classifiers and plural morphology

[David Gil]

Audrey writes:

> My speculations are
> (i) if the word order is Number +Classifier + N, plural morphology
> will not appear on the N  (though, if N occurs alone in the same
language,
> without Number and Classifier, the N may have a plural form).
> (ii) if the word order is N + Number + Classifier, the N CAN have
plural
> morphology.  However, it NEED NOT to.
>
> I am focusing on the relation between word order and the possibility
> (not obligatoriness) of plural morphology.

Off the top of my head, I can't think of any examples of numeral
classifiers and inflectional number marking cooccurring in the same
construction in any language -- regardless of what the word order is.
But given the incredible amount of syntactic diversity within the East /
Southeast Asian sprachbund, I wouldn't be that surprised to encounter
such an example.  Is anybody familiar with any examples?

David


--
David Gil

Department of Linguistics
Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology
Inselstrasse 22, D-04103 Leipzig, Germany

Telephone: 44-341-9952310
Fax: 44-341-9952119
Email: gil at eva.mpg.de