Verbal agreement in number in Iron Ossetic

Abstract

This paper describes variability in Ossetic predicate agreement in number with different kinds of semantically plural subjects. Drawing upon the materials available in Ossetic corpora, as well as elicitation data, I come to a number of conclusions which cannot be found in previous literature. Transitivity proves to be the most significant factor determining number agreement in Ossetic. Only intransitive predicates allow non-agreement in number, and non-agreeing subjects are required to satisfy the conditions of indefiniteness and syntactic focality.