Number Marking in Nadëb

Abstract

One of the most robust sources of fresh insights into typological categories comes from our growing knowledge of the indigenous languages of South America, a region that until recently has been significantly under-represented in typological studies. This paper offers a case in point through the investigation of number in Nadëb, a member of the small Naduhup family of the northwest Amazon, which reveals several typologically intriguing features. One of these is Nadëb’s emphasis on marking number on the verb as opposed to the noun, even while any registering of event number appears to be secondary to that of participant number. Nadëb also relies heavily on suppletive or semi-suppletive stem pairs in encoding numberdistinctions in both nouns and verbs. Finally, Nadëb’s resources for expressing number are quite different from those seen in its three sister languages, in which number is primarily a feature of the noun phrase, suggesting a significant reorganization of number-marking within the language family. The Nadëb case underscores the considerable diversity evident in number-marking strategies typologically, and how this diversity may emerge even within a single language family of limited time-depth.

Keywords

• number
• plurality
• Nadëb
• Amazonia
• typology