Long distance agreement in Godoberi (Daghestanian) complement clauses

The term long distance agreement is used here for a construction in which t he complement-taking verb agrees with an argument of its complement clause. Long distance agreement in gender occurs with certain complement-taking ve rbs in Godoberi, a Nakh-Daghestanian language. This kind of agreement is qu ite unusual cross-linguistically, and unexpected also from the point of vie w of current theories of agreement. While Daghestanian agreement syntax is unusual in several other respects as well, I show in this paper that long-d istance agreement in Godoberi is not as "exotic" as it appears at first sig ht. The complement-taking verbs with which it occurs are those that commonl y occur in clause-union constructions in other languages, and a similar ana lysis is proposed for Godoberi here. In this perspective, long distance agr eement can be taken as one symptom of incipient grammaticalization of the c omplement-taking verbs. I cite parallels from other languages and end with a brief general discussion of the role of grammaticalization in the diachro nic spread of agreement to new targets.