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Semantic number agreement in Balkar
Unlike many other Turkic languages, Balkar normally demonstrates obligatory subject-verb
number agreement in finite clauses with 3rd person subjects: when a subject is plural-marked,
so is the verb. However, there are cases when the subject is not overtly plural-marked, but the
verb can be. We argue for an account where such facts are not reduced to any form of syntactic
agreement, but rather reflect an option for verbal number features to be semantically interpreted.
The relevant data include typologically unusual cases of plural agreement with subjects based
on distributive universal quantifiers and the numeral ‘one’. The semantic analysis uses number
neutral denotations for the plural in competition with strictly atomic singular alternatives to
derive embedded multiplicity implicatures.