The morphological expression of plurality and pluractionality in Mandarin

• Plurality and plurationality is expressed by the same reduplicant in Mandarin.
• The root of AABB nouns and verbs are acategorial.
• The reduplicant of AABB nouns and verbs are acategorial.
• Acategorial plural markers can be integrated into a structure before categorization.

This paper reports the fact that the morpheme that expresses the plurality of individuals and the one that expresses the plurality of events or actions are the same derivational reduplicant in Mandarin Chinese. It is seen in AABB nouns and AABB verbs. Thus, an instance of cross-categorial quantification is attested morphologically. With respect to word formation, the fact can be explained if the reduplicant is combined with a base first and then a functional element is merged with the combination, and the categorial features are projected from the functional element alone (categorization). Thus, not only roots, but also derivational affixes, can have no categorial features. As a consequence, the existence of acategorial plural markers indicates that number features can be integrated not only after categorization, realized as inflectional affixes or functional elements, but also before categorization, realized as derivational affixes. The same is true of gender and animacy features, cross-linguistically.