Plurality in Anaang Language

Abstract

Human knowledge of an entity at any point in time always has underneath it the concept of number because of the possibility of using the entity in speech or writing. The act of counting and having ‘one’ or ‘more than one’ entity as reference in speech or writing is a common phenomenon in the use of language. In concrete situations, every language user finds himself tending to express number or talking about ‘one’ or ‘more than one’ entity. Number is indispensable in the use of language. Entities that constitute the subject and, or object in sentences often occur in singular or plural form and languages grammaticalise the concept differently. Proper reference to entities in number is essential in constructing a grammatical sentence. This paper investigates plural marking in Anaang language. The Anaang language is one of the Lower Cross languages under the Delta Cross in the New Benue Congo family. The data for the study were collected from naturally occurring language recorded from native speakers of Anaang language during a fieldwork. The study used Lexical morphology and Aronof’s (1976) Unitary Base Hypothesis (UBH). The study reveals that Anaang language pluralizes entities through vowel alternation at the initial and at the medial positions, zero morpheme and through stem change, among other processes.