Gender and number morphology in Tigrinya

M. Rita Manzini – Leonardo M. Savoia Tesfay Tewolde Yohannes University of Florence There is strong evidence for concluding that in languages with a gender/number inflectional system, i.e. more generally a nominal class one, inflectional exponents provide an interpretive contribution (Manzini and Savoia 2005, 2007, 2011, Kihm 2005, Dechaine et al. 2014, Kramer 2015 on Amharic) and hence can be equated to types of classifiers. Tigrinya nominal/adjectival morphology (cf. Tewolde 2002) provides us with the evidence that gender/number morphology has interpretive content which concurs to fixing the denotation of the noun. The syncretism of feminine and plural morphology cannot be captured in terms of traditional descriptive categories, strengthening the conclusion that different properties must be involved.