To Agree or not to Agree: An overview of agreement in copular sentences in Culhwch ac Olwen.

Abstract

In this thesis I examine the text Culhwch ac Olwen from the Llyfr Gwyn Rhydderch, the White Book of Rhydderch, in an attempt to find out if there is a pattern to the agreement of copula sentences, and I compare the findings to the patterns we expect to find, based on non-copula sentences. I expect to find that if there is a difference in the amount of agreement between a copula and its subject and between other verbs and theirs, the copula will show agreement more often. There were only three instances of a copula followed by a subject that is a plural noun and all of these were in the third person singular. While there is too little data from which to draw any hard conclusions, this is in accordance with the literature and suggests that there is no reason to assume that the copula has different rules governing its agreement than other verbs have.