Pluractionality

In linguistics, pluractionality, or verbal number, if not used in its aspectual sense, is a grammatical aspect that indicates that the action or participants of a verb is, or are, plural. This differs from frequentative or iterative aspects in that the latter have no implication for the number of participants of the verb. Often a pluractional transitive verb indicates that the object is plural, whereas in a pluractional intransitive verb the subject is plural. This is sometimes taken as an element of ergativity in the language. However, the essence of pluractionality is that the action of the verb is plural, whether because several people perform the action, it is performed on several objects, or it is performed several times. The exact interpretation may depend on the semantics of the verb as well as the context in which it is used. The lack of verbal number does not generally mean that the action and participants are singular, but rather that there is no particularly notable plurality; thus it may be better described as paucal vs. multiple rather than singular vs. plural. Although English does not have verbal number as a grammatical device, many English verbs such as stampede and massacre are used when one of the participants involves a large number. English also has a number of verbs (often ending in -le, such as nibble) which indicate repetitive actions, and this is similar to some types of grammatically-marked pluractionality in other languages. The Ainu language of Japan has a closed class of 'count verbs'. The majority of these end in -pa, an iterative suffix that has become lexicalized on some verbs. For example, kor means 'to have something or a few things', and kor-pa 'to have many things'; there are also causative forms of the latter, kor-pa-re 'to give (one person) many things', kor-pa-yar 'to give (several people) many things'. The -pa may occur more than once; this may be a case of the pluractional verb in its iterative aspect: hosip-pa-pa "everyone came back" There are also suppletive forms: In addition to literal number, pluractionality can be used for politeness, much as plural pronouns are in many languages.