Gender and number morphology in Tigrinya

There is crosslinguistic evidence for concluding that in languages with a gender/number inflectional system, i.e. more generally a nominal class system, inflectional exponents make an interpretive contribution (Manzini and Savoia, 2005, 2007, 2011; Kihm, 2005; Dechaine et al. 2014; cf. Kramer, 2014 on Amharic) and hence can be equated to types of classifiers. Tigrinya nominal and adjectival morphology (cf. Tesfay Tewolde, 2002) provides us with such evidence that gender/number morphology has interpretive content. In keeping with recent literature on nominal inflection (nominal class/gender), we assume that gender morphemes correspond to elementary predicates (‘classifiers’) which are interpreted at the CI interface as restricting the denotation of nominal arguments. We treat the plural as a particular type of classifier, identified with a part-whole (hence divisibility) content notated (⊆) or with a content [aggregate] unifying mass singulars with plurals. Within this framework we investigate the syncretism whereby the same morphemes -ti/-at that introduce the plural can also have a gender/noun class interpretation. The strongest assumption is that -ti/-at lexicalize the same part-whole or aggregate interpretive content in all contexts where they occur. Indeed our proposal is that these inflectional elements do not coincide with feminine in the traditional sense of the term, but concern the representation of inherent qualities of referents, like countability, extension, etc.