A crosslinguistic perspective on the category of nominal number and its acquisition

Nominal number is one of the central noun phrase categories and one of the most commonly encountered ones in the languages of the world. After considering the cognitive bases of number as it is expressed in language (subitizing vs. counting), a scheme for crosslinguistic comparison of nominal number in the languages of the world will be proposed. This will comprise an overview of plural-marking systems (two-, three-, and four-term systems), of differences among languages with respect to the significance of expressing number distinctions (numerality vs. transnumerality, singulative-plural marking systems vs. plural marking systems), of linguistic means for marking number (grammaticalized vs. lexicalized), and of functions of the grammatical category of number (semantic vs. syntactic). Special attention will be given to differences in nominal number marking in the languages included in the Crosslinguistic Project on Pre- and Protomorphology in Language Acquisition. Finally, some suggestions for studying the acquisition of number in a crosslinguistic perspective will be made