Pluralphrasen

Pluralphrasen is a term used in linguistics to describe a class of noun phrases in which plurality is encoded by a combination of elements within the phrase, rather than by a single plural head noun alone. In pluralphrasen, markers of number can appear on numerals, determiners, adjectives, or embedded nouns, producing a multi-component realization of number that can influence overall interpretation and morphosyntax.

The concept highlights how number features can propagate through a phrase in ways that are not reducible to the head noun. Pluralphrasen may interact with agreement systems in the surrounding language, sometimes affecting verb or adjective concord, and can vary in how transparently the plurality is signaled across the NP versus in the surrounding clause.

Typology within pluralphrasen is often described in terms of distributive versus collective perspectives. Distributive pluralphrasen express plurality by distributing quantity across members of a set (for example, phrases like every one of the three teams). Collective pluralphrasen treat the group as a single unit while still encoding plurality in the internal structure of the phrase. The distinction is not universally fixed and can blur in languages with rich agreement morphology.

Examples are used to illustrate the phenomenon without implying a single universal rule. In English, phrases such as two of the students contain a numeral within a larger NP, while in German, phrases like die drei jungen Lehrkräfte show numeral and adjectival marking within the noun phrase. In some languages, adjectives may bear plural agreement even when the head noun is singular, yielding a pluralphrasen structure.

Research on pluralphrasen remains theoretical and cross-linguistic, aiming to map how different languages realize number within multiword noun phrases and how such realizations interact with syntactic agreement and semantics.