Verbal number in Muyu

Abstract This article analyses verbal number in Muyu, a Lowland Ok language of the Trans New Guinea family spoken in South Papuan Province. Verbal number stands for a system of pairwise lexical contrasts in which alternating verb stems encode a singular/plural opposition for subject or object arguments of the clause (e.g. ‘take one object’ vs. ‘take many objects’) or for how often the denoted event occurs (e.g. ‘hit once’ vs. ‘hit repeatedly’). Muyu has a relatively large inventory of such verb pairings: 37 pairs. Since nominal morphology is virtually absent, verbal number is the most important means to signal participant number. Verbal number in Muyu is analysed as a system of lexical paradigms rather than suppletion. In addition to the synchronic analysis, this paper puts forth a scenario for the diachronic development of the system, in which any verb pair is lexicalised in three consecutive stages.