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Article published In:
Asia-Pacific Language Variation
Vol. 5:2 (2019) ► pp.208–243

Variable number marking in Vera’a

Animacy and beyond

| Otto-Friedrich-Universität Bamberg

The number interpretation of Noun Phrase structures (NPs) with different animacy values and variable overt marking of number is investigated in a corpus from the Oceanic language Vera’a. It is found that number marking is optional for all nouns and that number marking is essentially semantic, expressing collectivity and distributivity. While statistical patterns of greater likelihood of number marking comply with the animacy hierarchy, the central motivating factor for number marking is found to be likelihood of individuatedness. This study thus contributes to a functionalist account of cross-linguistically observed patterns of hierarchical number marking.

Keywords: optional plural, hierarchical number marking, animacy, Oceanic languages, collectivity, distributivity
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Variable and hierarchical number marking: A very short overview
    • 1.2Language background and documentation
    • 1.3Structure of the paper
  • 2.Number in Vera’a
    • 2.1Number values and basic number-marking constructions
    • 2.2NP structure
  • 3.Structural properties of number-marking constructions
    • 3.1Pluralised common NPs with 'erē
    • 3.2Non-singular personal NPs
    • 3.3Expression of number by numeral modifiers
    • 3.4Comparison with neighbouring languages
  • 4.Semantic classes and number interpretation
    • 4.1General number and animacy
    • 4.2Number-marking and animacy
      • 4.2.1Restricted use of number-inflecting pronouns
      • 4.2.2Number-marking strategies and animacy
  • 5.Discussion
  • 6.Conclusions
  • Notes
  • Abbreviations
  • References
Published online: 2 March 2020
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https://doi.org/10.1075/aplv.00006.sch
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