The morphosyntactic structure of number in Italian and Albanian. High and low plurals
I adopt the view that there are two number positions, including a lower Class position also hosting gender and a higher Num position. Italian -a plurals and Albanian neuters are associated with a cluster of properties often thought to characterize low plurals: application to a restricted set of lexi...
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| Format: | Article |
| Language: | Catalan |
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Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
2020-12-01
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| Series: | Catalan Journal of Linguistics |
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| Online Access: | https://revistes.uab.cat/catJL/article/view/319 |
| Summary: | I adopt the view that there are two number positions, including a lower Class position also hosting gender and a higher Num position. Italian -a plurals and Albanian neuters are associated with a cluster of properties often thought to characterize low plurals: application to a restricted set of lexical bases, meaning idiosyncrasies, association with (feminine) gender and agreement in the singular with the finite verb. Current analyses associate count Ns (both singular and plural) with a specialized node while treating mass Ns as default. I argue that mass Ns are associated with a specialized feature [aggr] (Albanian neuter) – and that a divisibility feature [part] for plural can attach to both count and mass bases (Italian -a). The properties of low number depend on the properties of the Class position, including the fact that it is low enough to select gender and also to combine with a different Num, yielding mixed agreement. |
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| ISSN: | 1695-6885 2014-9719 |