Summary

Many languages have devices which signal which words belong together as head and modifiers; that is, they signal syntactic linkage. Traditionally, two types of devices are recognized, namely agreement and government. Agreement was applied to examples in which a head and its modifier were both marked for some property. In many languages, the head noun in a noun phrase and the adjectives that modify it all carry markings for case and number, while the subject noun in a clause and the verb both carry markings for person and number. Government was applied in constructions in which the head was not marked but the modifier was. For example, in many languages the direct object of a verb carries a particular case suffix but the verb itself has no marking. Likewise, in prepositional phrases the complement of the preposition has a case suffix but the preposition itself has no marking. In spite of the traditional distinction, instances of agreement and government all involve a head assigning some property or properties to its modifiers. The current preferred view is that all syntactic linkage is government.