This talk addresses three cases of anti-singularity in questions, illustrated in (1a)-(1c). They all convey that the speaker expects that the answer will name more than one individual:
(1) a. Which books did you buy? English
b. Was hast du alles gekauft? German
What have you all bought
“What all have you bought?”
c. Quiénes se fueron pronto? Spanish
Who-PL REFL left early
“Who left early?”
The anti-singularity of (1a) has been explained as arising from competition with its singular version: which book did you buy?, which has a uniqueness presupposition – only one book can be named. This explanation does not extend to the other two cases. There is no uniqueness presupposition in the version of (1b) without alles or in the version of (1c) that has a singular wh quién.
The proper analysis of the anti-singularity observed in (1b)-(1c), I argue, requires us to pivot from consideration of number proper. Drawing inspiration from work on so-called optional plural markers, specifically the Cuzco Quechua morpheme kuna, I show how anti-singularity can be a bi-product of a presupposition of sortability – it should be possible to partition the set denoted by the noun complement along some dimension, such as type, size, color etc.