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Number in Classifier Languages

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Number in Classifier Languages Number in Classifier Languages A DISSERTATION SUBMITTED TO THE FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF MINNESOTA BY Hiroki Nomoto IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Advisor: Hooi Ling Soh March, 2013 c Hiroki Nomoto 2013 ALL RIGHTS RESERVED Acknowledgements Looking back at the years I spent for my doctoral studies, I cannot but realize that quite a number of people were there to play various roles. Most of them did not even know who I was, and I do not know who they were either, like those many strangers who said hi to me on the street, which by the way never happens at the places that I have lived other than in the United States. No matter how small their roles may be, they are definitely part of my memory and my life. Those who beat their collective power include the following individuals, to whom I wish to record my sincere gratitude here. The person who deserves the first mention is no one but my advisor, Hooi Ling Soh. If I had not met her in Singapore, my life—both academic and personal—would have been totally different. I greatly appreciate that she encouraged me to pursue my graduate studies at the Uni- versity of Minnesota (U of M). Though the decision making process was a painful experience, I strongly believe that I made the right decision. I have learned a lot through working with Hooi Ling. It is worth noting that my serious take on optionality and perspective towards it have developed in the course of our collaborative research on the verbal prefix meN- in Malay (Soh and Nomoto 2009, 2011, to appear). Brian Reese read various drafts very carefully and gave detailed comments. His comments and questions have helped clarify my thinking and made my work more precise. I thank the other committee members, Jeanette Gundel and Michael Maratsos, for asking important questions. Addressing them, I hope, has made this study accessible to a wider readership. Besides the committee members, special thanks go to Alan Bale and Akira Watanabe, who have read drafts of parts of this dissertation and gave insightful comments and criticisms. Their comments were crucial in developing and sharpening ideas presented in this study. Parts of this dissertation have been presented at the 2010 Annual Meeting of the Linguis- tic Society of America, the 29th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics, Workshop on i Indonesian-Type Voice Systems, Institute of Language Research Regular Colloquium and the fourth meeting of the Indonesian Languages Research Group at Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (TUFS). I would like to thank the participants at these meetings for their questions, com- ments and encouragement, especially Bryan James Gordon, Shinjiro Kazama, Kunio Nishiyama and Norvin Richards (in alphabetical order). In addition, I also benefited greatly from discus- sions with the following people: Byeong-Uk Yi, Kartini Abd. Wahab, James Stevens and Eun-Ju Noh. This study includes data from various languages. I am grateful to the following people, who shared with me their knowledge of their languages: Kartini Abd. Wahab, Mohd Izzat Mohd Thiyahuddin, Muhammad Idham Adli bin Musa, Muhammad Nizam Md Zin (Malay); Fatemeh Gharahkhani, Maryam Ataski Golestan (Persian); Bi Xi, Shu Fan, Pamela Peng (Mandarin); Nala Huiying Lee, Qizhong Chang (Singlish); Filipe Santos Kawano (Brazilian Portuguese); Iwan Setiya Budi (Indonesian); Byeong-Uk Yi, Eun-Ju Noh (Korean). I also thank the three Hmong speakers who served as consultants for Hooi Ling Soh’s project supported by the Col- lege of Liberal Arts Imagine Fund Award (2009–10). In this connection, I am grateful to An- drew Simpson for giving me an opportunity to work together on a comparative study of forms and meanings of noun phrases in four classsifier languages (Simpson et al. 2011). The research reported here was financially supported by the U of M and also by the JSPS Grant-in-Aid for Young Scientists (B) (#23720199), without which I could not have traveled for conferences and hired many consultants. While the work started early in my dissertation years at the U of M, I wrote most of this dissertation while teaching at TUFS. I thus could rely on my colleagues with different exper- tises for information, materials and consultant recruitment: Kenji Okano (Burmese), Naotoshi Kurosawa (Portuguese), Keiko Mochizuki (Mandarin), Kyoko Niwa (Bangla) and Satoko Yoshie (Persian). Masanori Ichikawa helped me with statistics in acceptability judgment experiments that I conducted relating to the present study. I also appreciate the constant care and sup- port from my immediate colleagues in the Malay Language Program, Naoki Soda and Faridah Mohamed. Last but not least, my former advisor, Isamu Shoho, has been always supportive, especially at important turning points in my academic life. Needless to say, those listed above are not responsible for the content of this dissertation; any remaining errors are solely mine. Outside the academic life, I would like to thank my fellow linguistics graduate students and also to Asish Abraham for their friendship. Finally, I owe my deepest gratitude to my parents, ii Masazumi and Setsuko Nomoto, for their continuous patience and support for my unusual life path. I dedicate this dissertation to them, hoping that they will understand what this dissertation means to me. iii Abstract Classifier langauges are often described as lacking genuine number morphology and treating all common nouns, including those conceptually count, as an unindividuated mass. This study argues that neither of these popular assumptions is true, and presents new generalizations and analyses gained by abandoning them. I claim that no difference exists between classifier and non-classifier languages regarding the semantics of either nouns or numerals. Common nouns universally denote properties and are individuated, contra Chierchia (1998b). The primary evidence comes from optional classifier languages such as Malay, in which direct numeral modification of nouns without classifiers is generally possible. Moreover, upon closer examination, optional classifier use is also observed in obligatory classifier languages such as Japanese. I propose that classifiers are a sophisticated kind of singular number marker in that they not only assert the restriction of the domain to singularities but also conventionally implicate the characteristics of the noun. Plural markers in classifier languages have the same semantic structure, and hence they are genuine plural number markers. Furthermore, classifiers and plural markers in classifier languages are subject to the same licensing condition, which involves either referential determiners or quantifiers. These similarities endorse their belonging to the same grammatical category, i.e. number. I argue that that general number, which is associated with number-neutral properties, is a universally available basic number category, along with singular and plural. Classifier languages have distinct forms for all three. Optional number marking follows from the three-way distinction number system, where the general is morphologically unmarked. The three basic number categories can be expressed by combinations of two binary fea- tures, i.e. [±Sg] (atomicity) and [±Pl] (divisibility). They create two kinds of general numbers differing in the presence/absence of number morphology: GN+ and GN−. Languages such as Brazilian Portuguese and Singlish indeed have two number-neutral forms, one with a plural marker and the other without. While classifier languages distinguish all basic number categoires, non-classifier languages conflate one or more of them morphologically. Languages can be classified into five types according to this criterion: (i) SG : GN : PL, (ii) SG/GN : GN/PL, (iii) SG/GN : PL, (iv) SG : iv GN/PL, and (v) SG/GN/PL. Classifier languages (type (i)) do not lack number, but instead make the most fine-grained basic number distinction. The difference between classifier and non- classifier languages reduces not to semantics (Krifka 1995; Chierchia 1998b; Wilhelm 2008) or syntax (Li 1999), but to a difference in number morphology. The proposed number system and typology make it possible to account for bare “singular” kind terms in type (ii) languages (e.g. Brazilian Portuguese), a problem to Dayal’s (2004b) theory of number and definiteness marking in kind terms. v Contents Acknowledgements i Abstract iv List of Tables x List of Figures xi List of Abbreviations xii 1 Introduction 1 1.1 Scope of inquiry . 1 1.2 Overview of the remaining chapters . 2 2 Dissociating classifiers from counting 6 2.1 Introduction . 6 2.2 The definition of ‘classifiers’ . 8 2.3 Classifiers are not for counting . 12 2.3.1 Optional classifier languages . 12 2.3.2 Optional classifier use in obligatory classifier languages . 15 2.4 Two little-discussed facts about classifier languages . 19 2.4.1 Three ways of interpreting noun phrases . 19 2.4.2 Fact 1: Classifiers prevent reference to subkinds . 21 2.4.2.1 Optional classifier languages: Malay and Persian . 22 2.4.2.2 Obligatory classifier languages: Japanese and Thai . 24 vi 2.4.2.3 Crosslinguistic generalization . 26 2.4.2.4 Pragmatic factors affecting the ease of object/subkind reading 29 2.4.3 Fact 2: Plurals do not denote kinds . 30 2.5 Summary . 33 3 Analysis of the two little-discussed facts about classifier languages 34 3.1 Introduction . 34 3.2 Background . 36 3.2.1 The ontology of the domain of individuals . 36 3.2.2 The relation between [object] and [kind] individuals . 41 3.2.3 Kinds . 46 3.3 Fact 1: Classifiers prevent reference to subkinds . 48 3.3.1 The idea . 48 3.3.2 An implementation in Linear Optimality Theory . 51 3.4 Fact 2: Plurals do not denote kinds . 57 3.4.1 Proposal . 57 3.4.2 Alternative accounts . 62 3.4.2.1 Individuality: Reduplication in Malay/Indonesian .
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