Morphological and semantic markedness revisited: The realization of plurality across languages

Abstract The paper investigates two related questions that concern the realization of plural morphology on nouns across languages. The first question is whether markedness in the sense of complexity in form goes hand in hand with complexity in meaning. In other words, since plural nouns are formally more complex than singular nouns, does that mean that they differ in interpretation? On the basis of experimental and theoretical investigations the claim is supported that plurals, although morphologically more complex than singulars, are semantically unmarked across languages. The second question is what regulates the presence of plural morphology in numeral-noun constructions across languages, in light of the proposal that plural appears on nouns in such constructions only if it is semantically unmarked. The paper offers an explanation of this distribution by adopting a dual system of agreement, which distinguishes between CONCORD and INDEX features. By looking at these two questions, the paper makes a contribution to the discussion of the relationship between semantic and morphological markedness.