Plural strategies and devices in Igbo

This study examines strategies and devices adopted in Igbo to mark plurality on lexical items at both word and phrasal levels. The study provides additional evidence, adequate description, and explanation, as well as a theoretical background to the phenomenon which hitherto was not provided by earlier studies. Data were collected through observation, oral interview, and from existing literature. Data were analysed based on the principles and operations of the Minimalist Program. The study finds that five basic strategies could be employed to mark plurality in Igbo. These include merging of singular nouns with plural words or morphemes, via reduplication, use of conjunctions, use plural sensitive verbs, and context of speech. Plural devices include nouns with an inherent PL feature such as ndi ̇ ‘persons’ and u ̇ mu ̇ ‘offspring’; the third person plural pronoun, ha; quantifiers such as niile/dum ‘all’; numerals abu ̇ o ̇ ‘two’ and above; mass nouns, igwe/igwurube ‘group’; clitics ga and nu ̇ ; reduplicated nouns; conjunctions na ‘and’; and plural-sensitive verbs such as chi ̇ ta ‘bring’, and ju, ‘be’. The study concludes that Igbo belongs to the set of languages that syntactically mark plural by using independent morphemes/words; i.e. plural words.


Introduction
The goal of this study is to examine the various ways by which plural is expressed in Igbo; 1 specifically, the strategies and plural marking devices.Plural expression is universal across languages.It is used to express number indicating more than one, e.g.dual (two), trial (three), paucal (few), etc. (Crystal, 2008).Existing works such as Dryer (1989), Collins (2001), Cope (1993), Ajíb óyè (2005, 2010), and Ilo .ri (2013) among others show that plurality is not expressed similarly across languages due to certain particular language parameters.These authors show two broad ways of marking the plural cross-linguistically.These are morphological and syntactic plural marking.For the morphological plural marking strategy, plural marking is achieved via noun inflection by the process of prefixation as in Bantu languages (e.g.Igala, Swahili etc.) and Tagalog, or suffixation as in English and Lele (a Chadic language; Cope, 1993) as in (1).
(1) a. wa-toto PL-child G. O. Nweya d. shoe-s shoe-PL 'shoes' (English) In (1), Swahili and Tagalog (1a, 1b) employ prefixes to mark plural while Lele and English (1c, 1d) employ a suffix to achieve a similar purpose.Most times, languages that fall in the latter category have obligatory plural marking and obligatory agreement.
In contrast, languages that syntactically mark plural often employ independent morphemes or words which may perform other functions in the language.These syntactic objects are often called plural words.Plural words are morphemes whose meaning and function is similar to that of plural affixes in other languages (Dryer, 1989).According to Dryer, plural words vary from language to language and do not belong to a syntactic natural class 2 because they could be pronouns (2a), grammatical number words (2b, 2d), determiners/articles (2c), grammatical plural words (2e), 3 or demonstratives (2f).
( 2 relevant materials are sent to PF and the grammatical and semantically relevant features sent to LF.The computational procedure continues to apply similar processes to build fully formed structure at the PF and LF which are the interface levels.At these points, the syntactic objects are presented for appropriate interpretation.If the PF is phonetically interpretable and the LF semantically interpretable, the derivation converges; otherwise, it crashes.

The percolation mechanism
This proposal is meant to capture the fact that languages that syntactically 8 mark plural employ certain lexical items which, by virtue of having the [PLURAL] feature, enforce plural interpretation of nouns in their environment.To account for this, Ajíb óyè (2005, 2010) 9 proposed a feature percolation 10 mechanism in the sense of copying which assumes that the feature mechanism copies the plural feature of a node onto the node that dominates it.This assumption is represented in the diagram below: (4) Output Plural percolation (Ajiboye, 2010: 147)   a X [PLURAL]   Percolation, as demonstrated above, can come from one or more nodes within an NP.The Plural feature theory proposal falls within the theory of features in syntax as manifest in PERSON (1st, 2nd, 3rd), TENSE (Past, Present, Future), and GENDER (Male, Female).

Syntactically determined plural marking in Igbo
In Igbo, nominal expressions may be marked as plural in the following ways: (1) use of specialized plural words such as ndi ˙'persons' and u ˙mù ˙11 'offspring'; (2) use of clitic (morphemes) such as ga; (3) use of ha, the third person plural pronoun (3PL); (4) use of quantifiers and numerals; (5) use of reduplicated nouns; and (6) use of conjunctions and contextually determined plural marking.These shall be accounted for in the sections that follow.

Marking plural with inherent plural words, ndi
˙and u ˙m ù ˙.The Igbo language has nominal expressions with inherent [PLURAL] features that interpret adjoining nouns as plural.In other words, they serve to mark plural whenever they are merged with other nouns in a construction.Observe the examples below: 8 Two mechanisms of plural marking exist cross-linguistically as discussed in the literature.They are feature percolation and feature matching.Languages that mark plural syntactically adopt the feature percolation mechanism, while languages that mark plural morphologically adopt feature matching. 9See Ajíb óyè (2010, pp.147, 228-229). 10Ajíb óyè (2010, p. 146) explains that percolation employed in this sense is different from its broad use.In its broad use Owolabi  (1995) defines it as a device that enables a complex word to inherit the syntactic features of its head. 11The tonal marking convention adopted here is that the low and downstep tones are marked while the high tones are left unmarked.
ii 'These goats are dead.' In (5) above, the bolded expressions in example (5ai-5fi) indicate singular while those in (5aii-5fii) indicate plural.In (5ai) the noun mmadu ˙'person', needs no SG marking device to be interpreted as SG for the fact that it shares the feature [+HUMAN] with the SG marking device.Hence, it could be construed as either SG or PL depending on context.Examples (5bi) and (5ci) could be unambiguously interpreted as singular due to the presence of onye 'person'.Similarly, (5di) and (5fi) express singular because they involve bare nouns merged with the demonstratives, a (5di) and (5fi) or ah ù ˙(5ei).It is important to note that onye cannot be used to mark singularity in (5di, 5fi) because it has the feature [+HUMAN].Consequently, it cannot occur adjacent to nouns that bear the feature [ HUMAN].On the other hand, (5aii-5fii) show that the sole function of ndi ˙'persons', is to give the preceding or following nouns plural interpretation.It occurs pre-nominally in (5aii-5cii) and post-nominally in (5dii-5fii), thus yielding a [±HUMAN] dichotomy.In (5aii-5cii) where it is used to pluralise a [+HUMAN] noun it occurs pre-nominally.Whereas, it occurs post-nominally in (5dii-5fii), having been used to pluralise a [ HUMAN] noun.Therefore, it could be deduced that if ndi ˙'persons' occurs before a [ HUMAN]   In the examples above, u ˙mù ˙serves to mark the following nouns as plural.The diagram below demonstrates how the feature percolation mechanism applies to the data presented. (10) In summary, the [PL] feature of the nominal expressions ndi ˙and u ˙m ù ˙respectively percolates onto the higher NP prior to movement, interpreting the entire nominal expression as plural.12This is shown by the arrows in (10).

4.2.
Marking plural with ha, 3PL pronoun.Generally, personal pronouns are used to express the plural cross-linguistically. 13 Igbo is not an exception.Singular 1st, 2nd, and 3rd personal pronouns in the language have their plural counterparts as shown in Table 1 shows that the 2SG I ˙'you' and 3SG o/o ˙'he/she/it' is restricted to the subject position.The impersonal pronoun a/e is also restricted to the subject position and is unspecified for number.Hence, there is less overt manifestation of structural case in the language.
However, there is a special use of the 3PL pronoun ha 'they', where it is merged often with a proper name to indicate more than one.In this case, the noun precedes the pronoun as if they are appositives, but this is not the case since the singular function of the pronoun is to give the preceding nominal a plural reading.What could be understood from this kind of structure is that the R-expression marks specificity while the 3PL pronoun marks plurality.From the examples above, it may be observed that the 3PL pronoun serves to mark the preceding nominal as plural.In (12a), ha shows that the nominal Uchè came with other person(s) who share some kind of relationship with him/her.Similar interpretations could be given to (12b-12d).In (12d), ha (3PL) occurs twice in the sentence.In the first instance, it does not mark plural but functions as a 3PL possessive pronoun where Nna 'father' is the possessed; But in the second instance, it functions to mark the preceding nominal Eberè as plural.This example is common with proper names but it is possible with GEN constructions as shown in (12e).However, when the GEN construction involves the 3PL pronoun ha as in (12d), the derivation crashes at PF as in (13) below: In summary, this study assumes that ha (3PL) is a post-nominal determiner that functions as a plural word and is obligatorily merged with a noun [+HUMAN], and that the PL feature of ha percolates onto the NP to give the entire nominal expression a plural interpretation.This is illustrated with diagram below: In (15) above, (15a) converges after merge has taken place while (15b) crashes because the quantifier and the noun do not agree in number.Such agreement is not required for Igbo and other languages such as Yoruba and Igala that syntactically mark plural.144.3.1 Quantifiers as plural words.It is observed that when Igbo nominals occur with group-denoting expressions (such as quantifiers and numerals) that are intrinsically plural in an NP configuration, they are unambiguously expressed as plural.Quantifiers and numerals have the semantic feature [PLURAL]  'Some books fell down.' Data ( 16) above shows that in (16ai-16fi), the nouns occur without quantifiers and hence may be construed as either singular or plural.While those in (16aii-16fii) occur with quantifiers and unambiguously receive plural interpretation.Therefore, bare nouns cannot be unambiguously interpreted as plural until they are merged with quantifiers.However, it has to be pointed out that the syntactic position of these quantifiers varies (See also Emenanjo, 1978; Mbah, 1999; Anurudu, 1999, 2010).For instance, ni īle or dum 'all' (16dii, 16eii) obligatorily follow the nouns they modify; ìmìrìkiti and ò ˙tu ˙tu ˙(16aii, 16bii) obligatorily precede the nouns they modify while olemaole and ù ˙fo ˙du ˙'few' (16cii, 16fii) optionally pre-modify a noun. 15he syntactic positions of olemaole and ù ˙fo ˙du ˙(i.e.whether pre-nominal or post-nominal) do not have any effect on the quantificational interpretation of the noun.It was mentioned earlier that when a modifier shifts positions, it becomes the head while the noun becomes the modifier.Quantifiers also co-occur with other plural devices 16 The fact that these Q can occur with both singular and plural nouns justifies Ajiboye's assertion that languages that syntactically mark plural do not have obligatory agreement.This may further be attributed 15  Anurudu (2010, p. 89) posits a Noun-Quantifier structure as follows: In Igbo, a head N is modified by a quantifier post-nominally, obligatorily pre-nominal and in some cases optionally pre-nominal.According to him, it is the inherent features of the modifier that determines the position. 16Such plural devices include ndi ˙and u ˙mu ˙.This is possible because these words have a [+HUMAN] feature besides their Plural feature which also percolates to the adjoining noun.
Kansas Working Papers in Linguistics | Vol.37 (2016) | pp.1-22 to the ability of bare nouns to be interpreted as either singular or plural in such languages.The diagram in (18) shows the application of the feature percolation mechanism to the data presented in ( 16) and (17).
In (18a-b), the Q ò ˙tu ˙tu ˙moves to the SPEC of the higher node to derive the modifier-NP linear order while in (18c-d) the Q, d ūm, need not move since it occupies its appropriate position and bears a weak [MEASURE] feature.It is assumed here that the PL feature of the Q and N percolates onto the higher nodes QP and NP, respectively.The foregoing is an indication that nominal expressions are interpreted as plural when they are merged with numerals just like quantifiers.Hence, it is proposed that numerals have an abstract [PLURAL] feature that could be realised on the nouns they are merged with.They need no other independent pluralising morpheme to realize plural in such constructions.However, they can co-occur with another plural morpheme and we assume such cases as double plural marking.The diagram below demonstrates how the feature percolation mechanism could be applied to NPs as shown in (19) above.Num PL ato N Ul ⇥

NP PL
In (20a), nari moves to the pre-modifying position because of its strong measure feature.The diagram demonstrates that the plural feature of the numerals percolates onto the NP and in that way enhances their interpretation as plural expressions.In (21a-d), the expressions are interpreted as plural after merge has taken place.It was also observed that if the nominal ends in a low tone, the enclitic also ends in low tone.Nwokeiwu and Ilechukwu (2013) give two reasons for writing the enclitic, gà, separate from the noun; first, is to show that it is not a suffix and secondly, to prove that nouns do not accept affixes whether inflectional or derivational in Igbo.In my view, the reasons are tenable because there are other clitics in the language such as kwa and cha used just for emphasis and same rule applies. 19Conversely, nu ˙is written together with the verb since it is only verbs that accept affixes in the language.Dr. B. M. Mbah (classroom communication) explained that nù ˙is the remnant of the second person plural subject pronoun unu which is deleted by transformation in imperative sentences.The enclitic nu ˙serve to interpret the null subject of the imperative sentence as plural.One evidence in support of this view is that the second syllable of un ù 'you' PL bears an inherent low tone which is retained in the derivation.However, the clitic is realised as nu/nu ˙due to the influence of vowel harmony operational in the language.
Kansas Working Papers in Linguistics | Vol.37 (2016 The examples in (23) show that the understood subject in each of the expressions is more than one.The clitic PL morpheme is attached to the nominal expressions.This study posits that nù ˙is the remnant of the second person plural subject pronoun un ù 'you' PL that cliticised to the verb. 20The full form is presented in (24) below: The set of data above show the plural clitic ( 24) and its full form (25).It seems to be the case that in these constructions, the 2PL pronoun grammaticalized to a number marker.Hence, they cannot be used to address one person in natural expressions.Nevertheless, the question that arises is how to account for this clitic using the MP and percolation theory.It is plausible to assume that the clitic enters derivation in its full form via merge having been numerated as the external argument of the VP.At some point in the derivation, the verb adjoins to it before moving to T. At PF, the phonological process of elision and assimilation takes place to realise the clitic in appropriate constructions.This assumption is schematized as (26) below.Semantically, using the following mass nouns before singular nouns makes them plural.This implies that the nouns have literal plural reading.Syntactically, the mass nouns obligatorily pre-modify a NP.Hence, the study holds that the [PLURAL] feature of the mass nouns percolates onto the bare nouns and interprets them as plural expressions as illustrated below: 22 Reduplication whether partial or complete could also be employed to achieve customary activity, partitiveness, increase in size, added intensity and continuance.In Igbo, aside from plural formation, it is used to achieve intensity and adverbial notion.Expressions that could be reduplicated in Igbo include nouns, agentives, gerunds, infinitivals, quantifiers, numerals and PPs (See Okonkwo, 1974;  Anurudu, 2010).Reduplication as a plural strategy in Igbo, is reported by Anurudu (2010) and Nwokeiwu and Ilechukwu (2013)  among others.However, the strategy is also employed in other languages such as Yoruba (Ajíb óyè, 2010) and Igala (Ilo .ri, 2013) Following the operations of MP, the study posits that the derivation of this structure begins with the numeration of the lexical items or syntactic objects (SOs) indicating the number of times they would be used in the derivation (e.g.Numeration: osisi 2 ); and that there is a null functional head, pl 0 , which selects [±ANIMATE] nouns as complement to project plural words which is merged with the null Pl head to form Pl I .The derived structure is externally merged with the second copy of the SO to form a PlP.It is believed that for some morphological reasons, Pl 0 requires similar SO to occupy its complement and SPEC positions for the derivation to converge at LF.These contentions are diagrammatically presented below.23   ˙zi and I are dancing.'In (28) above, merging two NPs peripherally in a construction gives the resulting expressions plural interpretation.This kind of construction involves simple mathematics such that two singular entities joined together equals two.Therefore, the study posits that when two singular NPs are joined to be headed by In the schema above, Chi ˙ma is the specifier of the &P while Chu ˙kwu ˙ka is its complement.The &P has plural reading having been built of two nominal entities (persons).According to Radford (2009, p. 53), structures of this nature permit multiple specifiers to accommodate more items.This mechanism serves to increase the numeral quality of the &P.24 4.8.Plural sensitive verbs.Some verbs in Igbo are sensitive to plural arguments such that they select only plural arguments in a construction. 25Such verbs are chi ˙26 and kpo27 'bring or take [+PL]'28 depending on their extensional suffix or adjoining simple verb.They are transitive verbs that obligatorily select a plural internal argument and a volitional agent. 29 In (33a, 33c), the verbs wète 'bring' and wep ù ˙'take' are sensitive to [SG] internal arguments.Hence, they give the NP object a SG reading after merge has taken place.While the verbs, chì ˙ta 'bring' and kpop ù 'take' in (28b, 28d) are sensitive to plural internal arguments.Thus, they give the object NP (efere 'plate') a plural reading.The study posits that chì ˙ta 'bring' and kpop ù 'take' being two place predicate 30 verbs assign theta roles of agent and theme to their subjects and objects respectively.Therefore, the derivation could be accounted for using the VP shell structure with an outer VP shell to generate its subject following the internal subject VP hypothesis and an inner core VP to value their accusative features.This is shown in the schema below: (34) In (34), chi ˙ta 'bring' and efere 'plate' enter the derivation with unvalued and valued PL features, respectively.Chi ˙ta 'bring' assigns a theta role theme to the object, efere 'plate', prior to movement.Since the motivation for movement is to value unvalued features, efere 'plate' moves to the Spec-VP to value its case and number features.In the Spec-VP, they take a probe-goal position to value the unvalued features while the uninterpretable features are deleted.The derivation converges because the number feature plays a role in the semantic interpretation.This structure is merged with a light VP taking into consideration the Internal VP Hypothesis and thus, the full structure in (34) was derived.
In contrast, nu 'surge' and ju 'be' are sensitive to PL subject NP.Therefore, it is assumed that the plural feature of the DP external argument is checked before it occupies Spec-TP.Both verbs are two-place predicate verbs but while nu 'surge' denotes an action, ju 'be' denotes a state.Observe the following examples: In (35a-d) ga 'pass' and no ˙'be' have [±SG] features and therefore can select a [±SG] subject in a sentence, while the verbs nu 'surge' and ju 'be' unambiguously select a plural subject.How can one account for the G. O. Nweya plural feature of these verbs that permit the selection of an appropriate external argument?One plausible way is to suggest that T values the PL feature of the external argument before it moves to occupy Spec T.
If it has the PL feature, it moves to occupy Spec T, otherwise, the derivation crashes after the first phase.The implication is that any subject that would be merged as the external argument of nu or ju should be unambiguously interpreted as plural.The subjects in (35b, 35d) meet this requirement.Though motò and mmad ù ˙are without overt PL markers, they are unambiguously interpreted as plural NPs.The complement position of the verbs could be filled by locative adjuncts or an NP complement.This proposal is schematised below: (36) In (36) above, the subject of the sentence is generated at the Spec of VP and it enters the derivation with a valued PL feature.This plural feature is checked off at I o before the movement to Spec-IP to satisfy EPP and the derivation converges.Movement is never blocked since the external argument can be in its bare form which is ambiguous between singular and plural.4.9.Contextually determined singular and plural interpretation.One of the characteristics exhibited by languages that syntactically mark plural is that in cases where PL is not marked explicitly, it is context that determines the singular or plural interpretation of nouns.From the examples above, one can understand that whenever nwa 'child SG ' and onye 'person SG ' are merged with bare nouns, the expression can only be given a SG interpretation.The constructions above are not contextually determined.In the sections that follow, the study would make effort to give instances of contextually determined plural marking in the language.
Context could be used to determine if a nominal expression is singular in Igbo.This could be determined by identifying the pronoun used to substitute the noun in another context since pronouns are intrinsically SG or PL.Conversely, this study reveals that contexts for plural interpretation of bare nouns in the language are difficult to come by even with discourse cues as observed for SG nouns.In the contexts where this may be possible number is usually unspecified, resulting in ambiguity.This can occur when a count noun occurs by itself (42a), or when it takes a modifier (42b), a relational noun (42c), or a possessive pronoun (42d).The noun can either be construed as singular or plural depending on the discourse context.( 42 The examples in (42) suggest that in Igbo, bare nouns are unspecified for number; as such, number marking can be said to be underdetermined in the language.It further shows that ambiguity of number interpretation of nouns as singular or plural is a feature of languages that lack overt plural marking. 32

Summary and conclusion
In the preceding sections, this study was able to examine the strategies and devices for expressing plurality in the Igbo language.The findings show that Igbo marks plural using various strategies and morphemes/words.The strategies of marking plural could be classified into five types: (1) merging singular nouns with plural words or morphemes; (2) reduplication; (3) use of plural sensitive verbs; (4) use of conjunctions; and (5) contextually determined plurality.Plural devices include nouns with an inherent PL feature such as ndi ˙'person' and u ˙mù 'offspring', the third person plural pronoun ha, quantifiers such as niile/dum 'all', numerals abu ˙o ˙'two' and above, mass nouns igwe/igwurube 'many', clitics ga and nu ˙, the coordinate conjunction na 'and', reduplicated nouns, and plural verbs such as chi ˙ta 'bring' and ju 'be'.The paper accounts for the strategies of marking plural in the language using the feature percolation mechanism and feature checking/valuation.This paper studied the strategies and the devices adopted to mark plurality in Igbo.These were accounted for using feature percolation for those that involve nouns and their modifiers, and feature checking for those that involve verbs and their arguments.The study shows that Igbo does not mark plural on nouns morphologically because it lacks agreement; rather, it belongs to the group of languages that syntactically mark plural by employing certain plural words or morphemes.

Introduction
The goal of this study is to examine the various ways by which plural is expressed in Igbo; 1 specifically, the strategies and plural marking devices.Plural expression is universal across languages.It is used to express number indicating more than one, e.g.dual (two), trial (three), paucal (few), etc. (Crystal, 2008).Existing works such as Dryer (1989), Collins (2001), Cope (1993), Ajíb óyè (2005, 2010), and Ilo .ri (2013) among others show that plurality is not expressed similarly across languages due to certain particular language parameters.These authors show two broad ways of marking the plural cross-linguistically.These are morphological and syntactic plural marking.For the morphological plural marking strategy, plural marking is achieved via noun inflection by the process of prefixation as in Bantu languages (e.g.Igala, Swahili etc.) and Tagalog, or suffixation as in English and Lele (a Chadic language; Cope, 1993) as in (1).
(1) a. wa-toto ⇤ Address correspondence to geraldnweya@yahoo.com 1 Igbo is a Benue-Congo language spoken by a culturally homogeneous group of people located at the Southeastern part of Nigeria.Presently, it is made up of five states.They are Anambra, Imo, Enugu, Abia and Ebonyi.The language is also spoken in parts of the Delta and Cross River, Rivers, Benue, and Akwa Ibom States.It is spoken as first or second language by at least 35 million people (cf.Anurudu, 1999; Nweya, 2010; Emenanjo, 2011).In (1), Swahili and Tagalog (1a, 1b) employ prefixes to mark plural while Lele and English (1c, 1d) employ a suffix to achieve a similar purpose.Most times, languages that fall in the latter category have obligatory plural marking and obligatory agreement.
In contrast, languages that syntactically mark plural often employ independent morphemes or words which may perform other functions in the language.These syntactic objects are often called plural words.Plural words are morphemes whose meaning and function is similar to that of plural affixes in other languages (Dryer, 1989).According to Dryer, plural words vary from language to language and do not belong to a syntactic natural class 2 because they could be pronouns (2a), grammatical number words (2b, 2d), determiners/articles (2c), grammatical plural words (2e), 3 or demonstratives (2f).
( 2 Works exist on plural formation in Igbo such as Okonkwo (1974), Ikekeonwu et al. (1999), and Nwokeiwu and Ilechukwu (2013), among others. 6This work notwithstanding, the present study is relevant for the following reasons.First, the earlier works did not exhaust the strategies of marking plural in Igbo. 7Second, the works are descriptively inadequate as they do not fully account for the semantic and syntactic properties of the plural words employed in the language.Lastly, the above works do not have a theoretical background except in a few instances where issues related to plural expression are mentioned in passing.
The paper addresses these issues by examining the strategies involved in plural expression and the words that serve this purpose in the language.The following questions are designed to guide the study: 1. What are the strategies of marking plural in Igbo? 2 Though they do not belong to a natural syntactic class, they perform similar semantic functions. 3In this case, the plural morpheme does not perform other functions in the language aside from marking plurality on the noun. 4According to Dryer, ea is a particle identified by Jensen (1977) as a 'noun phrase connector' used in NPs that lack articles in Yapese. 5Spoken French has lost plural suffixes on nouns.As a result, the article les solely indicates plurality but it is also an article since it codes definiteness as well.
6 Some scholars discussed plural formation in passing: Anurudu (1999, 2010), for instance. 7For instance, the present study shows that Igbo can express plurality by the use of the 3rd person plural pronoun ha and this is not pointed out in any of these works.
Kansas Working Papers in Linguistics | Vol.37 (2016) | pp.1-22 2. What are the syntactic devices that function as plural words in the language?3. How do plural words behave syntactically and semantically in the language?4. What generalizations could be made based on the behavior of plural words?
In the sections that follow, we shall look at the theoretical framework ( §2), the feature percolation mechanism proposed in Ajíb óyè (2005, 2010) ( §3), the strategies of expressing plurality as well as the plural words that exist in the language ( §4), and the final summary and conclusions in §5.

Theoretical framework
This paper is developed within the principles and operations of the Minimalist Program (henceforth MP).MP is a more economical approach to the analysis of grammars of I-languages advanced by Chomsky (1993,  1995, 2000, 2008, 2013) and work by other linguists.Its major goal is to reduce the theoretical apparatus used to describe syntactic structure to a minimum (Radford, 2009; Cook and Newson, 2014).Chomsky (1993, p.  168) assumes that the performance system of languages fall into two types, PF and LF, which are the interface levels.The language determines the set of pairs drawn from the PF and LF levels.MP holds that language consists of two components: a lexicon and a computational system with their idiosyncratic properties.The computational system uses these elements to generate derivations and structural descriptions (SDs).The program is schematized as follows: The schema above demonstrates the operations of MP.It shows that the human mind is a complex computational machine that processes language.The basic computational process takes pre-selected lexical items (LIs) and builds them into a structure by successive application of Merge.Merge is external when LIs are new in the derivation and internal when any of the items is already in the derivation and undergoes scrambling in the forms of head movement, subject movement, cyclic movement and/or remnant movement to form a syntactic object (SO).The derivation splits at the point of Spell Out where the phonetically relevant materials are sent to PF and the grammatical and semantically relevant features sent to LF.The computational procedure continues to apply similar processes to build fully formed structure at the PF and LF which are the interface levels.At these points, the syntactic objects are presented for appropriate interpretation.If the PF is phonetically interpretable and the LF semantically interpretable, the derivation converges; otherwise, it crashes.

The percolation mechanism
This proposal is meant to capture the fact that languages that syntactically 8 mark plural employ certain lexical items which, by virtue of having the [PLURAL] feature, enforce plural interpretation of nouns in their environment.To account for this, Ajíb óyè (2005, 2010) 9 proposed a feature percolation 10 mechanism in the sense of copying which assumes that the feature mechanism copies the plural feature of a node onto the node that dominates it.This assumption is represented in the diagram below: (4) Percolation, as demonstrated above, can come from one or more nodes within an NP.The Plural feature theory proposal falls within the theory of features in syntax as manifest in PERSON (1st, 2nd, 3rd), TENSE (Past, Present, Future), and GENDER (Male, Female).

Syntactically determined plural marking in Igbo
In Igbo, nominal expressions may be marked as plural in the following ways: (1) use of specialized plural words such as ndi ˙'persons' and u ˙mù ˙11 'offspring'; (2) use of clitic (morphemes) such as ga; (3) use of ha, the third person plural pronoun (3PL); (4) use of quantifiers and numerals; (5) use of reduplicated nouns; and (6) use of conjunctions and contextually determined plural marking.These shall be accounted for in the sections that follow.

Marking plural with inherent plural words, ndi
˙and u ˙m ù ˙.The Igbo language has nominal expressions with inherent [PLURAL] features that interpret adjoining nouns as plural.In other words, they serve to mark plural whenever they are merged with other nouns in a construction.Observe the examples below: 8 Two mechanisms of plural marking exist cross-linguistically as discussed in the literature.They are feature percolation and feature matching.Languages that mark plural syntactically adopt the feature percolation mechanism, while languages that mark plural morphologically adopt feature matching.
9 See Ajíb óyè (2010, pp.147, 228-229). 10Ajíb óyè (2010, p. 146) explains that percolation employed in this sense is different from its broad use.In its broad use Owolabi  (1995) defines it as a device that enables a complex word to inherit the syntactic features of its head. 11The tonal marking convention adopted here is that the low and downstep tones are marked while the high tones are left unmarked.
ii 'These goats are dead.' In (5) above, the bolded expressions in example (5ai-5fi) indicate singular while those in (5aii-5fii) indicate plural.In (5ai) the noun mmadu ˙'person', needs no SG marking device to be interpreted as SG for the fact that it shares the feature [+HUMAN] with the SG marking device.Hence, it could be construed as either SG or PL depending on context.Examples (5bi) and (5ci) could be unambiguously interpreted as singular due to the presence of onye 'person'.Similarly, (5di) and (5fi) express singular because they involve bare nouns merged with the demonstratives, a (5di) and (5fi) or ah ù ˙(5ei).It is important to note that onye cannot be used to mark singularity in (5di, 5fi) because it has the feature [+HUMAN].Consequently, it cannot occur adjacent to nouns that bear the feature [ HUMAN].On the other hand, (5aii-5fii) show that the sole function of ndi ˙'persons', is to give the preceding or following nouns plural interpretation.It occurs pre-nominally in (5aii-5cii) and post-nominally in (5dii-5fii), thus yielding a [±HUMAN] dichotomy.In (5aii-5cii) where it is used to pluralise a [+HUMAN] noun it occurs pre-nominally.Whereas, it occurs post-nominally in (5dii-5fii), having been used to pluralise a In the examples above, u ˙mù ˙serves to mark the following nouns as plural.The diagram below demonstrates how the feature percolation mechanism applies to the data presented.In summary, the [PL] feature of the nominal expressions ndi ˙and u ˙m ù ˙respectively percolates onto the higher NP prior to movement, interpreting the entire nominal expression as plural. 12This is shown by the arrows in (10).

4.2.
Marking plural with ha, 3PL pronoun.Generally, personal pronouns are used to express the plural cross-linguistically. 13 Igbo is not an exception.Singular 1st, 2nd, and 3rd personal pronouns in the language have their plural counterparts as shown in Table 1 Table 1 shows that the 2SG I ˙'you' and 3SG o/o ˙'he/she/it' is restricted to the subject position.The impersonal pronoun a/e is also restricted to the subject position and is unspecified for number.Hence, there is less overt manifestation of structural case in the language.
However, there is a special use of the 3PL pronoun ha 'they', where it is merged often with a proper name to indicate more than one.In this case, the noun precedes the pronoun as if they are appositives, but this is not the case since the singular function of the pronoun is to give the preceding nominal a plural reading.What could be understood from this kind of structure is that the R-expression marks specificity while the 3PL pronoun marks plurality.From the examples above, it may be observed that the 3PL pronoun serves to mark the preceding nominal as plural.In (12a), ha shows that the nominal Uchè came with other person(s) who share some kind of relationship with him/her.Similar interpretations could be given to (12b-12d).In (12d), ha (3PL) occurs twice in the sentence.In the first instance, it does not mark plural but functions as a 3PL possessive pronoun where Nna 'father' is the possessed; But in the second instance, it functions to mark the preceding nominal Eberè as plural.This example is common with proper names but it is possible with GEN constructions as shown in (12e).However, when the GEN construction involves the 3PL pronoun ha as in (12d), the derivation crashes at PF as in (13) below: In summary, this study assumes that ha (3PL) is a post-nominal determiner that functions as a plural word and is obligatorily merged with a noun [+HUMAN], and that the PL feature of ha percolates onto the NP to give the entire nominal expression a plural interpretation.This is illustrated with diagram below: In (15) above, (15a) converges after merge has taken place while (15b) crashes because the quantifier and the noun do not agree in number.Such agreement is not required for Igbo and other languages such as Yoruba and Igala that syntactically mark plural. 144.3.1 Quantifiers as plural words.It is observed that when Igbo nominals occur with group-denoting expressions (such as quantifiers and numerals) that are intrinsically plural in an NP configuration, they are unambiguously expressed as plural.Quantifiers and numerals have the semantic feature [PLURAL] denoting a group.Quantifiers that enter derivation to produce such expressions include: o ˙tu ˙tu ˙'many'; olemaole 'few'; dum/niile/ncha 'all'; imirikiti 'most'; u ˙fo ˙du ˙'some', etc.In the examples below, quantifiers are merged with bare nouns and thus, the entire nominal expression is understood as plural.( 16 'Some books fell down.' Data ( 16) above shows that in (16ai-16fi), the nouns occur without quantifiers and hence may be construed as either singular or plural.While those in (16aii-16fii) occur with quantifiers and unambiguously receive plural interpretation.Therefore, bare nouns cannot be unambiguously interpreted as plural until they are merged with quantifiers.However, it has to be pointed out that the syntactic position of these quantifiers varies (See also Emenanjo, 1978; Mbah, 1999; Anurudu, 1999, 2010).For instance, ni īle or dum 'all' (16dii, 16eii) obligatorily follow the nouns they modify; ìmìrìkiti and ò ˙tu ˙tu ˙(16aii, 16bii) obligatorily precede the nouns they modify while olemaole and ù ˙fo ˙du ˙'few' (16cii, 16fii) optionally pre-modify a noun. 15The syntactic positions of olemaole and ù ˙fo ˙du ˙(i.e.whether pre-nominal or post-nominal) do not have any effect on the quantificational interpretation of the noun.It was mentioned earlier that when a modifier shifts positions, it becomes the head while the noun becomes the modifier.Quantifiers also co-occur with other plural devices 16 The fact that these Q can occur with both singular and plural nouns justifies Ajiboye's assertion that languages that syntactically mark plural do not have obligatory agreement.This may further be attributed 15 Anurudu (2010, p. 89) posits a Noun-Quantifier structure as follows: In Igbo, a head N is modified by a quantifier post-nominally, obligatorily pre-nominal and in some cases optionally pre-nominal.According to him, it is the inherent features of the modifier that determines the position. 16Such plural devices include ndi ˙and u ˙mu ˙.This is possible because these words have a [+HUMAN] feature besides their Plural feature which also percolates to the adjoining noun.
Kansas Working Papers in Linguistics | Vol.37 (2016) | pp.1-22 to the ability of bare nouns to be interpreted as either singular or plural in such languages.The diagram in (18) shows the application of the feature percolation mechanism to the data presented in ( 16) and ( 17).
In (18a-b), the Q ò ˙tu ˙tu ˙moves to the SPEC of the higher node to derive the modifier-NP linear order while in (18c-d) the Q, d ūm, need not move since it occupies its appropriate position and bears a weak [MEASURE] feature.It is assumed here that the PL feature of the Q and N percolates onto the higher nodes QP and NP, respectively.4.3.2Numerals and numeral quantifiers as plural words.Similarly, numerals and numeral quantifiers perform the function of plural marking in Igbo.When nouns are merged with cardinal numerals or numeral quantifiers two and above, they are interpreted as plural.This assertion is demonstrated in the examples below: ( The foregoing is an indication that nominal expressions are interpreted as plural when they are merged with numerals just like quantifiers.Hence, it is proposed that numerals have an abstract [PLURAL] feature that could be realised on the nouns they are merged with.They need no other independent pluralising morpheme to realize plural in such constructions.However, they can co-occur with another plural morpheme and we assume such cases as double plural marking.The diagram below demonstrates how the feature percolation mechanism could be applied to NPs as shown in (19) above.Num PL ato N Ul ⇥

NP PL
In (20a), nari moves to the pre-modifying position because of its strong measure feature.The diagram demonstrates that the plural feature of the numerals percolates onto the NP and in that way enhances their interpretation as plural expressions.

The clitics g à and n
ù ˙as plural morphemes.In Igbo, enclitics such as gà 17 are employed to express plurality.The enclitic, gà occurs post-nominally and is written separately from the noun 18  In (21a-d), the expressions are interpreted as plural after merge has taken place.It was also observed that if the nominal ends in a low tone, the enclitic also ends in low tone.Nwokeiwu and Ilechukwu (2013) give two reasons for writing the enclitic, gà, separate from the noun; first, is to show that it is not a suffix and secondly, to prove that nouns do not accept affixes whether inflectional or derivational in Igbo.In my view, the reasons are tenable because there are other clitics in the language such as kwa and cha used just for emphasis and same rule applies. 19Conversely, nu ˙is written together with the verb since it is only verbs that accept affixes in the language.Dr. B. M. Mbah (classroom communication) explained that nù ˙is the remnant of the second person plural subject pronoun unu which is deleted by transformation in imperative sentences.The enclitic nu ˙serve to interpret the null subject of the imperative sentence as plural.One evidence in support of this view is that the second syllable of un ù 'you' PL bears an inherent low tone which is retained in the derivation.However, the clitic is realised as nu/nu ˙due to the influence of vowel harmony operational in the language.
Kansas Working Papers in Linguistics | Vol.37 ( 2016 The examples in (23) show that the understood subject in each of the expressions is more than one.The clitic PL morpheme is attached to the nominal expressions.This study posits that nù ˙is the remnant of the second person plural subject pronoun un ù 'you' PL that cliticised to the verb. 20The full form is presented in (24) below: The set of data above show the plural clitic (24) and its full form (25).It seems to be the case that in these constructions, the 2PL pronoun grammaticalized to a number marker.Hence, they cannot be used to address one person in natural expressions.Nevertheless, the question that arises is how to account for this clitic using the MP and percolation theory.It is plausible to assume that the clitic enters derivation in its full form via merge having been numerated as the external argument of the VP.At some point in the derivation, the verb adjoins to it before moving to T. At PF, the phonological process of elision and assimilation takes place to realise the clitic in appropriate constructions.This assumption is schematized as (26) below.Semantically, using the following mass nouns before singular nouns makes them plural.This implies that the nouns have literal plural reading.Syntactically, the mass nouns obligatorily pre-modify a NP.Hence, the study holds that the [PLURAL] feature of the mass nouns percolates onto the bare nouns and interprets them as plural expressions as illustrated below: 22 Reduplication whether partial or complete could also be employed to achieve customary activity, partitiveness, increase in size, added intensity and continuance.In Igbo, aside from plural formation, it is used to achieve intensity and adverbial notion.Expressions that could be reduplicated in Igbo include nouns, agentives, gerunds, infinitivals, quantifiers, numerals and PPs (See Okonkwo, 1974;  Anurudu, 2010).Reduplication as a plural strategy in Igbo, is reported by Anurudu (2010) and Nwokeiwu and Ilechukwu (2013)  among others.However, the strategy is also employed in other languages such as Yoruba (Ajíb óyè, 2010) and Igala (Ilo .ri, 2013) Following the operations of MP, the study posits that the derivation of this structure begins with the numeration of the lexical items or syntactic objects (SOs) indicating the number of times they would be used in the derivation (e.g.Numeration: osisi 2 ); and that there is a null functional head, pl 0 , which selects [±ANIMATE] nouns as complement to project plural words which is merged with the null Pl head to form Pl I .The derived structure is externally merged with the second copy of the SO to form a PlP.It is believed that for some morphological reasons, Pl 0 requires similar SO to occupy its complement and SPEC positions for the derivation to converge at LF.These contentions are diagrammatically presented below. 23 ˙zi and I are dancing.'In (28) above, merging two NPs peripherally in a construction gives the resulting expressions plural interpretation.This kind of construction involves simple mathematics such that two singular entities joined together equals two.Therefore, the study posits that when two singular NPs are joined to be headed by G. O. Nweya a Conjunction Phrase, represented here as &P following Radford (2009, p. 53), the &P would have plural interpretation as in the tree below: In the schema above, Chi ˙ma is the specifier of the &P while Chu ˙kwu ˙ka is its complement.The &P has plural reading having been built of two nominal entities (persons).According to Radford (2009, p. 53), structures of this nature permit multiple specifiers to accommodate more items.This mechanism serves to increase the numeral quality of the &P.In (33a, 33c), the verbs wète 'bring' and wep ù ˙'take' are sensitive to [SG] internal arguments.Hence, they give the NP object a SG reading after merge has taken place.While the verbs, chì ˙ta 'bring' and kpop ù 'take' in (28b, 28d) are sensitive to plural internal arguments.Thus, they give the object NP (efere 'plate') a plural reading.The study posits that chì ˙ta 'bring' and kpop ù 'take' being two place predicate 30 verbs assign theta roles of agent and theme to their subjects and objects respectively.Therefore, the derivation could be accounted for using the VP shell structure with an outer VP shell to generate its subject following the internal subject VP hypothesis and an inner core VP to value their accusative features.This is shown in the schema below: (34) In (34), chi ˙ta 'bring' and efere 'plate' enter the derivation with unvalued and valued PL features, respectively.Chi ˙ta 'bring' assigns a theta role theme to the object, efere 'plate', prior to movement.Since the motivation for movement is to value unvalued features, efere 'plate' moves to the Spec-VP to value its case and number features.In the Spec-VP, they take a probe-goal position to value the unvalued features while the uninterpretable features are deleted.The derivation converges because the number feature plays a role in the semantic interpretation.This structure is merged with a light VP taking into consideration the Internal VP Hypothesis and thus, the full structure in (34) was derived.
In contrast, nu 'surge' and ju 'be' are sensitive to PL subject NP.Therefore, it is assumed that the plural feature of the DP external argument is checked before it occupies Spec-TP.Both verbs are two-place predicate verbs but while nu 'surge' denotes an action, ju 'be' denotes a state.plural feature of these verbs that permit the selection of an appropriate external argument?One plausible way is to suggest that T values the PL feature of the external argument before it moves to occupy Spec T.
If it has the PL feature, it moves to occupy Spec T, otherwise, the derivation crashes after the first phase.The implication is that any subject that would be merged as the external argument of nu or ju should be unambiguously interpreted as plural.The subjects in (35b, 35d) meet this requirement.Though motò and mmad ù ˙are without overt PL markers, they are unambiguously interpreted as plural NPs.The complement position of the verbs could be filled by locative adjuncts or an NP complement.This proposal is schematised below: In (36) above, the subject of the sentence is generated at the Spec of VP and it enters the derivation with a valued PL feature.This plural feature is checked off at I o before the movement to Spec-IP to satisfy EPP and the derivation converges.Movement is never blocked since the external argument can be in its bare form which is ambiguous between singular and plural.4.9.Contextually determined singular and plural interpretation.One of the characteristics exhibited by languages that syntactically mark plural is that in cases where PL is not marked explicitly, it is context that determines the singular or plural interpretation of nouns.From the examples above, one can understand that whenever nwa 'child SG ' and onye 'person SG ' are merged with bare nouns, the expression can only be given a SG interpretation.The constructions above are not contextually determined.In the sections that follow, the study would make effort to give instances of contextually determined plural marking in the language.
Context could be used to determine if a nominal expression is singular in Igbo.This could be determined by identifying the pronoun used to substitute the noun in another context since pronouns are intrinsically SG or PL.In (38a-c) the nouns ezi, mmadu ˙and nna are interpreted as SG because they were substituted with a 3SG pronoun ya 'he/she/it' elsewhere in the sentence.While the SG interpretation of the bolded nouns in (38d-g) is determined by the discourse.Furthermore, when a bare noun is merged with a demonstrative (a/ahu ˙), 31 it can be unambiguously interpreted as SG.For instance, 31 a and ahu ˙are the two demonstratives in the Igbo language.They obligatorily post-modify nouns in the language.The former indicates that the noun in question is close while the latter indicates that the hearer has a prior knowledge of the noun being pointed out.

G. O. Nweya
When ot ù/òfu 'one' is merged with a bare noun, it is unambiguously interpreted as SG.This postulation is illustrated below: Following the percolation mechanism, it is assumed here that the SG feature of the SG words percolates onto the higher NP to give the entire nominal expression a SG interpretation.This is exemplified below: Conversely, this study reveals that contexts for plural interpretation of bare nouns in the language are difficult to come by even with discourse cues as observed for SG nouns.In the contexts where this may be possible number is usually unspecified, resulting in ambiguity.This can occur when a count noun occurs by itself (42a), or when it takes a modifier (42b), a relational noun (42c), or a possessive pronoun (42d).The noun can either be construed as singular or plural depending on the discourse context.( 42 The examples in (42) suggest that in Igbo, bare nouns are unspecified for number; as such, number marking can be said to be underdetermined in the language.It further shows that ambiguity of number interpretation of nouns as singular or plural is a feature of languages that lack overt plural marking. 32

Summary and conclusion
In the preceding sections, this study was able to examine the strategies and devices for expressing plurality in the Igbo language.The findings show that Igbo marks plural using various strategies and morphemes/words.The strategies of marking plural could be classified into five types: (1) merging singular nouns with plural words or morphemes; (2) reduplication; (3) use of plural sensitive verbs; (4) use of conjunctions; and (5) contextually determined plurality.Plural devices include nouns with an inherent PL feature such as ndi ˙'person' and u ˙mù 'offspring', the third person plural pronoun ha, quantifiers such as niile/dum 'all', numerals abu ˙o ˙'two' and above, mass nouns igwe/igwurube 'many', clitics ga and nu ˙, the coordinate conjunction na 'and', reduplicated nouns, and plural verbs such as chi ˙ta 'bring' and ju 'be'.The paper accounts for the strategies of marking plural in the language using the feature percolation mechanism and feature checking/valuation.This paper studied the strategies and the devices adopted to mark plurality in Igbo.These were accounted for using feature percolation for those that involve nouns and their modifiers, and feature checking for those that involve verbs and their arguments.The study shows that Igbo does not mark plural on nouns morphologically because it lacks agreement; rather, it belongs to the group of languages that syntactically mark plural by employing certain plural words or morphemes.
are in the church.' bought clothes with others for Ebere and others.' formation with quantifiers and numerals.When nouns are modified with quantifiers in Igbo, they are not independently marked plural; rather, the [PLURAL] feature of the quantifier percolates onto the noun.In languages that mark plural morphologically, where feature matching obtains, the nouns are independently marked plural, such that there is an agreement between the two as in the examples below: (15) a.Many men Most women Two houses Four boys b. *Many man *Most woman *Two house *Four boy Kansas Working Papers in Linguistics | Vol.37 (2016) | pp.1-22 21e-h) shows that the post-verbal clitic, n ù ˙bears obligatory low tone and obeys the vowel harmony principle operational in the language (cf.21e, 21h).It occurs in subjunctive and imperative constructions where the external argument is optionally covert.Below are some subjunctive expressions (such as greetings) in the language.(23)a. Dàalu-n ù ṫhank-2PL'Thank you all.' b.Ǹdeēwo-n ù ġreetings-2PL'Good morning/afternoon/evening you all.' go to the market.' nouns as plural words.Mass nouns could also be used to express plurality in Igbo.Such nouns include igwe/igwurube '

'
as a strategy for expressing plural in Igbo.Another strategy employed to achieve plural in Igbo is reduplication.22Nouns or NPs could be reduplicated to express plural in Igbo.In some cases, the sentence is structured such that it obligatorily selects reduplicated nouns or NPs as object.The prayer house is filled with people.' of conjunctions.In grammatical analysis, conjunctions generally serve to join two elements of a construction.Thus it could be used to join two singular nouns or NPs and the resulting expression could be interpreted as plural.Consider the following examples: G. O. Nweya a Conjunction Phrase, represented here as &P followingRadford (2009, p. 53), the &P would have plural interpretation as in the tree below:

G
bought clothes with others for Ebere and others.' formation with quantifiers and numerals.When nouns are modified with quantifiers in Igbo, they are not independently marked plural; rather, the [PLURAL] feature of the quantifier percolates onto the noun.In languages that mark plural morphologically, where feature matching obtains, the nouns are independently marked plural, such that there is an agreement between the two as in the examples below: (15) a.Many men Most women Two houses Four boys b. *Many man *Most woman *Two house *Four boy Kansas Working Papers in Linguistics | Vol.37 (2016) | pp.1-22 21e-h) shows that the post-verbal clitic, n ù ˙bears obligatory low tone and obeys the vowel harmony principle operational in the language (cf.21e, 21h).It occurs in subjunctive and imperative constructions where the external argument is optionally covert.Below are some subjunctive expressions (such as greetings) in the language.(23)a. Dàalu-n ù ṫhank-2PL'Thank you all.' b.Ǹdeēwo-n ù ġreetings-2PL'Good morning/afternoon/evening you all.'

'
You are all welcome.' go to the market.' nouns as plural words.Mass nouns could also be used to express plurality in Igbo.Such nouns include igwe/igwurube '

'
as a strategy for expressing plural in Igbo.Another strategy employed to achieve plural in Igbo is reduplication.22Nouns or NPs could be reduplicated to express plural in Igbo.In some cases, the sentence is structured such that it obligatorily selects reduplicated nouns or NPs as object.The prayer house is filled with people.' of conjunctions.In grammatical analysis, conjunctions generally serve to join two elements of a construction.Thus it could be used to join two singular nouns or NPs and the resulting expression could be interpreted as plural.Consider the following examples: 24

4. 8 .
Plural sensitive verbs.Some verbs in Igbo are sensitive to plural arguments such that they select only plural arguments in a construction.25Such verbs are chi ˙26 and kpo 27 'bring or take [+PL]' 28 depending on their extensional suffix or adjoining simple verb.They are transitive verbs that obligatorily select a plural internal argument and a volitional agent.29  Their singular counterpart is we 'bring [+SG]'.This is evident in the examples below: She took away some plates.'

'
We saw that chair in the compound.' noun, the derivation crashes or converges to give a different interpretation at LF.For instance, +PLURAL] and therefore could be used to pluralise[+ANIMATE]nouns; but unlike ndi ˙, it has the feature [ ANIMATE].Hence, it is not used with inanimate nouns since it literarily means children/offspring.Rather, it is often used with nouns that have a reproductive capacity either pre-nominally or pronominally.The semantic and syntactic features of ndi ȧnd u ˙mù ˙are summarised in the feature matrix below:
Observe the examples below: denoting a group.Quantifiers that enter derivation to produce such expressions include: o ˙tu ˙tu ˙'many'; olemaole 'few'; dum/niile/ncha 'all'; imirikiti 'most'; u ˙fo ˙du ˙'some', etc.In the examples below, quantifiers are merged with bare nouns and thus, the entire nominal expression is understood as plural.

22 4.4. The clitics g à and n ù ˙as plural morphemes. In
Kansas Working Papers in Linguistics | Vol.37 (2016) | pp.1-Igbo, enclitics such as gà 17 are employed to express plurality.The enclitic, gà occurs post-nominally and is written separately from the noun 18 while nù ˙19 occurs post-verbally and is written together with the verb as shown below: group/crowd/herd' and ukwu/o ˙yo ˙ko ˙/aju ˙'bunch'.21 The former are used before animate nouns while the latter are used before inanimate nouns as demonstrated below: 20 B. M.Mbah (personal communication 10 August, 2011)explained that nù ˙is the remnant of the second person plural subject pronoun un ù 'you' PL which is deleted by transformation in imperative sentences.21Theseexamplesweretaken fromNwokeiwu and Ilechukwu (2013). .
Their singular counterpart is we 'bring [+SG]'.This is evident in the examples below: Examine the proverb cited below: ) the nouns ezi, mmadu ˙and nna are interpreted as SG because they were substituted with a 3SG pronoun ya 'he/she/it' elsewhere in the sentence.While the SG interpretation of the bolded nouns in (38d-g) is determined by the discourse.The former indicates that the noun in question is close while the latter indicates that the hearer has a prior knowledge of the noun being pointed out.G. O. NweyaWhen ot ù/òfu 'one' is merged with a bare noun, it is unambiguously interpreted as SG.This postulation is illustrated below: Following the percolation mechanism, it is assumed here that the SG feature of the SG words percolates onto the higher NP to give the entire nominal expression a SG interpretation.This is exemplified below: 'We saw that chair in the compound.' 31a and ahu ˙are the two demonstratives in the Igbo language.They obligatorily post-modify nouns in the language.
[ HUMAN]noun.Therefore, it could be deduced that if ndi ˙'persons' occurs before a [ HUMAN] noun, the derivation crashes or converges to give a different interpretation at LF.For instance, +PLURAL] and therefore could be used to pluralise[+ANIMATE]nouns; but unlike ndi ˙, it has the feature [ ANIMATE].Hence, it is not used with inanimate nouns since it literarily means children/offspring.Rather, it is often used with nouns that have a reproductive capacity either pre-nominally or pronominally.The semantic and syntactic features of ndi ȧnd u ˙mù ˙are summarised in the feature matrix below: AGR-die-finish-PERF 'People are dead.'Kansas Working Papers in Linguistics | Vol.37 (2016) | pp.1-22
Observe the examples below: in appropriate constructions.In such contexts, one can easily claim multiple plural marking.Consider the examples below: while nù ˙19 occurs post-verbally and is written together with the verb as shown below: group/crowd/herd' and ukwu/o ˙yo ˙ko ˙/aju ˙'bunch'.21Theformerareused before animate nouns while the latter are used before inanimate nouns as demonstrated below: B. M. Mbah (personal communication 10 August, 2011) explained that nù ˙is the remnant of the second person plural subject pronoun un ù 'you' PL which is deleted by transformation in imperative sentences.21Theseexamplesweretaken fromNwokeiwu and Ilechukwu (2013). 20 .