Nilo-Saharan languages are well-known for their complicated system of nominal number marking, which features a variety of singulative and plural affixes (Dimmendaal 2000). Even though these systems have received some attention in the typological literature, there has been limited theoretical work on their implications for the morphosyntax of number cross-linguistically. The goal of this paper is to fill this gap, by providing an analysis of nominal number morphology in Kipsigis (Nilotic, Kenya), based on data from original fieldwork. First, I show that singulatives in Kipsigis are true allomorphs of singular number, unlike singulatives with a classifier function in languages like Ojibwe (Mathieu 2012). The descriptive term ‘singulative’ is therefore misleading, as it corresponds to two very different types of morphemes. Second, I claim that the tripartite system of number marking of Kipsigis and other Nilo-Saharan languages is due to the classification of nouns into morphosyntactic classes defined by the presence of inherent number features on little n; the interaction of these features with interpretable number features on the functional projection Num (Ritter 1991 a.o.) in the post-syntactic component gives rise to the exponence pattern that we observe. Finally, my analysis corroborates the existence of noun classification based on number, which has only been argued for Kiowa-Tanoan before (Harbour 2007). The existence of three number classes in Kipsigis can only be explained by reference to bivalent number features; number-based noun classification systems thus strongly support the view that number features are bivalent and not privative, which is also argued by Harbour (2007, 2011) for Kiowa.

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In this paper, I provide a description and analysis of conjugation classes in Kipsigis (Nilotic; Kenya). While traditional descriptions discuss two conjugation classes, I show that the morphophonological properties of Class II can be reduced to the presence of a moraic affix spelling out a verbalizing head (little v in theories like DM). On the semantic side, I show that Class II is primarily used for causative verbs, and I identify the verbalizing head as vCAUSE. The analysis highlights three properties of inflectional classes that are relevant for their analysis cross-linguistically: i) there is a close (historical or synchronic) connection between conjugation classes and transitivity, ii) what looks like a conjugation class can be reduced to the spellout of a verbalizing head, iii) there is an asymmetry between nouns and verbs for a number of languages: verbs tend to have fewer inflectional classes than nouns. Finally, the analysis of the Kipsigis facts contributes to a growing body of literature on mora affixation in Nilotic and beyond (e.g., Trommer & Zimmermann 2014), and it shows that such abstract representations in combination with regular phonology are sufficient to derive apparently complex morphophonological alternations. 

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Mass nouns are generally incompatible with plural morphology in number-marking languages. Greek mass nouns, though, can freely pluralize. Chapter 11 shows that the meaning of plural mass nouns in Greek is that of ‘spread over a surface in a disorderly way’. The author argues that plural morphology on mass nouns in the language is the spell-out of number features on the nominalizing head n, unlike plural morphology on count nouns, which spells out the head of the functional projection NumP. She extends this analysis to other languages with plural marking on mass nouns, and argues that plural morphology on mass nouns is never the spellout of features on Num, which can only have the meaning associated with regular plural morphology on count nouns cross-linguistically.