16 Number in Marori

Abstract

We describe the nominal and verbal number systems of Marori, a Trans- New Guinea/Papuan language. The expression of number in Marori is distinguished by distributed underspecified exponence. Certain number values can be expressed even when there is no dedicated number marking for that value: for example, third person dual nominal number is expressed not by dual morphology, but by a combination of nonsingular and nonplural exponents. Verbal number, including duactionality, is also characterized by distributed and underspecified exponence, with duactionality expressed by a combination of nonsingular and nonplural verbal number marking. Marori also allows specification of incompatible values for number, with particular semantic effects; a singular argument indexed by nonsingular verb marking gives rise to a comitative-inclusory interpretation, for example. These characteristics make the nominal and verbal number systems of Marori very different from the familiar syntactic number systems of languages like English.