-lAr-marked nominals and three types of plurality in Turkish F. Nihan Ketrez University of Southern California 1 -lAr-marked nominals The morpheme lAr 1 has traditionally been analyzed as the plural marker in Turkish (Lewis 1968, Underhill 1976, Kornfilt 1997, among others). In this study, I show that its plural marking property is not limited to objects or arguments; rather, when it is attached to a nominal it can result in three different plural readings: 1. multiple singulars (MS-reading), 2. multiple events (ME-reading). 3. multiple types (MT-reading). In the first type, which is exemplified in (1), it pluralizes the object (i.e.,book) and gives a set of single individual items or multiple number of singular objects reading. In such examples, the verb bears the primary stress and the object is marked with case. (1) Ayşe kitap-lar-ı oku-dœ Ayşe kitap-lAr-acc read-past 2 Ayşe read the books (MS) The second and third readings are derived from the structure exemplified in (2). In such sentences, the nominal has the primary stress and it does not bear overt case marking. One of the readings of the sentence is that there were multiple events of book-reading preformed by Ayşe. In this reading, the number of the objects is not specified; i.e, we talk about a book-reading event without focusing on the number of the individual objects involved. Rather than a plural object, lAr- marking on the nominal implies a plural or continuous, extended event of book- reading, which is composed of multiple sub-events. In other words, in (2), there may be one single book (as seen clearly in (3)) that is read multiple times. The other reading that drives from the same form is the multiple types reading, in which the book-reading event can involve different types of books, i.e., the event in (2) can include plural number of books, only if the books are of different types. (2) Ayşe kitap-lÆr oku-du Ayşe book-lAr read-past (literally: Ayşe books-read) (i) Multiple events of book-reading (ME) (ii) Ayşe read different types of books (MT) (iii) *Ayşe read (the) books (*MS) 1 -lAr appear as lar (e.g., kitap-lar) or -ler, (e.g., ne-ler) due to vowel harmony. 2 Abreviations: abl=ablative, acc=accusative, cm=compound marker, dat=dative, DIK=nominalizer, gen=genitive, loc=locative, pass=passive, past=past tense, pl=plural, poss=possessive (possessed), prog=progressive, rel=relative clause marker, sg=singular, (&)=fusion, (-) =morpheme boundary.