Meaning of monstrous agreement | Babel Free

Definitions

The phenomenon, in certain languages, of anaphoric references within an item of reported speech to the subject of the report agreeing in the first person (equivalent to *“He said that he am coming”).

uncountable

Examples

“Why can’t we analyze them as quotation (full or partial/mixed)? Because grammatical dependencies cannot cross quotation marks, whereas in monstrous agreement they do.”

“McFadden shows that in case of monstrous agreement, allocutive agreement in the lower clause must reflect the relationship of the author of the embedded speech act to the addressee of that same speech act, and not the addressee of the overall speech act.”

“Interestingly, not all speakers accept the monstrous agreement pattern. There are speakers for whom examples like (3a) sound very unnatural (while not totally ungrammatical).”

CEFR level