Plural Marking and the Semantics of Plurality

This paper provides an overview of second language acquisition (SLA) studies on the interpretation and judgments of plurality. Plural marking is closely related to the count/mass distinction. Experimental SLA studies on plural marking have typically contrasted English, a language with a fully grammaticized count/mass distinction and obligatory plural marking, with Generalized Classifier languages such as Chinese and Korean, which have highly restricted and/or optional plural marking. SLA studies on the semantics of plurality largely rely on three types of tasks: interpretation tasks that examine the relationship between the form of the noun (singular vs. plural) and its interpretation (object- vs. substance-denoting); offline judgment tasks that examine learners’ ability to reject sentences with missing or incorrect plural marking; and online tasks which examine learners’ sensitivity to missing or incorrect plural marking online, for example in self-paced reading. Study results, taken together, point to the role of both universal factors and language-specific morphosyntax in the L2 acquisition of plurality. There is evidence for L1 transfer, as well as conflicting evidence with regard to whether recovery of transfer and full integration of the plural morpheme into the L2 grammar is possible.