Phonological length of number marking morphemes in the framework of typological markedness

The study tests the hypothesis that morphemes marking the typolog- ically less marked member of the conceptual category of number should have a phonological length that is less than or equal to that of morphemes marking a ty- pologically more marked member of the same category. The hypothesis is tested for morphemes marking number in nouns, verbs, adjectives and pronouns. The cross-linguistic quantitative count includes 42 languages, 17 of them exhibiting a singular-plural-dual contrast, the others having a singular-plural contrast only. In order to measure phonological length the phonemes making up a morpheme are counted. The hypothesis is verified: Apart from rare exceptions, singular markers have for all the four parts of speech a length that is less than or equal to that of the corresponding plural markers. In languages with dual markers these are longer than or equally long as the corresponding plural and singular markers.