Concord

 INTRODUCTION

Concord is central to English grammar and to our understanding of how English sentences can be
effectively used to convey our thoughts, ideas, feelings and so on. Grammatical elements that are used in forming sentences should always be well-connected and agreed with one another in order to produce a comprehensive linguistic construction. 
THE CONCEPT OF CONCORD
This is a concept that is used in grammatical theory and description to refer to formal relationships that exist between elements of grammar. Concord is the general grammatical term of a language which in a basic sense, refers to the relationship between two grammatical units. One unit which triggers the agreement relation is known as “controller” and the other unit which is determined by the controller known as “target”. These two units are determined by syntactic and semantic characteristics which are called “agreement features”. This means that if the subject is the controller and the verb is the target, the agreement features are represented by the use of number and person. In simple terms concord simply means that a form of one
word requires a corresponding form of another.
In traditional grammar concord is seen as an agreement between a subject and a verb in a sentence, which is however much more than that. The subject and the verb are just two elements out of many elements that possibly make up sentences. In this regard, Eastwood explains that “concord can be seen as an internal agreement among the grammatical elements within a sentence, occupying their right and respective
positions, showing their relationship in number, person and time as well as functioning to collectively generate an idea of the sentence in which they appear”. when discussing „agreement‟, asserts the following:
In addition to the terms used for the parts of speech, traditional grammatical analysis has also given us a number of other categories, including “number,” “person,” “tense,” “voice” and “gender.” These categories can be discussed in isolation, but their role in describing language structure becomes clearer when we consider
them in terms of agreement. The quotation above shows that concord is a broad concept under which a number of grammatical issues such as the relationship between the speaker, listener, and the person/thing being discussed, singular and
plural usages, time of speaking or writing and the agreement between pronouns and their antecedents are dealt with. Looking at the brief arguments raised in the definitions and discussions above, concord has be seen as a
concept that integrates all grammatical elements used in sentences rather than just limiting it to a relationship between „subject‟ and „verb‟. On this note, attempts have been made in paper to highlight some areas where agreement counts, as one word has to agree with another for having a grammatical construction either group or
clause.
TYPES OF CONCORD
Being a broad concept in which a number of grammatical issues are treated, concord is generally discussed under three (3) different types namely: grammatical concord, notional concord and concord of
proximity.
1. Grammatical Concord
This refers to the agreement of subject and verb, pronoun and its antecedent, subject and complement
etc. It is the most fundamental type of concord in which the verb matches the subject in number. A singular
subject agrees with a singular verb and a plural subject takes a plural verb. There are two types of grammatical
concord which are concord of number and person. Concord of number deals with singularity and plurality, but
concord of person deals with 1st person, 2nd person and 3rd person (Leech & Svartivk, 2002, p. 273).
2. Notional Concord
This is the second principle of concord. It is semantically based. It refers to the agreement according to the idea
of plurality in a group noun rather than a singular form of the noun. Different words or a group of nouns take
either singular or plural concord like the word “family”:
2. (a) A new family have moved in across the street.
2. (b) A new family has moved in across the street.
In (2) (a) above, the word “family” notionally takes the plural verb (have), but in (b) it grammatically takes the singular verb (has). The singular is used when the group is considered as a single undivided body

3. Concord of Proximity
This is the agreement of the verb with the closely preceding subject. It is positionally based in which the verb agrees with the nearest subject. The verb takes its number from whatever pronoun or noun phrase precedes it and functions as a subject. This is evidently illustrated in the examples below:
3. a- No one except his own supporters agree with him. In the sentence above, the verb “agree” agrees with the number of “supporters”. Although the head noun “No one” is singular, the verb agrees with the nearest noun. It is very important to note that proximity concord is reinforced by notional concord.
4. b- Either the teacher or the students are to blame for the bad results.
In the sentence above, the verb “are” agrees with the number of “students”. Although the first head noun “the teacher” is singular, the verb agrees with the nearest noun
Conclusion
The paper discussed „concord‟ beyond the traditional point of view in which is limited to „subject-verb‟ agreement. As such, the paper stressed the importance of incorporating the correct use of other elements that are frequently used in phrase, clause or sentence formation. It was shown how modifiers and their heads agree with each other, how verbs agree with time adverbials that they are used together, how group or pair nouns and the verbs used agree with each other and how pronouns and their antecedents also agree with each other. Consequently, the discussions showed that concord concerns with the general syntagmatic relations of the grammatical elements used in sentences not only „subject‟ and „verb‟. To reveal more areas that are worthy of nothing, the paper also reviewed some of the experts‟ works; particularly the work of Eastwood (1994) and Murthy (1998) on certain areas as far as concord is concerned.