The expression of number in Jamaican Creole

Abstract

In this paper I argue that there is no true number morphology in Jamaican Creole (JC). Instead, I show that dem, traditionally taken to be a plural marker, is more properly analyzed as a marker of inclusiveness, a defining characteristic of definiteness. These are expected outcomes of JC being in the class of languages which are claimed to have set nouns, i.e. nouns which, when combined with a numeral X, refer to an X-numbered set of individuals rather than to X number of individuals (Rijkhoff 2004). Since JC does not mark plurality in the same way as its lexifier English, individuation and number in JC cannot be analysed in the same way as is done for English. The proposal for a syntactic analysis of number in JC, given the above, is that functional structure above the NP provides for optional individuation via Cl(assifier)Phrase, and additionally for optional number specification, via Num(ber)Phrase.

Nominal architecture in Jamaican Creole

“…(48) Police shoot Starman inna dance… dem rain down gunshot police shoot Starman in dance 3pl rain down gunshot pon him (Sistren 1986: 192) on 3sg 'The police shot Starman in a dance… they rained down gunshots on him' Stewart (2006Stewart ( , 2007Stewart ( , 2011 argues that the use of dem is not to mark plurality, but rather to imply inclusiveness. According to her, the data in (49b) implies one killing event, with the boys acting collaboratively, an interpretation which is not forced in (49a).…”

“…Di chii bwai dem kil dem faada 17 the three boy incl kill 3pl father 'The three boys killed their father. ' " Stewart (2011) remarks that "the naturalness of the use of the plural with the JC definite di is easily explained when it is considered that inclusiveness is a feature of definiteness. (…) What this means is that in JC di bwai dem 'the boys' , dem indicates that it is the totality of bwai which is under consideration.…”

“…This is realized by a null classifier in JC (and s in JP) (Stewart 2006(Stewart , 2007(Stewart , 2011Bobyleva 2011). This projection is present in the structure with individuated nominals only.…”

“…Stewart (2006Stewart ( , 2011 inserts all this material in NumP, and as such a functional projection reserved for the merging of numerals in its specifier is less clear. However cross-linguistic studies suggest that when free morphemes express notions such as singular and plural, they generally come below numerals and numeral classifiers (see e.g.…”

“…(Thelwell 1980: 368) 20 'Tell your confederates. ' " Bobyleva therefore adopts only part of the analysis in Stewart (2006Stewart ( , 2007Stewart ( , 2011, namely the idea that varieties of Jamaican Creole make use of a null classifier which is housed in ClP and accounts, for example, for data such as that given in (49a) where there is no collective reading for the sequence chii bwai. As such, the null classifier fulfills the function of the division of stuff, along the lines of Borer (2005).…”