1 Plurality

Although there is striking variation across languages (and even within a single language) in how the plural is formally expressed, it is relatively easy to indicate what plurality is from a morphological point of view: the plural is one of the instances of the inflectional category of number. From a semantic point of view, however, the concept of plurality is much more di↵use. To start with, the general folk linguistic intuition that being plural expresses being more than one is inaccurate. For example, while (1-a) suggests that there are multiple stains on the carpet, (1-b) does not suggest that only the carrying of multiple guns is illegal, nor does (1-c) suggest it might be the case that there has been a solitary alien walking the earth.