Towards a typology of Classical Armenian nominal paradigms: Instr.Pl.

The paper discusses the morphological status and the origin of instrumental plural form in Classical Armenian. This form is typologically unique in two ways: first, it is the only segmentable form within the flective declensional paradigms in Classical Armenian, which consists of the instrumental case marker and a separate plural marker -k‘; second, this plural marker occupies a peculiar linear position after the case marker (and not before it, unlike in all standard agglutinative declension patterns). It is argued that the notion of “decumulation” can account for some properties of Classical Armenian declension; a hypothesis of late clitic origins of the plural marker within the form in question is also discussed.