Séminaire sur les systèmes de traits

Languages that exhibit subject-verb agreement asymmetries (Afroasiatic, Celtic) also share complex processes of plural formation. Building on earlier work (Lecarme 2002), I argue that partial agreement derives from a morphosyntactic property of nominal [number]. I propose that Afroasiatic/Celtic plurals involve a ‘lower ’ source of plurality, namely *n, independently motivated for the inter-pretation of group nouns and collectives. Evidence for the existence of a *n projection is provided by morphosyntactic parallels in the verbal domain (intensives, repetitives, plu-ractionals). Unlike Num-plurals, *n-plurals are invisible to the core syntactic computation (ϕ-features agreement). On this view, partial agreement may involve a genuine subject-verb agreement relation (local configuration).