Abstract
A category often held to be prototypically inflectional, namely number, proves less uniform cross-linguistically in its inflectional status than was once thought (Booij 1993, 1996; Van Marle 1996).2 We therefore examine a series of hypotheses as to its status in section 2. We then take a typological view: number has been the basis for some seemingly robust typological claims and yet these too are problematic (section 3). They can be rescued by clarifying the domain of morphology to which the different claims apply. This leads back to the nature of inflection, with the conclusion that the ‘obligatoriness’ criterion for inflection requires greater prominence than in some recent accounts. (section 4). This criterion also allows us to make progress in understanding facultative number (section 5) and minor numbers (section 6).