Definition

Noun: 1. Grammatical Concord in Person: The grammatical rule requiring that a pronoun and its antecedent, or a verb and its subject, match in grammatical person (first person: I/we; second person: you; third person: he/she/it/they). This ensures clarity and correctness in a sentence.

Usage

This is a technical grammatical term used to describe a specific rule of syntax. It is primarily used in linguistic analysis, language teaching, and grammar instruction. * The sentence is incorrect due to a lack of person agreement; the third-person subject "she" does not agree with the first-person verb "am." * When learning a new language, understanding person agreement between subjects and verbs is fundamental.

Advanced Usage

• Formal Linguistic Analysis: In formal grammar, person agreement is a type of syntactic feature-checking where the person feature of a subject noun phrase must be compatible with the inflectional features of the verb.
  • The linguist's paper analyzed the constraints on person agreement in pro-drop languages.

Variants and Related Words

• Agreement (n.): The broader grammatical category encompassing person agreement, number agreement, and gender agreement.
• Concord (n.): A synonym for "agreement," often used in formal grammatical contexts.
• Subject-verb agreement (n. phrase): A common term for the rule that a verb must agree with its subject in person and number. This is a specific, common application of person agreement.

Synonyms

• Grammatical concord (in person)
• Person concord

Related Grammatical Concepts

• Number agreement: The rule requiring matching in grammatical number (singular or plural).
• Gender agreement: The rule requiring matching in grammatical gender (masculine, feminine, neuter), where applicable.

Noun

1. agreement in person between pronouns and verbs