Leftover Agreement: Spelling out Kartvelian Number
Tanya Bondarenko, Stanislao Zompi'
September 2021
 

In this paper we examine a pattern of number agreement in the four South Caucasian languages (Georgian, Laz, Megrelian, Svan), in which the spell-out of a lower agreement probe affects agreement on a higher agreement probe. Specifically, the higher probe shows plural agreement if the lower probe does not lexicalize a plural feature, and does not show plural agreement if the lower probe lexicalizes a plural feature. Departing from morphological accounts of South Caucasian number agreement present in the literature (Halle & Marantz 1993, Lomashvili & Harley 2011, Blix 2020, a.o.), we argue that this interaction between the two probes is syntactic in nature and arises due to what we call Leftover Agreement — agreement by a higher probe with the unlexicalized features of a lower probe. Our account provides evidence for a certain kind of interleaving of syntax and spell-out, and motivates an architecture in which Vocabulary Insertion is only partially replacive: exponents replace only those features that their specification matches exactly.
Format: [ pdf ]
Reference: lingbuzz/005643
(please use that when you cite this article)
Published in: WCCFL proceedings (to appear)
keywords: agreement, number, spell-out, vocabulary insertion, kartvelian, syntax
previous versions: v3 [November 2023]
v2 [October 2021]
v1 [December 2020]
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