Multiple Readings of the Plural Morpheme in Turkish * F. Nihan Ketrez University of Southern California, U.S.A ketrez@usc.edu 1. The plural morpheme and its readings In this study, I show that the plural marking property of the morpheme –lAr 1 in Turkish 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 one, 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-dú 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-lár 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) (3) Ayşe Kur’an-lár oku-du Ayşe Koran-lAr read-past Ayse read the Koran multiple times / continuously (literally: Ayse read the Koran-s) For the present discussion, the most important difference between the two forms and the three readings is that in (1) “the nominal” is plural (MS-reading), whereas in (2), either it is not plural (ME-reading) or we have a plurality of “types” of objects (MT-reading). I propose that the contrast between the three types of readings in (2i) (2ii) and (1) is a consequence of the properties of different DP structures that I show in (4). I discuss these structures in the following sections. (4) (i) ME reading: [ ClP [ NP ] -lAr] (ii) MS reading: [ DP [ NumP [ ClP [ NP ] - lAr ] -lAr]] * I am grateful to Hagit Borer, Audrey Li, Jean-Roger Vergnaud, Hajime Hoji, Roumyana Pancheva , Barry Schein and Maria Luisa Zubizarreta for comments and discussion. All errors are, of course, mine. 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 (´)= primary stress.