Abstract
AbstractThis entry discusses various issues related to how features (meaning) can be expressed in morphemes (form). In particular, it focuses on multiple exponence, a one‐to‐many mapping between form and meaning, and the reverse pattern of cumulative exponence, a many‐to‐one mapping. The entry starts with describing what multiple and cumulative exponence is, and provides an overview of the types of patterns that are found cross‐linguistically. The remainder of the entry discusses two issues related to both types of exponence. The first issue relates to cumulative exponence, and where the formation of a single morpheme expressing multiple features should be modelled: in the syntax or the morphology. The main empirical focus is on cumulative patterns of subject and object agreement from a cross‐linguistic perspective, which provide a rich testing ground for where to form a cumulative marker. The last section focuses on several issues related to multiple exponence. In particular, the section focuses on what empirically should be regarded as multiple exponence, and what should be excluded, if we take into account several diagnostics regarding wordhood. Most theories of multiple exponence exclude cases where a single feature is expressed multiple times on different words (for example with negative concord), and only include cases where a single feature is expressed many times word‐internally. However, determining what counts as word‐internal multiple exponence becomes more difficult in languages where wordhood diagnostics are divergent, which then raises questions on what the empirical landscape of multiple exponence might look like.