Expression of Nominal Plural Meaning (Feature 23)
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Feature Annotation
Here we look at the type of plural marking. If a language has (virtually) no plural marking, value 1 should be selected. If a language has any plural marking, one (or more) of the other values should be selected, regardless of how frequent or invariant the plural marking is. (For variability of use and restriction to humans, see Feature 22).
There are basically two ways in which languages indicate plurality. The first (and most common) involves changing the morphological form of the noun, as in English dog/dogs (values 2-6). The second involves indicating plurality by means of a word or clitic that occurs somewhere else in the noun phrase (values 7-8), illustrated by the pluralizer dem in Krio pikin dem 'children', where the word dem has the same function as the plural suffix in English.
Additional remarks
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Values
| Value | Value Annotation | |
| 1 | Plural is not expressed overtly | This value is chosen if the language has (virtually) no plural marking. In this case, no other value can be chosen. |
|---|---|---|
| 2 | Plural prefix | Anindilyakwa(Australian) wirr-iyikwayiwa [pl-child] ‘children‘ |
| 3 | Plural suffix | English cat/cat-s 'cat-pl' |
| 4 | Stem change | English goose/geese |
| 5 | Tone | Ngiti (DR Congo) kamà ‘chief’ - kámá ‘chiefs’ |
| 6 | Reduplication | Ghanaian Pidgin English faktri-faktri 'factories' (total reduplication), or partial reduplication |
| 7 | Plural word | Krio book dem 'books' |
| 8 | Plural clitic | A type of plural word, whose position is defined syntactically in that it has a specified position within the noun phrase, but which attaches phonologically to whatever word happens to occur adjacent to that position within a particular noun phrase. E.g. the Cayuvava (South America) plural marker me= attaches to the first word in the NP: me=rišɔ raḇiri 'pl=new paddle'. |
WALS No.
33 (Total)
