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Verb agreement with numeral-noun constructions in Kazym Khanty
The paper examines the variation in number agreement of numeral-noun subjects with a verb in Kazym Khanty. As evidenced by the field data presented in the article, in Kazym Khanty, numeral-noun subjects (e. g., wet amp ‘five dogs’) are capable of causing both the singular and the plural agreement on the verb. The paper shows that such competition between the two models of agreement is a typologically unexpected phenomenon, since for languages in which the noun in a numeral-noun construction is not marked for number, only the singular agreement is expected to be productive. However, the paper shows that in Kazym Khanty, plural agreement serves rather as a default strategy, and it is singular agreement that requires some special conditions but not plural. The paper discusses the semantic and syntactic factors influencing the selection of the agreement strategy. Among the key factors there are such properties of the subject as the ability to control PRO, definiteness, and explicit individuation. The information structure and animacy of the subject are regarded as secondary factors. In the analysis section, the author proposes to postulate different syntactic structure for such numeral-noun subjects that trigger plural agreement and those that do not. The former appear to be Small Nominals and the latter and full DPs, respectively. The discrepancy in the amount of structure between the former and the latter appears to be a source for both the lack of number feature to share with a verb and the inability to sustain an individualized or definite interpretation.