Typology and Diachrony of Person Systems with Focus-based Number Category

This study defines the notion of focus-based systems. These are systems of person marking which count not the total number of members of the group referred to by the pronominal element, but the number of the referents added to the focal referent. A characteristic of such systems is the presence of the inclusive dual form, which refers to the group which consists of two participants: speaker and hearer — and which paradigmatically aligns with pronominal elements with singular reference. The purpose of this study is to investigate the typological properties of the expression of number that focus-based systems may share as opposed to more common, cardinality-based systems, that count the total number of referents of the pronominal element. The research hypothesis is that the morphological structure of focus-based systems is more often segmentable (i. e. there are separable markers of number) than in non-focus-based systems, because number does not scope over the focal referent (which defines the person value), so there is less interaction between number and person.