Con(s)t(r)aining heterogeneous plurals: towards a comprehensive analysis of associative and similative plurals

Abstract:

Heterogeneous plurality is an umbrella term for plurals that don't "add up" tokens of the same type (these are additive or homogeneous plurals), but instead combine with a nominal stem ‘X' and produce a plural set whose members are not all tokens of 'X'. The two kinds of heterogeneous plural under investigation here – associative plurals and similative plurals – are shown below. The associative plural (see (1)) combines with a noun 'X' to generate 'X and X's associates' and the similative plural (see (2)) combines with a noun 'X' to generate 'X and things like X'. Interestingly, both heterogeneous plurals may be expressed using the same morpheme that is used to express homogeneous (additive) plurality (cf. the examples in (b) and (c)). 

(1) Associative plurals

a. Raaman okke            
   Malayalam
   Ram   APL(‘all’)
  ‘Ram and associates’ (Daniel and Moravcsik 2013, Asher and Kumari 1997)

b. Mika-tachi
    Japanese
    Mika-APL
   ‘Mika and her friends/family’       

c. gakusei-tachi
    student-PL
   ‘students’ (Nakanishi and Ritter 2008)

(2) Similative plurals

a. wuuc=yuk
    Kuuk Thaayorre
    dance=SPL
   ‘dances and things’ (Gaby 2018) 

b. karetu=kwana
    Cavineña
    cart=SPL
   ‘the cart and everything (the oxen, the load, etc)’

c. ebakwa=kwana
    child=PL
   ‘children’ (Guillaume 2008)

In the first part of this talk I will discuss a new generalization, established in Lewis 2024, regarding when a language may use the regular plural to express an associative plural. Based on a sample of 109 genetically and geographically diverse languages, I show that (3) holds. I argue that this finding – which unexpectedly ties the morphological expression of associative plurality to the determiner system – necessitates a reassessment of traditional syntactic analyses of associative plurality, which I provide.

(3) Generalization (I): Languages that use the regular plural as (or as part of) the associative plural lack free-standing definite articles  (they either lack definite articles or have affixal definite articles). 

In the second part of the talk, I take a closer look at languages that have both associative and similative plurals. Based on the implicational hierarchy given in (4), to be established in the talk, I develop an account of these heterogeneous plurals whereby the similative plural is built upon the associative plural featurally (but not necessarily structurally), along the lines of Bobaljik 2012, Smith et. al 2019, Moskal 2018, a.o. 

(4) Generalization (II): if a language uses the additive plural as the similative plural, it must also use the additive plural as the associative plural (in languages that have both). 

Through a typological investigation of heterogeneous plural marking, these generalizations can help us understand more about number marking cross-linguistically and its function in syntax, morphology and semantics.