The article deals with the semantic properties of several pluractionality markers in the Hill Mari language. The aim of the study is to identify their semantic differences against the typologically relevant pluractionality pa-rameters (see [Cusic 1981], [Khrakovskiy 1989], [Shluinskiy 2006], [Wood 2007] inter alia). We will show that the Hill Mari pluractionality markers can be subdivided into those that express iterative meanings and those that can be regarded as measure operators modifying both single and plural events.

The latter set of markers (namely, the attenuative -al- and the discontinuative -kal-), considered in greater detail, can modify several semantic components of a verb. We analyze these based on the ideas of predicate decomposition in terms of the Ramchand’s event structure theory. We will show that these markers can modify independently the initial, the progressing, and the resulting subevents of the event denoted by a given verb. With the event structure of a predicate established, one can predict a given predicate’s reading emerging in combination with a given pluractionality marker. Thus, achievements modified by the attenuative can only produce a resulting-state reading, while in combination with the degree marker achievements denote situations with a reduced degree of the action’s performance, etc. We will also show that, in some cases, the attenuative and the discontinuative can modify an iterative (often implicit) operator putting it into a special position in the syntactic tree (iterative phrase head).

Another hypothesis of this paper is that all pluractionality markers include quantized events in their semantic representation, that is, pluractionality markers can be viewed as operators over quantized events, which makes it possible to draw some parallels between nominal plurality and pluractionality.