Inclusive plurals and the theory of number

Abstract

I argue that an account of both inclusive plurals and the crosslinguistic typology of grammatical number requires postulating a [—atomic] feature (or something very much like it) in the structure of exclusive-plural DPs. When combined with the only theory we currently have that accounts for the crosslinguistic typology of number (Harbour 2014), theories in which the exclusive-plural DPs of a language with inclusive plurals are [—atomic]-less under-or overgenerate with respect to that typology. These problems disappear as soon as the structure of exclusive plural DPs contains a component that generates exclusive-plural interpretations, either Harbour’s [—atomic] feature (added to a system with a second, [—atomic]-less structure, a proposal compatible with, e.g., Farkas and de Swart 2010) or a predicate-level exhausti-vity operator (from Mayr 2015).