Distributed Plural hypothesis.

Ljudmila Geist, Joanna Blaszczak

Abstract:

In this paper, building on Mathieu (2014), we put forth a split analysis of plural
number. More precisely, we argue that functional morphemes can be polysemous.
Different positions in the syntactic structure correlate with different interpretations.
In other words, the plural is distributed along the syntactic spine and may
realize three different functional heads in the fine-grained DP-structure: n (a low
functional head), # (a middle functional head), and Div (a high functional head). We
present evidence based on the plural marking in Russian and Polish showing that
also in Slavic languages the plural comes in many guises, which justifies proposing
different syntactic positions for its different semantic manifestations. We refer
to this observation as the ”distributed plural hypothesis.” Altogether we argue,
based on the facts discussed in the paper, that the assumption of a fine-grained
DP-structure is justified in Russian and Polish, potentially also in other Slavic languages.
Keywords: DP, plural, countability, kind, classifier