Paper 3810
The Pragmatics of Optional Plural in Tiwa
Virginia Dawson and Royce Gibson
94-103 (complete paper or proceedings contents)
Virginia Dawson and Royce Gibson
94-103 (complete paper or proceedings contents)
Abstract
We examine the pragmatics of optional plural marking in Tiwa (Tibeto-Burman; India). While plural marking is optional for DPs of any animacy, its pragmatic effects differ for human vs. non-human DPs: omitting plural marking for a human DP triggers a 'not plural' implicature that is absent for non-human DPs. We argue that this pragmatic difference follows from the structural possibilities for different DPs: human DPs must project a #P, while this projection may be absent in non-human DPs. We discuss the consequences of this data for morphosyntactic theories of optional plural marking, arguing contra Wiltschko 2008 that optional plurals can be inflectional.
Published in
Proceedings of the 42nd West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics
edited by Shweta Akolkar, Amber Galvano, Akil Ismael, Kang Franco Liu, and Line Mikkelsen
Table of contents
edited by Shweta Akolkar, Amber Galvano, Akil Ismael, Kang Franco Liu, and Line Mikkelsen
Table of contents