Feature GB044: Is there productive morphological plural marking on nouns?

Patrons: Hedvig Skirgård

Description ⇫

Summary

This question concerns a bound grammatical marker of plural number on nouns. This feature contrasts with GB318 Is plural number regularly marked in the noun phrase by a phonologically free element? which focuses on non-bound marking of plural number. For more on bound marking, please see this page. Bound marking of number on nouns derived from other word classes (such as adjectives or verbs) does not suffice for a 1. Reduplication (full or partial) does not count for this feature.

The marker should occur with an open set of nouns, not with a restricted set. Classes of animate nouns or human nouns are large and open enough. Kinship terms however are a restricted set since it is very hard to add new members.

Number marking is often fused with marking of other categories, such as definiteness/specificity or gender/noun class. It is possible for the number marker to also signal other functions and be coded as 1, as long as these other functions do not interfere with the number distinctions and as long as number marking is productive and regular.

Procedure

  1. Consider the section in the grammar that deals with number or nominal morphology.
  2. If the author describes a bound marker of plural number on the noun that occurs regularly, code 1.
  3. If the only marking of plural number occurs on nouns derived from other word classes (adjectives, verbs etc.) or on a small subset of all nouns, code 0.
  4. If the only marking of plural number is accomplished by reduplication, code 0.
  5. If the grammar mentions that plural number is not marked productively, or that it is marked somewhere else than on the noun, code as 0.
  6. If the grammar does not describe number marking at all and you have a reason to believe that the author may have missed it, code ?.
  7. If the grammar does not describe number, you encounter no examples of number marking, and the grammar is otherwise comprehensive, code 0.

Examples

Swedish (ISO 639-3: swe, Glottolog: swed1254)

Nouns in Swedish are regularly marked for plural number by a suffix -ar. This would be an example of a 1 code for this feature.

An illustration with the noun båt ‘boat’ (Teleman et al. 1999: 62):

singular plural
indefinite båt båt-ar
definite båt-en båt-ar-na

Samoan (ISO 639-3: smo, Glottolog: samo1305)

Nouns in Samoan do not take bound number marking. Number is instead expressed by articles. Articles differ for specificity and number. Plural number combined with specificity is in fact zero-marked, i.e. the absence of an article indicates plural number for specific nouns. Non-specific plural is overtly marked. Samoan is an example of 0 code for this feature.

An illustration with the noun fale ‘house’ (Mosel & Hovdhaugen 1992: 90):

singular plural
specific le fale fale
non-specific se fale ni fale

Further reading

Corbett, Greville G. 2000. Number. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

References

Mosel, Ulrike & Even Hovdhaugen. 1992. Samoan reference grammar. (Instituttet for sammenlignende kulturforskning 85.) Oslo: Scandinavian University Press.

Teleman, Ulf, Staffan Hellberg & Erik Andersson. 1999. Svenska Akademiens grammatik. Stockholm: Svenska Akademien.

Morphological number marking

Phonologically free number marking

Number agreement within the noun phrase

Other


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0 absent 1020
1 present 1282
? Not known 96
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Values ⇫

Name Glottocode Family Macroarea Contributor Value Source Comment