On semantic agreement

We discuss semantic agreement, cases in which agreement between a head and a DP seems to drive, or be driven by, interpretive properties of this DP rather than its syntactic properties. This discussion centers mostly on the case of subject/verb number and person agreement (but its conclusions would extend to other cases of agreement between a head and a DP). In such a configuration, semantic agreement occurs in cases in which the feature values on T do not seem to match the feature values of its DP subject. More specifically, we conclude that features on agreeing heads can and sometimes must be semantically interpretable. In such cases, the values of the features on T can target the denotational properties of its DP subject, instead of its phi (ϕ)-feature (values): they can or must trigger a presupposition about this DP subject's denotation.

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Publication Details

Journal
Frontiers in Language Sciences
Published
2026-02-16
DOI
https://doi.org/10.3389/flang.2026.1625397
Primary Topic
Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation
Type
article
Field-Weighted Citation Impact
0.00

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article

On semantic agreement

Dominique Sportiche, Isabelle Charnavel
Frontiers in Language Sciences
Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation
article

On semantic agreement

Dominique Sportiche, Isabelle Charnavel
article en

Abstract

We discuss semantic agreement, cases in which agreement between a head and a DP seems to drive, or be driven by, interpretive properties of this DP rather than its syntactic properties. This discussion centers mostly on the case of subject/verb number and person agreement (but its conclusions would extend to other cases of agreement between a head and a DP). In such a configuration, semantic agreement occurs in cases in which the feature values on T do not seem to match the feature values of its DP subject. More specifically, we conclude that features on agreeing heads can and sometimes must be semantically interpretable. In such cases, the values of the features on T can target the denotational properties of its DP subject, instead of its phi (ϕ)-feature (values): they can or must trigger a presupposition about this DP subject's denotation.

Frontiers in Language SciencesVol. 5
University of Geneva (CH), University of California, Los Angeles (US)
National Science Foundation, Schweizerischer Nationalfonds zur Förderung der Wissenschaftlichen Forschung, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Université de Genève
Reduced inequalities
Openalex Percentile: Top 59%
Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation
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