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ODYSSEY ENABLED

Article Author: Monica Macaulay

.Jm

Article Title: The Plural Word in ChalcatongoMixtec

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289

IThe Plural Word in Chaleatongo Mixtec

'I

1 introduction

2Plural marking in Chalcatongo Mixtec is entirely

optional. When the plural is overtly expressed, it is

not marked directly; that is, there is no nominal af-

fixation which marks argument plurality. One of the

alternative strategies which is employed instead is use

of the free morpheme hinÿ?a, which simply means 'plu-ral', and is illustrated in (I) through (4):

(I) kÿiSi°k6=ÿ tÿafrl hinÿ?abe+here=3 parent=l plural

My parents are here •(2) tAa=ri hlna?a na-ÿukwÿ"ÿ ÿ[a

parent=l plural REP-turn=3 tomorrowMy p@rents will return tomorroW

(3) ni-hÿ=rl kWa?A yU?ÿ kAni hinA?acP_buy=l many rope long plural

I bought many 19ng ropes . .

(4) Juan hÿndee=# h[-ÿ=ka 6ay[0 wÿa hÿna?aJuan be+lOcated+in=3 with-°neffiADD people

that pluraljuan is there among those people

(i) contains a postverbal plural subject (tÿa=rÿhina?a) ;3 (2) a topicalized plural subject (tÿa=rlhinA?a again); (3) a plural object (hÿ Zÿ[ÿ hÿ!hinÿ?a); and (4) a plural oblique argument (ÿ!ÿ ÿ

hiBa?a).plural words such as the one just illustrated are

the topic of Dryer 1987. Dryer defines "plural word"as follows:

{The plural word is] a morpheme whose meaningand function is similar to that of pluralaffixes in other languages, but which is a

separate word that functionSÿ as a modifier ofthe noun (Dryer 1987:1).

Dryer surveys 307 languages which contain some

kind of overt plural argument marking (this formulationis meant to exclude plural agreement marking on the

verb). Of those 307 languages, 259 mark plural throughaffixation on the noun, and the remaining 48 make use

Monica Macaulay

Purdue University

of a plural word. Dryer discusses a number of charac-

teristics which the plural words in these 48 languageshave in common, as well as typological characteristics

of languages which have plural words. Both of these

topics will be considered below.

2 The Lexical Category of Hinÿ?a

The lexical category of hinÿ?a is somewhat un-

clear. The two most plausible options are pronoun and

quantifier, although we will see below that neither isentirely satisfactory.

Examples like (5) and (6) illustrate the pronoun-llke behavior of hinÿ?a:

(5) kAisikO=# hinÿ?a nÿ-mesabe+located=3 plural face-table

They'll be on the table(6) kÿ-hÿ?K-# hlnÿ?a be?e

PL-goÿ3 plural house

They went to their house

In both examples, one might be tempted to argue

that hinÿ?a is a subject pronoun in postverbal posi-

tion. There are several reasons, however, why this

solution cannot be correct.

First, although free pronouns do cooccur with

clitic pronouns in Mixtec, they are normally barred

from postverbal subject position. Free subject pro-

nouns may only appear in topic position.

Secondÿ if hinÿ?a were a pronoun, it would be a

rather deviant oneÿ since it is neutral with respect to

person. In fact, it can be overtly marked for any

person, through attachment of a pronominal clitic, as

in (7) and (8):

(7) ndÿ?ÿffirf hlnÿ?ÿri ni-ÿA-koyo=ri

all-I pluralml CP-come-pour-I

Wÿ all came(8) kI?Imni hinA?a-nl

goffi2RESP pluralm2RESP(You plural) gol

In addition to the fact that this lack of an in-herent person category makes hinÿ?a quite unlike any

true pronoun in Mixtec, we can observe that the true

pronouns never allow attachment of a pronominal clitic

at all, even one of the same person. Yet we see a

290 291

I

variety of clitics attaching to hinA?a -- additional

examples are given in (9) and (10):

(9) ndito-to hinÿ?a-tobe+awakem3RESP pluralm3RESP

They are awake ,(I0) ro?o hÿnÿ?ÿnro kÿ?ÿ k6yonro

you plural=2 go pour=2

You (plural) will gO

Such evidence clearly indicates that hinA?a is nota pronoun. In examples like (5) and (6), the zerothird person marker is what functions as the pronominal

subject, with hinÿ?a marking that subject as plural,just as it may for any overt clitic pronoun (as in, for

example, (8) and (9)).With respect to the hypothesis that hinÿ?a is a

quantifier, however, the evidence is not quite so

clear. Consider first (II) through (14), which pro-vide examples of four typical Chalcatongo Mixtec quan-

riflers, and (15), which provides an example with a

numeral:

(II) ÿani=rl ni_hA?ÿ=# kWA?A gfi?fi nuu-ribrother=l CP-givem3 much money face-I

My.bro%her gave me a lot of money

(12) kWÿa=rl hob lanabuy=l a+little woolI'm going to buy a little wool

(13) t&nÿ h&?a kÿ-hitÿnri ini be?e eskWelavarious time PL-sing=I stomach house school

We often [lit: various times] sang in school(14) ni-s-kÿ=rl nd*?ÿ sÿ?ÿ=ri

CP-CAUS-eatffil all child-i

I fed all my children(15) ni-hlni-rl ÿ halÿll

CP-see=l two child

I saw two children

The semantics of hinÿ?a would seem to be consis-

tent with analysis as a quantifier, but comparison of

the data in (I) through (4) with the examples ÿustgiven shows that hinÿ?a does not exhibit the same wordorder with respect to the head as other words do which

are unarguably quantifiers. The quantlfiers (and thenumeral) illustrated in (11) through (15) precede thehead, while, as we saw in (1) through (4), hina?a

follows the head.Dryer, in examining the categorial status of the

plural words in the languages of his sample, employsstrictly grammatical factors (that is, cooccurrence

possibilities and word order) as the primary criteriafor classification. Thus he would conclude from these

data that the Chalcatongo Mixtec plural word is not aquantifier.

Furthermore, Dryer points out that plural words

are not precisely parallel in their semantics to quan-

ifiers llke some and ÿZ" Plural words are semantic-

ally less complex than quantlfiers are. That is, quan-

tillers tend to code more than just plurality -- as

Dryer points out, they can be restricted to sets larger

than two, they can signal indefiniteness, and so on.

Plural words do not do any of this; they simply codeargument plurality.

Thus syntactic and semantic evidence would seem to

indicate that hinÿ?a is not a quantifier. The best so-

lution to the problem of its lexical category might beto assign it to a minor word-class of its own, which

is, in fact, one of the more common options Dryer finds

in his sample.

Despite the arguments that hinÿ?e is not a quanti-

fier, however, we will see in the next section that it

shows some behavior which is quite similar to that

shown by clear cases of quantifiers in other languages.

3 Syntactic Properties of Hin&?a

Up to this point, hinÿ?a has been presented inJust two syntactic configurations:D first, in a phrase

which also contains the head it marks as plural (as in

(I) through (4)), and second, with a verbal clitic --overtly expressed or not -- as head (as in (5), (6),

(8), and (9)). In the former case, the linear orderingof hinÿ?a with respect to the head and other elementsof the phrase is as shown in (16).

(16) (QP) - N - (Adj) - (Det) - (hinb?a)

That is, hinÿ?a follows all other material in theNP. Whether it is a sister to the head, or adjoined as

sister to the NP, however, is an issue to be discussed

further below.

In addition to the structures already presented,

there is another distributional possibility for hind?a:it can also be discontinuous with the head, as shown in

(17) through (19):

(17) t67o wÿ kdyaa=ÿ nundOa hinA?aperson that livem3 Oaxaca ÿ!u£a!Those people will live in !Oaxaca

292 293

(lg) kÿyaaÿri n6ndua hlna?aÿriliveÿl Oaxaca ÿluralÿlWe will lÿVe in Oaxaca

(19) ÿa?ARnl hÿ-nA hinA?Aÿnlcomeu2RESP withmlRESP ÿluraln2RESP(You plural) come with me

These examples all contain (among other things) asubject (topicalized or clitic), an intervening non-subject argument, and a subject-modifying hinA?a insentence-flnal position.

As pointed out earlier, unmarked word order in

Mixtec is VSO. SVO order is often observed, however,

and seems to be preferred when there is a full NP sub-

Ject. What is especially interesting about the discon-tinuous construction is that postposed hinÿ?a does not

occur when there is a full NP subject in post-verbalposition, as (20) illustrates:

(20) *nl-hitÿ?ÿm# ÿA wÿ ÿ hasÿ?ÿ hinA?aCP-fightn3 man that one woman ÿlural

*The men fought over/for/about a woman

There are two questions which are relevant at this

point wlth respect to the syntax of Mixtec: First, whatis the internal constituent structure of an NP which

contains hin6?a? Second, how is extraposition of theplural word from post-verbal subject position blocked?

With respect to the first question, I would arguethat hinA?a is in an adjunction relationship to theother material in the NPÿ sinceÿ as (21) illustrates,it is possible to separate the rest of the NP from theplural word, and move it to sentence-initial topic

position:

(21) tAafrl ÿakd-ÿ hinA?a Mexicoparent=l live-3 plural MexicoMy parents llve in Mexico

This is one of the respects in which hinA?a bearssome resemblance to a quantifier in, for example,

English or French: the structure I am proposing is sim-

ilar to what Sportlche (1988:426) calls a "partitivequantifier." These structures are shown in (22) :

(22) Partitive Q: [NP o NP]

Mixtec plural word: {NP NP hinA?a]

As for the second question posed above, a full

treatment is beyond the scope of this paper. What is

needed is a way to block sentences like (20), whileallowing for sentences like (17) through (19). Thiswill be accomplished by allowing extraposition ofhinÿ?a from topic position to CP, while prohibitingsuch adjunction from postverbal subject position to IP.This is shown schematically in (23) :

(23) __Cÿ ÿ I"

C" hinÿ?a I" hing?a

Specÿ I"

NP ÿ V NP ...

(Subj) V ... (subj)

4 Plural Words in Other Dialects of Mixtec

This brines us now to other dialects of Mixtec, in

which we find, unfortunately, not much data available

on plural words. Daly (1973) mentions a plural word inPeÿoles Mixtec (and in fact, Dryer includes this in hissample), and Alexander (1980) mentions one for At atlÿ-huca Mixtec. Aside from these two, I have found no

mention of 7such an element in any of the other dialectsof Mixtec.

The data from Peÿoles Mixtec are quite dissimilar

to those from Chalcatongo Mixtec. The first construc-

tion in which Daly mentions the plural word is thequantified NP, as shown in (24) through (27) :

(24) kOmi ÿAÿufour people

(25) bAi nÿumany people

(26) kwee tÿeplural men

(27) 6k6 kwee t6e 'twenty men'twenty plural men

[Daly 1973:20]

'four people'

'many people'

'menl

Comparing example (26) with the others in thisset, we see that in Peÿoles Mixtec the plural word con-

forms to the usual linear ordering for quantifiers, in

that it precedes the head. This is contrary to what is

found in Chalcatongo Mixtec, in which the plural wordis not ordered with the quantifiers.

294

i:

Peÿoles Mixtec also has a discontinuous plural

construction, as shown in (28) :

(28) tÿtÿ=i ndÿ?ÿ dit6=i kÿ-na-ku?ÿu-kwÿ=dÿ 6u?ufather=l with uncle=l go-REP-irrigate-plural=3M

groundMy father and my uncle are going to irrigate the

field[Daly 1973:42]

The difference between this example and the ones

from Chalcatongo Mixtec is that, according to Daly's

analysis, kwe(e) in (28) is not a free word, but isinstead a bound morpheme. If it is obligatorily bound,

it no longer qualifies as a plural word (under Dryer's

definition). However, it is possible that this examplesimply shows the result of rapid-speech contraction (a

common phenomenon in Mixtec). In that case, this would

be an example like (21) ÿ in which the plural word is inpost-verbalgsubject position, marking as plural a topi-

calized NP.The data from Atatlÿhuca Mixtec, contrary to those

from Peÿoles, are quite comparable to the Chalcatongo

Mixtec data. The first relevant point is that the plu-

ral word in the Atatlhhuca dialect occurs after the9head, as it does in Chalcatongo Mixtec:

(29) yÿkWÿ ii loko tÿndÿku aÿf t6?ÿ hijnÿ?a=dethere exist many worm say authority plural=3M

Over there, there are many wormsÿ say the

authorities

[Alexander 1980:54]

This dialect also employs the discontinuous plural

construction, as shown in (30) :I0' II

(30) te-kh-sA?a ÿ?a-u ayate hiJnÿ?ÿ=na

and-PL-make woman-the ayate plural=3F

And the women make ayates [cloth made of maguey

fiber][Alexander 1980:55 ]

One point of difference here is that apparently

the Atatlÿhuca dialect does permit a full postverbalsubject NP with a postposed plural word.

(31) summarizes the data from the three dialects:

295

(31)DIALECT FORM PRE/FOST HEAD DISCONTINUOUSChalcatongo hinÿa post yesAtatlÿhuca hijnÿ?ÿ post yespe6oles kwee pre yes

The plural words in Chalcatongo and AtatlÿhucaMixtec are obviously cognate, and exhibit virtually

identical grammatical behavior. The plural word inPe6oles Mixtec, however, appears not to be related to

the plural word in the other dialects, and is only par-tially similar in behavior.12

5 Typological Considerations

This section presents a few brief observations

about Chalcatongo Mixtec and Dryer's typological find-ings concerning plural words.

First, (32) presents Dryer's findings with respectto word order type and the relative order of pluralword and head noun. In this table, the numbers repre-

sent linguistic groups comparable, Dryer says, to the

subfamilies of Indo-European, rather than individual

languages. (The reason for this kind of categorization

is that tabulation of these data simply by number ofindividual languages per category would likely skew theresults, due to the fact that a large number of the

languages containing plural words in the sample are

closely related. Thus tabulating for larger linguisticgroupings is intended to control for this problem.)

(32) WORD ORDER TYPE AND ORDER OF PLURAL WORDAND HEAD NOUN

Plur-N N-Plur

OV 0 I1v0 I0 2

Recall that Penoles Mixtec is one of the languages

which Dryer includes in his sample. It is counted in

this table as a VO language which positions the pluralword before the noun. However, if we were to add Chal-

catongo Mixtec to the table, it would belong to thesmall group of VO languages which have the plural wordafter the noun.

This poses a problem for the method of categoriz-

ing the languages of the sample: how can we categorize

the languages by subfamily when ÿwo related languages

296 297

I. They tend to have classifiers

2. They show a tendency towards isolating/analytic structure, although:

3. Some verbal inflection is common

4. Case marking on nouns is rare

5. Pronominal possessive marking on nouns

is found in about half the sample

Chalcatongo Mixtec fits the profile quite well.While it no longer has productive nominal classifica-

tion, it has clear relics of such classification, and

many other Mixtec dialects still do make productive use

of classifiers. Chalcatongo Mixtec has some verbal in-

flection, no case marking, and pronominal possessive

marking on nouns. Because of the verbal inflection, it

cannot be said to have isolating structure, but it is

true that inflection is limited in this language.

(33) TYPOLOGICAL CHARACTERISTICS OF LANGUAGES WITHPLURAL WORDS

(in factÿ dialects of a single language) show different

relative orderings?Dryer points out that the data in (32) are the in-

verse of what one would expectÿ given well-known claims

about word order universals; in particular, the claim

that modifiers tend to precede the noun in OV fan- 13guages, and tend to follow the noun in VO languages.

He uses such data to argue that the ÿniversals are sim-

ply incorrect. The full argumentation and range ofdata involved in this claim are much too complex to go

into in this paper.14 Restricting ourselves only to thepresent casej however, note first that the Chalcatongo

data support the predicted tendencies, rather than con-

tradict them, Secondÿ it must be noted that Dryer°sclaim rests on the tacit assumption that plural words

are modifiers. If my conclusions about the constituent

structure of the NP and the plural word in ChalcatongoMixtec are correct, the plural word is not, strictly

speaking, a modifier. Nor does it fit into any of thecategories that e.g. Lehmann (1973) calls "nominal pre-

modifiers." Thus, universals of modifier-noun ordering

may be irrelevant to these data. Before we can compare

such universals with data on the ordering of pluralwords and their associated nouns, we first must estab-

lish the category and constituency of the plural wordswith respect to thosenouns.

In a final section, Dryer mentions typological

characteristics that languages with plural words have

in common. These are listed in (33):

Unfortunatelyj as Dryer points out, there is no

ready explanation for the occurrence of plural words in

languages with this particular set of characteristics.

It is obvious why plural words occur most often in lan-

guages with little or no nominal inflection -- clearlyÿ

it is an alternative means of marking plurality -- but

the rest of the characteristics remain unexplained.

6 Conclusion

This paper has presented a detailed description ofan instance of the little-known phenomenon of plural

words (a phenomenon which is little-known either in

Otomanguean languages, or in the languages of the

world, for that matter). The lexical category of thisform and aspects of its syntactic behavior have been

considered, it has been compared with similar forms in

other dialects of Mixtec, and finally, it has beenevaluated with respect to the findings of Dryer (1987).

There is one general point which bears repeating:

the syntactic findings point up the need for caution in

making typological generalizations. Admittedly one ofthe hazards of doing broad typological studies is thefact that one is at the mercy of oneg s sources, since

the level of detail required is often quite simply notpresent in the grammars one consults. It is to be

hoped that a study like this one will help to providethat level of detail.

Notes

i. I would like to thank Claudia Brugman, AmyDahlstrom, Matthew Dryer, Charles Jones, and Joe

Salmons for their comments on previous versions of this

paper. Of course none of them is responsible for the

final product.

2. This paper is based on data from the Chalcaton-

go dialect of Mixtec (an Otomanguean language spoken

primarily in the state of Oaxaca, Mexico), collected

between 1981 and 1988. Abbreviations which are used inthe examples are as follow: I t 2, 3 - First, second,

third person; ADD - Additive; CAUS - Causative; COND -Conditional; CP - Completive; F - Feminine; M - Mascu-

line; NEG - Negative; PL - plurÿl; REP - Repetitive;

RESP - Respect.

298299

3. Unmarked word order in Mixtec is VSO.

4. Whether or not the Chalcatongo Mixtec pluralword should be considered a modifier is discussed

below.5. I would especially like to thank Charles Jones

for his help with this section. The usual disclaimers

apply.6. I am assumingÿ for the purposes of exposition,

an analysis along the lines of Sproat (1985), in whichVSO word order is derived from underlyingly configura-tional SVO word order. Surface SVO word order is con-

sidered topicalization, i.e. subsequent movement of the

subject to specifier of C position.7. It is likely that this is an oversight, not a

statement about the incidence of plural words in dla-

lects of this language.

8. Daly formulates this as an agreement transfor-

matlon, andÿ interestingly, says that it is obligatory.

This is noteworthy because marking of plurality is op-

tional in all of the other dialects of Mixtec withwhich I am familiar.

9. I have adjusted Alexander's orthography to con-

form more closely to standard Americanlst transcrip-

tion. The only exception is her "jnÿ" which I believeis a voiceless nasal. I have left it as is since I'm

not entirely sure what it represents.

I0. Note in this example that the third-person

feminine clitic, -ÿaÿ makes it clear that it is the

subject ÿ na?a 'woman', which is pluralized by hinÿ?a,

rather than the object, ÿMÿS"II. One additional point in the comparison between

these two dialects is that ÿ according to Alexander, the

plural word in the Atatlÿhuca dialect is restricted toanimate entities. In contrast, my data from Chalca-

tongs Mixtec include repeated examples in which hinÿ?a

is used with inanimates. However, while trying recent-

ly to test the grammaticality of various examples con-

taining hinA?a, my consultant spontaneously told me

that it was reserved for animate NPs. This is the same

consultant who had earlier provided me with the inani-

mate examples. I leave this an unsolved problem.

12. Relevant topics which deserve further study

are: What are the sources of the two plural word types?

And, what form do other dialects have (assuming that

they do have plural words)?13. e.g. in Lehmann 1973, Greenberg 1963.

14. For more on this issue, see Dryer 1986 and

1988.

References

Alexander, Ruth Maria. 1980. Gramÿtica Mixteca:

Mixteco de Aÿatlÿhuca. Mÿxico, D.F. : Instituto

Lingdÿstico de Verano.

Daly, John P. 1973. A Generative Syntax of Peÿoles

Mixtec. Norman: Summer Institute of Linguistics.

Dryer, Matthew. 1986. Word Order Consistency and

English. In Delancey and Tomlin (eds.): Proceed-

!nÿs of the Second Annual Pacific LinguisticsConference. Eugene, Oregon.

..... . 1987. Plural Words. Paper given at LSA, San

Francisco, December 1987. (To appear 1989,

Linguistics.)..... . 1988. Object-Verb Order and Adjective-Noun

Order: Dispelling a Myth. Lingua 74:185-217.Greenberg, Joseph H. 1963. Some Universals of Grammar

with Particular Reference to the Order of Meaning-

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guage and Its Implications. Language 49:47-66.

Sportiche, Dominique. 1988. A Theory of FloatingQuantifiers and Its Corollaries for Constituent

Structure. Linguistic Inquiry 19:425-449.

Sproat, Richard. 1985. Welsh Syntax and VSO Struc-

ture. Natural Language and Linguistic Theory

3:173-216.