So 'I' goes with 'am' and not 'is', and that match is what 'person agreement' means.