2882: Complex Verbal Agreements Nov 11, 2024

In most languages, even ergative-absolutive languages, the verb simply needs to agree with the subject [agent] but does not have any morphosyntactic relationship to the object, or indirect object etc.. Some languages, like Ubykh, once recently spoken in the Caucasus, needs to show agreement with the subject*, direct object, and any indirect object (i.e. also  benefaction and ablative objects). With only 2 vowels and over 80 consonants—among the most in the world—this made Ubykh’s highly agglutinative also very nuanced phonetically to most outsider's ears.

Other languages as well, including Basque also require verbs to agree with subject*, direct object, and any indirect objects, but also for agreement with the listener, for instance singular or plural. 

*Ubykh and Basque are ergative-absolutive languages so it’s not entirely true to call it a subject