Agreement, a Meaningful Category in Impersonal Constructions: A Cognitive Grammar Approach

The main purpose of this paper is to study one of the active impersonal constructions in Persian within the framework of Cognitive Grammar. This type includes two instances. In both, there are two clauses (main clause and subordinate clause); in the first clause there is no linguistic element in subject position. The verb in the first clause always comes in third person singular. The fact is that almost always agreement is assumed to have a purely grammatical function with no semantic base. In this paper an analysis of third person singular agreement in subjectless impersonal constructions will be presented. The results indicate that in the impersonal constructions the most prominent constituent which functions as subject (tr) is setting-subject; a general and ambient setting within which the event unfolds. It is also shown that the occurrence of third person singular agreement in this construction is not arbitrary, it agrees with setting-subject. Therefore, agreement is considered meaningful rather than a purely grammatical category.