Accounting for counting (crosslinguistically)

Ushasi Banerjee (Yale)

This paper proposes a universal account of counting constructions. The variability that has been observed in such constructions can be condensed to four possible systems that result from the settings of two linguistic parameters - NP[+/- pred] (whether the NP is a predicate or a kind term) and Card/CL (whether cardinal and classifier heads are fused). The four systems show different patterns vis-à-vis overt occurrence of number-marking plurals (of the English type) and numeral classifiers - they are either obligatorily complementary, or obligatorily absent, or they obligatorily co-occur. While the first two systems have been discussed in the literature, the latter has been argued to be impossible. This paper introduces novel data from Khasi, which exhibits such a pattern. The proposed typology can not only integrate all the systems of counting observed crosslinguistically, but also shed light on the nature and function of both plurals and numeral classifiers.