Hebrew QNP Agreement: Towards an Empirically Based Analysis

Quantified noun phrases (QNPs) in subject position may trigger agreement with the quantifier or with the noun. Previous work (Danon 2011, 2013) has proposed a theoretical model for explaining such alternations, but left open the empirical question of speaker preference. This paper describes preliminary findings from an ongoing research project aimed to answer this question. It is shown that speakers have a strong preference for noun agreement when the noun in the QNP is plural, whereas a much more heterogeneous pattern emerges when the QNP contains a singular/group noun. The empirical findings are argued to support an analysis in which the features involved in agreement are formally distinct from those marked morphologically on Q and N, which allows us to maintain a syntactic model of agreement even for apparent cases of ‘semantic agreement'.