The Case Marker Agrees with the Complement Noun in Odia Noun Phrases

Abstract

This article demonstrates that in Odia (Indo-Aryan, Indo-European) case-marked noun phrases, the case marker shows agreement with the head noun for plurality. Historically, this phenomenon has arisen through structural reanalysis, namely, keeping the original sequence intact and changing the structure: the exponent of plurality was originally a portion of the noun’s ending, and came to be part of the case marker. Alongside case-marker agreement, Odia has the obligatory numeral quantifier. The interaction of the two phenomena is discussed (i) in light of the cross-linguistic generalization of the (near-) complementary distribution of a plural marker and a numeral classifier (the Greenberg-Sanches-Slobin generalization), and (ii) in the context of the historical development of the Indo-Aryan languages.departmental bulletin pape