Verbal Plurality Cross-Linguistically

Abstract

AbstractThis chapter gives a general overview of verbal plurality phenomena cross-linguistically, with verbal plurality understood as a descriptive label for instances of verbal morphology marking multiple events. Verbal plurality markers form a heterogeneous class cross-linguistically and many verbal plurality markers have readings that go beyond event plurality such as duratives and intensives. Part of this variation can be related to the fact that multiplicity readings arise from different sources such as plurality markers, collective markers, additive expressions, and degree expressions. Another factor of variation is contributed by the different event-identification conditions imposed by the verbal plurality marker. In particular, the event pluralities introduced by verbal plurality markers are often limited in their interaction with other elements in the clause and in many languages the availability of distributive dependencies between the event plurality and plural arguments depends on the syntactic type of the plurality denoting expression.