Inclusive Plurals and the Theory of Number

Abstract

I argue that an account of both inclusive plurals and the crosslinguistic typology of grammatical number requires postulating a [−atomic] feature (or something very much like it) in the structure of exclusive-plural DPs. When combined with the only theory we currently have that accounts for the crosslinguistic typology of number ( Harbour 2014 ), theories in which the exclusive-plural DPs of a language with inclusive plurals are [−atomic]-less under- or overgenerate with respect to that typology. These problems disappear as soon as the structure of exclusive plural DPs contains a component that generates exclusive-plural interpretations, either Harbour’s [−atomic] feature (added to a system with a second, [−atomic]-less structure, a proposal compatible with, e.g., Farkas and de Swart 2010 ) or a predicate-level exhaustivity operator (from Mayr 2015 ).

The abundance inference of pluralised mass nouns is an implicature: Evidence from Greek

“…It is worth keeping in mind thatFarkas & de Swart (2010),Grimm (2013), andMartí (2017) are exclusively concerned with count nouns; therefore only the results from our count noun condition can bear directly on their proposals. The results from the mass noun condition on the other hand represent an extension of the ambiguity approach to the mass domain, which we have discussed in detail above.…”

Person of interest: Experimental investigations into the learnability of person systems

“…6 Another argument that has been used to support the existence of both ±atomic and ±minimal contrasts comes from languages that make a singular-dual-plural distinction, but this is not relevant for our purposes (Harbour 2014, Martí 2020 collapsing categories which are expressed as distinct pronouns-'I' and 'we'-in English. While one could in principle argue that this explains why participants in Condition 2 are less likely to collapse exclusive minimal and augmented categories, this would not explain why participants in Condition 3 readily collapsed the exclusive and inclusive minimal.…”

Dual number and the typology of the numeral-noun construction

“…Two main positions exist in this debate: (i) either plural nouns only have an inclusive semantics, unlike that obtained from (12), and exclusive meanings arise pragmatically (see Dvorak & Sauerland 2006;Ivlieva 2013;Krifka 1989;Lasersohn 1998Lasersohn , 2011Sauerland 2003;Sauerland, Anderssen & Yatsushiro 2005;Spector 2007;Yatsushiro, Sauerland & Alexiadou 2017;Zweig 2009), or (ii) plural nouns are ambiguous between an inclusive and an exclusive semantics and their use is regulated pragmatically (see Farkas & de Swart 2010;Grimm 2012). Whereas arguments exist for and against both positions (see Kiparsky & Tonhauser 2012 for an overview), Martí (2020b) argues that only an ambiguity approach (such as (ii)) is compatible with Harbour (2014). Given that argument, and that the goal of this paper is, in part, to extend the empirical coverage of Harbour (2014), we must stick to an ambiguity approach here.…”

“…I would like to consider here the possibility that plural forms in Imere are ambiguous between an exclusive semantics (the one we've been assuming all along) and an inclusive semantics, which can be observed in (85) and 86 If angata 'snakes' or atama 'children' couldn't be understood inclusively, that is, pertaining to one or more snakes/children, (85) would be true if I had seen one snake, and (86)A would be a question about pluralities of children, and thus not answerable as in (86)B, contrary to fact. In Martí (2020b), I analyse inclusive plurals as lacking NumberP altogether -the absence of NumberP translates into plural morphology in languages that have inclusive plurals (see also footnote 5). That is, the analysis of inclusive and exclusive plurality is one of ambiguity: exclusive plurals are analysed just as we have done so far (see section 2), and inclusive plurals have an inclusive semantics and lack NumberP 34 .…”