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Part of
The Form of Structure, the Structure of Form: Essays in honor of Jean Lowenstamm
Edited by Sabrina Bendjaballah, Noam Faust, Mohamed Lahrouchi and Nicola Lampitelli
[Language Faculty and Beyond 12] 2014
► pp. 303–314

On Plurals, noun phrase and num(ber) 
in Moroccan Arabic and Djibouti Somali

 | CNRS & Université Paris 8
 | Université de Tours & LLL UMR 7270
In this paper, we focus on plural nouns in two Afroasiatic languages: Moroccan Arabic and Djibouti Somali. Within a syntactic approach to word formation, we show that not all plurals are located in the same syntactic position. In Moroccan Arabic, one plural results from the merger of a root with the head n, whereas the other realizes a feature on the number head. In a similar way, Somali displays two suffixal plurals, which realize two distinct syntactic structures. One suffix is associated to numP and behaves as a regular plural suffix; in contrast, the other suffix is analyzed as a bound root that selects for xPs (nP or numP) containing the feminine gender.
Published online: 17 December 2014
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/lfab.12.23lah
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Cited by (2)

Cited by two other publications

Jaradat, Abdulazeez
2023. Branching lexical plural into greater and paucal. Cogent Arts & Humanities 10:1 DOI logo
[no author supplied]
2021. A Theory of Distributed Number [Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today, 269], DOI logo

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