In English and many other languages, the interpretation of the plural is associated with an ‘exclusive’ reading in positive sentences and an ‘inclusive’ reading in negative ones. For example, the plural noun tulips in a sentence such as Chicken planted tulips suggests that Chicken planted more than one tulip (i.e., a reading which ‘excludes’ atomic individual tulips). At the same time, however, the corresponding negative sentence Chicken didn’t plant tulips doesn’t merely convey that he didn’t plant more than one tulip, but rather that he didn’t plant any tulip (i.e., ‘including’ atomic individual tulips). Different approaches to the meaning contribution of the English plural vary in how they account for this alternation across the polarities, but converge on assuming that (at least one of) the denotation(s) of the plural should include atomic individuals. Turkish, on the other hand, is cited as one of the few known languages in which the plural only receives an exclusive interpretation (e.g., Bale et al. Cross-linguistic representations of numerals and number marking. in: Li, Lutz (eds) Semantics and linguistic theory (SALT) 20, CLC Publications, Ithaca, pp 582–598, 2010). More recent proposals have, however, argued that the Turkish plural should in fact be analysed more like the English plural (e.g., Sağ, The semantics of number marking: reference to kinds, counting, and optional classifiers, PhD dissertation, Rutgers University, 2019). We report two experiments investigating Turkish-speaking adults’ and preschool-aged children’s interpretation of positive and negative sentences containing plural nouns. The results provide clear evidence for inclusive interpretations of the plural in Turkish, supporting accounts that treat the Turkish and English plurals alike. We briefly discuss how an inclusive meaning of the Turkish plural can be integrated within a theory of the Turkish number system which captures some idiosyncratic properties of the singular and the agreement between number and number numerals.

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多元化和跨语言变异：土耳其复数形式的实验研究

在英语和许多其他语言中，复数的解释与肯定句中的“排他性”阅读和否定句中的“包含性”阅读相关。例如，在句子中的复数名词郁金香，例如“鸡种植的郁金香”表明鸡种植了一种以上的郁金香（即“排除”原子个体郁金香的读数）。然而，与此同时，相应的否定句子“鸡不种植郁金香”并不仅表示他没有种植多个郁金香，还表明他没有种植任何郁金香。郁金香（即“包括”原子个体郁金香）。解释英语复数形式的意义贡献的不同方法在如何解释极性之间的这种交替方面有所不同，但是趋同于假设复数形式中的（至少一个）表示应包括原子个体。另一方面，土耳其语被称为少数几种仅使用复数形式的唯一已知语言（例如，Bale等人。数字和数字标记的跨语言表示。）：Li，Lutz（eds）语义和语言理论（SALT）20，CLC出版社，伊萨卡，第582–598页，2010年。不过，最近的提议认为，土耳其的复数实际上应像英语的复数那样进行分析（例如，Sağ，数字标记的语义：引用种类，计数和可选分类符，博士学位论文，罗格斯大学，2019）。我们报告了两个实验，研究说土耳其语的成年人和学龄前儿童对包含复数名词的正负句子的解释。结果提供了明确的证据土耳其语中的复数形式的包容性解释，同时支持土耳其语和英语的复数形式。我们简要讨论了如何将土耳其语复数的包容性含义整合到土耳其语数字系统的理论中，该理论捕获了单数的某些特质属性以及数字与数字之间的约定。