Number in Meryam Mir

Meryam Mir is an Eastern Trans-Fly Papuan language spoken in the Torres Straits. It has four number categories which are exhibited through complex morphosyntax, with marking principally on verbs. Accounts of the language to date (Piper, 2013; Ray, 1907) have considered only argument number. Reanalysis of a fragment of the language demonstrates that number phenomena can be better explained by including verbal number (Durie, 1986) in the account. The reanalysis also suggests that Arka's assumption of a single feature set for argument and verbal number in Marori (Arka, 2012) does not hold for Meryam Mir. For argument number, it demonstrates that the Meryam Mir number categories and morphological alternations can be generated by a feature set including the novel feature [±GROUP]. The proposed feature set is compatible with those proposed by Sadler (2011) for Hopi as well as Arka for Marori (with some adaptation). For verbal number expressed through verb stem alternations, the feature [±BOUNDED] is proposed and tested. Further work is required to account for other verbal number phenomena and the small amount of data currently available leaves some questions unresolved.