Article published In:
Linguistic VariationVol. 12:1 (2012) ► pp.27–56
Crosslinguistic and experimental evidence for non-number plurals*
In this paper, I find support for the idea that plural marking shows variation across languages but can still be captured in a universal syntax (Wiltschko 2008, 2011). The proposal that the plural morpheme heads the Number Phrase (Ritter 1991; Bernstein 1991; Valois 1991; inter alia) is not adequate to account for plural marking in all languages. Wiltschko (2008) proposed that plurals may merge either as heads or adjuncts to various projections along the spine of the Determiner Phrase (DP, NumP, nP and the root). I provide syntactic, semantic and experimental evidence that the plural morpheme in Yucatec Maya is adjoined to the DP. I highlight evidence from other language types for variation in the syntax of plural marking, and I discuss how this variation might be constrained in particular ways. The implication of these findings is that identity of function does not imply identical syntax or semantics. Keywords: plural marking; Number Phrase; Determiner Phrase; Yucatec Maya; sentence production; morphosyntactic priming
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