THE MARKING OF MASS, COUNT AND PLURAL DENOTATIONS IN MULTI‐DIMENSIONAL PARADIGMS*

This paper investigates the morphology of nouns in pseudo-partitive constructions, noun-numeral constructions and plurals. The data discussed reveal a *ABA pattern that restricts syncretism among these categories. Specifically, in the sequence pseudo-partitive, counting form and plural, only adjacent forms can be syncretic. I argue that the constraint can be derived from a particular morphosyntactic structure, where, following Borer (2005), mass nouns have the smallest structure, count nouns (found after numerals) are derived by dividing the mass into units, and plural is derived by restricting the count denotation to pluralities. The article further investigates how the relevant forms interact with case marking, and suggests that the forms should be organized into a twodimensional paradigm space where syncretic forms occupy contiguous regions.