In search of exclusive plural insights from Hausa

There is an ongoing debate in the literature whether there is a language with the exclusive plural only, i.e., in which plural invariably gives rise to the more-than-one meaning both in upward and downward entailing contexts. I extend the discussion on the exclusive vs. inclusive plural in a novel way to the interpretation of the verbal plural, so-called pluractionals. In particular, I examine the meaning of plural and pluractionals in Hausa, a language for which it has been claimed in the previous literature that it has the exclusive plural only, both in the nominal and verbal domain (see e.g., Součková and Buba 2008, Součková 2011, Zimmermann 2021). The outcome of the empirical elicitation studies suggests that the inclusive interpretation in Hausa is available in both domains. Thus the data from Hausa inform an empirically adequate theory of plural across domains and languages.