The morphosyntactic structure of number in Italian and Albanian. High and low plurals

M. Rita Manzini

doi:10.5565/rev/catjl.319

The morphosyntactic structure of number in Italian and Albanian. High and low plurals

Authors

M. Rita Manzini Università di Firenze https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5288-4210

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Abstract

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.

Keywords

number, plural, mass, gender, neuter, agreement

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The morphosyntactic structure of number in Italian and Albanian. High and low plurals

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