Madeline Ladore

RTG PhD student, member since 2024

Project "The semantics of plural morphology in select Niger-Congo; Kwa languages"

This project intends to collect and analyze data in select languages from the Niger-Congo; Kwa language family to incorporate these number-marking systems into the current theoretical landscape. Akan and Logba pose an interesting question for the analysis of the mass-count distinction (Chierchia 2010, Alexiadou 2011) and the concept of semantic markedness (Farkas & de Swart 2010, Sauerland et al. 2005, Yatsuchiro et al. 2017). Akan is reported to have nouns that have a number marking similar to the plural form, but has no singular counterpart. Conversely, Logba (Dorvlo 2009) is reported to have singular-marked nouns without a plural counterpart. In both cases, these nouns are acceptable when discussing pluralities and singularities. Renans (2014), when discussing a similar phenomenon in Ga, calls these 'intermediate' nouns, i.e., these nouns function somewhere between count and mass nouns. Through the duration of this project, I will be collecting data from speaker communities in Ghana using interviews, questionnaires, storyboards, and by recording natural conversation, alongside small experiments. This project aims to contribute to the current theories of plurality and count-mass distinctions as well as to the body of literature on the semantics of West African languages. Currently, much of the research on plurality in these languages is concerning the morphology of the language, rather than the semantic qualities. Moreover, many of the current theories on plurality are formed on the basis of European languages. Therefore, the discussion of a wider variety of plural strategies can only serve to increase our understanding of not only plurality, but also of how meaning varies from form in natural language.