The Semantics of Collectives and Distributives in Papago

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to propose a satisfying model-theoretic account of the notions of singularity, collective plurality, and distributive plurality expressed by both the nouns and the verbs of Papago according to Mathiot (1983). The approach will be algebraic in the sense of Link (1983). Informally, our proposal is that while English has only one form of plurality, Papago has two: one based on identity and the other on equivalence. The identity-based plural is one that Papago shares with English and other Indo-European languages; the equivalence-based plural, on the other hand, is characteristic of Papago and other Native American languages. The extreme elaboration of the notion of multiplicity expressed in Papago follows from this proposal, given sufficiently rich models and independently motivated principles governing the semantics of roots (Wackernagel 1920; Ojeda 1993; Eschenbach 1993), markedness (Jakobson 1957), and verbs (Davidson 1967; Parsons 1990).