Asymmetries in Plural Agreement in DPs

In some Friulian and Rhaeto-Romance varieties the inflection -s of the plural competes or interacts with the vocalic plural -i, and, in the feminine, with -a. In the North-Lombard varieties spoken in Switzerland (Soazza in the Mesolcina Valley) feminines select the plural inflection -ŋ. This article addresses the asymmetric occurrence of sigmatic and nasal plural inflections in the DP and in the sentence, interacting with the nominal class (gender) inflection -a. Furthermore, -ŋ inflection on clitics presents a complementary distribution with the verbal inflection. We argue: (i) that the asymmetries are restricted to the feminine -a because of the mass/plural properties of Romance -a; (ii) that the asymmetries between nouns and determiners or clitics depend on the referential properties of these elements, requiring a specialized inflection of plural; (iii) that the asymmetric distribution is phase-based, distinguishing phasal heads from their complement.