Replicated inflection? Plot twists behind apparent borrowed plurals

Abstract

Morphology, particularly inflectional morphology, has sometimes been considered among the last features of language to be transferred under conditions of language contact. It has become clear, however, that numerous factors can affect the susceptibility of bound morphology to transfer. One of these involves typological similarities among the languages involved, similarities which might increase over long periods of contact and in turn set the stage for elaboration of particular domains. Here such effects are examined in what is commonly viewed as a prototypical kind of inflection: plural marking on nouns. The languages involved are indigenous to a well-known linguistic area in Northern California, but they represent three unrelated families: Pomoan, Yukian, and Wintun. While shared plural markers often ride into languages in contact on the backs of borrowed nouns, speakers of these languages have a history of avoiding much lexical borrowing. The shared markers apparently entered the languages via a more circuitous route. Throughout the area, inflectional number marking on nouns is rare, but related distinctions on verbs can be elaborate. It appears that what was transferred were verbal distributive and collective suffixes, which then evolved within the individual languages, to varying degrees, into number marking on nouns.