Corbett (2000): Number #

This file formalizes the typology of number of [Cor00]. Number has more shape than the singular and plural of English. A language may express a noun's meaning outside the number system, the general number of Bayso, with a form of its own, or of Japanese, where the general form is the singular's; within the system the values are chosen in order, the determinate dual and trial dividing the plural before the indeterminate paucals and greater plural divide it further, so that the systems from Russian's two values to Lihir's five are the sequences of binary choices, and a facultative value, one whose use is not required, can only be a last choice, every choice after it facultative too. Which nominals distinguish number follows the Animacy Hierarchy, from the speaker through the addressee, the third person, kin and humans to animates and inanimates: the likelihood of number being distinguished never increases rightwards, so that a value's range is a top segment, each further choice has a range no wider than the choice before it, and obligatory marking lies above facultative. Minor numbers, the Hebrew dual or the Avar paucal, escape the hierarchy but only inside systems attested with and without them; associativity is a category of its own; and a second system lower on the hierarchy may conflate values or add a mass number no top system has. Number is expressed by words, syntax, morphology and suppletion, and by three arrangements that add no values outside the typology: inverse marking, minimal-augmented paradigms, and numbers constructed from two coarser markings. In syntax, controller and target numbers may differ in system, in default, or for particular controllers, the corporate nouns of English and the honorific plurals of Slavonic taking semantic agreement in the measure the Agreement Hierarchy and the Predicate Hierarchy allow; conjoined noun phrases take agreement with the nearest conjunct or with all, resolved to the dual for two singulars where there is one and to the plural otherwise, resolution favoured by animacy and precedence. Verbal number, of events or of participants, is a category apart. The book's examples are the rows of Data/Examples/Corbett2000.json.

Implementation notes #

A system is the book's sequence of binary choices: a shape, how many determinate and how many indeterminate choices are made and whether a greater plural is, with the kind of general number and how many final choices are facultative. The substrate's system, its values and its facultative values, is derived from the choices, and in every system the determinate values are an initial segment, by enumeration of the finite type of shapes.
A range is a function from the positions of the Animacy Hierarchy, with the animate position split as Miya needs, to a three-way marking; constraint III of chapter 3 is monotonicity, the top-segment constraint I a theorem of it, and constraints I–III of chapter 4 are read as a pointwise order between successive choices, which is stronger than their letter. The optional marking of chapter 3, Kannada's or Comanche's, is the general number of a second system in chapter 4, not a facultative value: the profiles carry chapter 3's presentation, the second systems chapter 4's.
Corporate nouns and the honorific plurals reuse the hybrid profiles and availabilities of Corbett's typology of gender; the Predicate Hierarchy is a linear order on the predicate's four sub-positions, and the rows of Table 6.11 are profiles over it.
Number resolution is the book's rule and is shown to be the substrate's resolution, the value of the sum of the conjuncts' referents; the corpus tables are typed here, in percentages, with the book's readings of them as theorems.
Second systems and constructed numbers are represented by what their forms cover; the data of Kiowa, Hopi, Rembarrnga and the Slavonic honorifics live here for want of fragments.

TODO #

Japanese's table of plural marking by referent and noun-phrase type, the count and mass effects of §3.6 and §3.7, distributives and collectives, agreement with quantified expressions, the special uses of chapter 7 and verbal number are prose only.
Constraint IV, the relative size of a minor number, Table 5.22's defectives, the mass form of the dialects of north-west Spain, which has no value in the substrate, and the irregular plurals of Bayso are not modelled.

Corbett (2000): Number #

Implementation notes #

TODO #

References #

Number values and systems (chapter 2) #

The Animacy Hierarchy (chapters 3 and 4) #

Minor numbers (§4.2) #

Top and second systems (§4.5) #

The expression of number (chapter 5) #

The syntax of number (chapter 6) #

The Agreement Hierarchy (§6.2) #

The Predicate Hierarchy (§6.4) #

Conjoined noun phrases (§6.5) #

The book's examples #