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Article published In: Studies in Language
Vol. 44:1 (2020) ► pp.231–269

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Plural marking patterns of nouns and their associates in the world’s languages

 | University of Leipzig
Published online: 6 May 2020
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https://doi.org/10.1075/sl.16001.che
Abstract
Plural marking reaches most corners of languages. When a noun occurs with another linguistic element, which is called associate in this paper, plural marking on the two-component structure has four logically possible patterns: doubly unmarked, noun-marked, associate-marked and doubly marked. These four patterns do not distribute homogeneously in the world’s languages, because they are motivated by two competing motivations iconicity and economy. Some patterns are preferred over others, and this preference is consistently found in languages across the world. In other words, there exists a universal distribution of the four plural marking patterns. Furthermore, holding the view that plural marking on associates expresses plurality of nouns, I propose a hypothetical universal which uses the number of pluralized associates to predict plural marking on nouns. A data set collected from a sample of 100 languages is used to test the hypothetical universal, by employing the machine learning algorithm logistic regression.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Sampling methods
  • 3.Data coding
  • 4.Motivations of four plural marking patterns
  • 5.Structures
    • 5.1Adnominal relations
      • 5.1.1Nouns and definite articles
      • 5.1.2Nouns and adnominal demonstratives
      • 5.1.3Nouns and adnominal adjectives
      • 5.1.4Nouns and adnominal numerals
      • 5.1.5Nouns and adnominal interrogatives
      • 5.1.6Noun and other adnominal expressions
    • 5.2Nouns and predicates
      • 5.2.1Two types of plural-expressing elements on predicates
      • 5.2.2The range of predicates
      • 5.2.3Distribution of plural marking patterns of nouns and predicates
    • 5.3Nouns and adnominal possessors
    • 5.4Nouns and other types of associates
  • 6.The universal distribution of plural marking patterns
  • 7.Hypothesis-driven universal testing
  • 8.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
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