In linguistics, polypersonal agreement or polypersonalism is the agreement of a verb with more than one of its arguments. Polypersonalism is a morphological feature of a language, and languages that display it are called polypersonal languages. In non-polypersonal languages, the verb either shows no agreement at all or agrees with the primary argument. In a language with polypersonal agreement, the verb has agreement morphemes that may indicate the subject, the direct object, the indirect or secondary object, the beneficiary of the verb action, etc. This polypersonal marking may be compulsory or optional. Polysynthesis often includes polypersonalism, which in turn is a form of head-marking. Polypersonalism has also been correlated with ergativity. Examples of languages with polypersonal agreement are Basque, Georgian, Magahi, to a lesser extent Hungarian and several other Uralic languages such as Mansi, Mordvinic or Nenets, the Bantu languages, as well as most polysynthetic languages, like Mohawk, Inuktitut and many other Native American languages.
Examples
Georgian
In Georgian, the verb consists of a root and several optional affixes. The subject and object markers might appear as suffixes or prefixes, according to the verb class, the person and number, the tense and aspect of the verb, etc.; they also interact with each other phonologically. The polypersonal verbal system of Georgian allows the verb compound to convey the meanings of subject, direct object, indirect object, genitive, locative and causative meanings. As examples of the extremely complicated Georgian verb morphology, these are some simple polypersonal verbs : An example of a polypersonal verb that has the genitive meaning incorporated can be: Here, xelebi means "hands." The second morpheme in the verb conveys the meaning "my." In Georgian this construction is very common with intransitive verbs; the possessive adjective is omitted before the subject, and the verb takes up the genitive meaning.
Basque
is a language isolate with a polypersonal verbal system comprising two sub-types of verbs, synthetic and analytical. The following three cases are cross-referenced on the verb: the absolutive, the ergative, and the dative. A dative can also be cross-referenced on an intransitive verb without a direct object in a "dative of interest" type of construction, as well as in constructions involving intransitive verbs of perception or feeling. Synthetic verbs take affixes directly onto their stems, while analytical verbs use a non-finite form that carries the lexical meaning of the verb, along with a conjugatedauxiliary which is either strictly transitive or intransitive. Some common auxiliaries used to conjugate analytical verbs are izan ‘be’, ukan ‘have’, and egin ‘do’. Unlike Georgian, Basque has only two really synthetic tenses able to take these affixes: present simple and past simple. Here are a few examples: Synthetic forms: Analytical or semi-synthetic forms:
Semitic languages
In Biblical Hebrew, or in poetic forms of Hebrew, a pronominal direct object can be incorporated into a verb's conjugation rather than included as a separate word. For example, ahavtikha, with the suffix -kha indicating a masculine, singular, second-person direct object, is a poetic way to say ahavti otkha. This also changes the position of the stress; while ahavti puts the stress on hav, ahavtikha puts it on ti. The same is true also of Arabic and Akkadian. A number of modern Arabic dialects incorporate both direct and indirect object pronouns, e.g. Egyptian Arabic "he didn't write them to me".
In Ganda, direct and indirect pronominal objects may be incorporated into the verb as object infixes. For example: In the second example, the applicative suffix -ira converts the verb gamba to a ditransitive. While agreement with a verbal subject is compulsory, agreement with an object is required only when the object is omitted. Many other Bantu languages exhibit this feature.
Hungarian
In Hungarian the suffix -lak/-lek indicates a first person singular subject and a second person object. The most prominent example is szeretlek "I love you". The second person singular object may be omitted but the plural requires the pronoun.
Clitic pronouns
Polypersonalism involves bound morphemes that are part of the verbal morphology and therefore cannot be found separated from the verb. These morphemes are not to be confused with pronominal clitics. Some have observed that the French pronominal clitics have evolved into inseparable parts of the verb in the colloquial use, and so, suggested that French could be analyzed as polypersonal.
