Number Category in Language Varieties of Some Cities in Kerman Province: A Typological Study

At first glance, “number” is considered as a very simple grammatical category. However, in fact, it is a complex matter in languages and it causes varieties in world languages. The present study aims at examining the plurality and number category in language varieties of some cities in Kerman province based on typological approach. The survey’s corpus is extracted from Iran Linguistic Atlas’s database (ILA) a project compiling in Research Center of Cultural Heritage and Tourism. The research results show that, the value of number category in the studied language varieties is just singular and plural. The singular nouns are encoded without marker and the plural nouns are marked. The plural markers attach to singular nouns in suffix form, therefore the strategy for plurality in the studied language varieties is morphology, which is the most common one in the world languages. The data analysis indicates that syntactic strategy is used for encoding the number category along with morphological one.



1. Introduction

At first glance, “number” is considered as a very simple grammatical category and it is simply considered for distinguishing between singularity and plurality. However, in fact, it is not a simple matter in languages and the analysis of number and plurality in languages may be a complex matter. The way number is expressed in languages are different. In this study, number category and the way for encoding it, is examined in the language varieties of some cities in Kerman province based on typological approach. Also, plural markers in the studied language varieties are introduced. For analyzing the data, Corbet (2004), Dryer (1998 & 2005) and Haspelmat (2005) are used as theoretical frameworks. The corpus of this study has been extracted from the Iran Language Atlas (ILA) database. ILA is a linguistic project of the Research Institute of Cultural Heritage and Tourism (RICHT). It aims at recording the usage of words, phrases and sentences of every regional spoken dialect of Iran’s rural areas based on a questionnaire consists of 105 words and phrases and 36 sentences. Recorded data of spoken language of 30 varieties of the said province included in ILA’s database.

Research questions:

1. What is (are) the strategy(s) of encoding the "number" category in the studied language varieties?

2. Which forms of number (singular/plural) are marked and is the presence of marker on noun obligatory?

3. What kinds of number values do exist in the studied language varieties?



2. Literature Review

According to traditional grammar, there are singular and plural number in Persian. Singular in contrast with plural refers to one person or object in real world. There are two markers for plural nouns in Persian /-hɑ/ and /ɑn/ which are attached as a suffix to the end of the singular nouns (Anvari and Ahmadi Givi 2008:85). Singular nouns are zero-marked in Persian. Lazard (2010) and Mahutian (2008) mentioned that /-hɑ/ is used in both spoken and written styles and /-ɑn/ which is changed to /-un/ in spoken language. Windfuhr and Perry (2009) believes that /-ɑn/ is less frequent, denoting animates, paired parts of body, and a few other words. Paul (2019:585-586) states that /-ɑn/ goes back to the Middle Persian and it was used for plural nouns in oblique case. In standard modern Persian, this plural suffix denotes the plural of animate nouns. He adds that in Modern Persian /-ɑn/ is almost replaced by /-hɑ/. But sometimes the usage of /-hɑ/ instead of /-ɑn/ causes difference in meaning of words. Shaghaghi (2007:55, 71) states that the plural markers in Persian are inflectional, because they do not produce a new word. However according to Ghomeshi (2003:56-57) they are derivational as they are variants based on different registers. Roshan and Ghadiri (2015) have mentioned that the suffix /-hɑ/ in Persian with time words refers to the meaning of repetition, along with plurality. Darzi and Ghadiri (2011) have studied the quantitative features of /-hɑ/ in Persian. They believe that this suffix with some time words shows quantitative features. Jam (2020) has examined the pronunciation of /-hɑ/ in Persian based on the theory of optimality. Different semantic functions of the suffix /-hɑ/ based on typological approach are studied by Bahrami (2018). According to Givon (2001) singularity is unmarked in the world languages but plurality is morphologically marked. He believes that in some languages plural forms are used just for animated nouns. Croft (2003) has mentioned that different languages show various behaviors in plurality. In some languages singular nouns are without marker but plural ones have markers on them. In some other languages both singular and plural nouns are with different markers. Also, there are a few languages in which none of the singular and plural nouns have markers on them. Some of the Iranian scholars like Rezai Baghbidi & Mahmoodi Bakhtiari (2005), Sharifi & Akhlaghi (2012), Karimi & Fallahi (2012) and Faalhi & Karimi (2015) have studied number category in some Iranian languages.

3. Methodology

This research is descriptive-analytical and is a field study, based on an original survey on natural linguistic data of the studied languages. Through this research, the singular nouns and their plural forms have been extracted from database and then analyzed according to the research theoretical frameworks. The data are from ILA database of Kerman province. In this study all 30 language varieties which are available in ILA database of Kerman province, are examined based on theoretical frameworks. The research corpus consists of 328 plural nouns and noun phrases.



4. Results

The Research aims at studying the “number” category in language varieties of some cities of Kerman Province based on typological approach. The data are from ILA database. Results show that the number system values are singular and plural in the whole analyzed research data. The singular nouns are zero-marked, but the plural ones have markers which are obligatory. The plural markers are in suffix forms attached to the singular nouns. The strategies of number category in all studied language varieties are morphological and syntactic ones.



Table 1.

Plural markers in Kerman province language varieties







Language variety
Plural Marker
Example
Tranlation


-ɑ
-hɑ
-ɑn/

-un
-lær/

-nær


1
Persian
+
+
+
-
deræXt-ɑ

Xorus-hɑ-j-e sijɑ

Ɂɑn zæn-ɑn

deræXt-un
trees

black cocks

those women

trees


2
Abgarmi
+
-
-
-
Xorus-ɑ sijɑ
black cocks


3
Eshkur
+
-
-
-
doXtær -ɑ Xub
good girls


4
Barfe
+
+
-
-
Xorus-ɑ sijɑ

Ɂu zejfe-hɑ
black cocks

thoes women


5
Baluchi
-
+
+
-
deræXt-hɑ

Ɂɑn ʤæn-ɑn
trees

thoes women


6
Turkic
-
-
-
+
jɑXʧe Gez-lær

jɑXʧe oɣlɑn-nær
good girls

good boys


7
Heydarabadi
+
-
-
-
Ɂʊ mærd-k-ɑ
those men


8
Dehaji
+
-
-
-
deræXt-ɑ
trees


9
Ruzbehabad
+
-
+
-
morq-ɑ-j-e sijɑ

pesær-ɑn-e Xub
blach hens

good boys


10
Zangiabadi
+
-
-
-
doXtær-u-w-ɑ Xub
good girls




11
Sohrab
+
-
-
-
deræXt-ɑ
trees


12
Sharikabad
+
-
+
-
ɟilim-ɑ

pesær-ɑn-e Xub
rugs

good boys


13
Shambuie
+
+
+
-
ɟilim-ɑ

deræXt-hɑ

morɟ-un-e sijɑ
rugs

trees

black hens


14
Shamili
+
+
+
-
Xorus -ɑ-j-e sijɑ

deræXt-hɑ

ɟilim-un

Ɂon mærd-ɑn
black cocks

trees

carets

those men


15
Aliabadi
+
-
+
-
deræXt-ɑ

pesær-ɑn-e Xub
trees

good boys


16
Ghaleasgari
+
-
-
-
doXtær-ɑ Xub
good girls




17
Keykhosravi
+
-
-
-
ɟilim-ɑ
rugs


18
Rudbari
-
+
+
-
deræXt-hɑ

Xorus-un-e sijɑ
trees

black cocks


19
Lalezari
+
-
-
-
deræXt-ɑ
trees


20
Rashki
-
-
+
-
ʔɑ zæn-un
those women


21
Faryab
+
-
+
-
morʁ-ɑ-j-e sijɑ

dot-un-e Xub
black hens

good girls


22
Kahnuji
-
-
+
-
doXtær-un-e Xub
good girls


23
Maarazi
-
-
+
-
dot-un-e Xub
good girls




24
Manujani
-
-
+
-
ʧok-un –e xub
good boys


25
Mazare
+
-
-
-
deræXt-ɑ
trees


26
Mamuli
+
-
-
-
deræXt-ɑ
trees


27
Mehrabadi
+
-
-
-
morq-ɑ sijɑ


black hens




28
Meymand
+
-
-
-
Ɂɑn mært –ǝke-ɑ


those men




29
Medvari


+
-
-
-
Ɂɑn zen-ǝk-ɑ
those women


30
Garmsiri
-
+
+
-
Ɂɑn zən-un

deræXt-ə-hɑ
thoes women

trees




+ Used in this language varieties

- Not used in this language varieties



The figure 1 shows that among the plural markers used in Kerman province language varieties, the usage frequency of /-ɑ/ is the highest and /-lær/ or /-nær/ are the lowest ones. Sometimes the informants do not use the plural forms by mistakes under negative interview circumstances. The last column in figure 1 indicates its frequency.



Figure 1.

The frequency of plural markers usage in the studied language varieties