Occurrence of Nominal Plural Markers (Feature 22)

From Apics

Feature Annotation

Nominal plural forms may occur variably in languages. Some languages lack them entirely, but those languages that have plural forms often use them only under certain conditions. One important condition is animacy: Especially human nouns tend to show plural marking when plural marking is not invariant in the language. (No language has plural forms for inanimate nouns but not for humans. Animals, which are intermediate between humans and inanimates, are disregarded here.)
When plural forms exist, they may be invariant (i.e. used whenever plural reference is intended), or they may be variable (i.e. not necessarily used; plural reference may also be left for the hearer to infer from the context).
Special contexts such as cooccurrence with quantifiers and numerals should be disregarded, because even languages with otherwise invariant plurality may lack plurals in such contexts (e.g. Hungarian gyerek ‘child’, gyerek-ek ‘children’, három gyerek ‘three children’, lit. ‘three child’). The same applies to generic contexts (”lion hunts gazelle”, i.e. ‘lions hunt gazelles’).
When the occurrence of plural forms is variable, it may still be determined by strict rules. An example would be the consistent use of plural forms in definite, but not in indefinite NPs with plural reference.
In some languages, animacy plays a clear role in determining the occurrence of plural markers, but there are some exceptions (i.e. many but not all human nouns take plural markers, or most but not all inanimate nouns lack plural marking). In such cases, the exceptions should be disregarded.
Note that by plural form we mean NPs that are marked grammatically for plurality in any way -- morphologically on the noun, by a plural word (e.g. Réunion Creole bann), or by a pluralarticle (as in French le/la vs. les). (But lexical items that imply plurality, such as quantifiers like ‘many’ or numerals like ‘three’, do not count as plural markers.)

Additional remarks

....

Values

Value		Value Annotation
1	The language has no nominal plural at all	Such a language has no morphological expression of nominal plurality; all nouns behave like English sheep (sg) - sheep (pl) (e.g. Bislama).
2	Plural only in human nouns, variable	E.g. Réunion Creole (bann) zanfan ‘children’, but not *bann lekol ‘schools’.
3	Plural only in human nouns, invariant	Such a language would have woman-women, girl-girls but house-house, book-book; This pattern is found in many indigenous North American languages.
4	Plural in human and inanimate nouns, variable in both	Such a language would have uncle-uncle(s), book-book(s); this pattern is found in many English-lexified Caribbean creoles and in Tok Pisin.
5	Plural in human and inanimate nouns, variable in inanimates	Such a language would have uncle-uncles, but book-book(s).
6	Plural in human and inanimate nouns, invariant in both	English woman-women, girl-girls, table-tables; This is the pattern of the European languages.

WALS No.

34 (Total)