Speakers: Sjef Barbiers & Irina Morozova (LUCL)
Title: How and why ONE is different
Date: Thu 28 Sep
Location: Lipsius 2.17
Time: 16:15–17:30
ONE has been regarded as different from the other cardinals by Borer (2005), Barbiers (2005), (2007), Her & Lai (2012), Kayne (2019), Corver (2021), among others. In this talk we aim to show that the distinct (morpho-)syntactic behaviour of ONE is the result of its lexical feature specification. We propose a novel structure for numerals containing nominal phrases, representing sets of units, where both Set and Unit are classifiers (1).
| (1) | [DP [D [SetP [Set [PP [P [UnitP [Unit [NP [N ]]]]]]]]]] |
This way we aim for a unified treatment of quantitatives (Num + N) and partitives (Num of D) (cf. Martí-Girbau 2010 for a different implementation), building on the analysis of indefinite pronouns by Leu (2005) and Roehrs (2008). Starting with the observation that in languages like Russian or Finnish numerals in non-oblique environments assign genitive or partitive case to the nominal complement, we argue that the relation between the numeral and the noun is established by an (abstract) P. Crucially, ONE is different in not assigning case to N. By means of the structure in (1), we show that ONE is a classifier with an unvalued [Unit] feature, the value for which can be provided by the syntactic environment of ONE, e.g., [gender], [person], [location], [time], [kind], [entity]. Treating ONE as a classifier that individuates the noun and makes it countable builds on Borer (2005), Barbiers (2007), Her & Lai (2012), Kayne (2019), Corver (2021). Other cardinal numerals, on the other hand, are phrasal quantifiers with a specific value for the feature [Partitioning: Value]. They specify a classifier element which can be one of the classifiers in languages like Mandarin (Her & Lai 2012) or Hungarian (Csirmaz & Dékány 2014), gender inflection in Hebrew, plural inflection in Germanic languages like English or Dutch (Doetjes 1996/1998, Borer 2005, Corver 2021). We show that unlike Cardinals, Indefinite Numerals (IndNums) like MANY or FEW are classifiers generated in head positions and have the feature specification [Unit:_; Partitioning]. Additionally, we argue for an optional projection SizeP, right above UnitP, that hosts classifier-like elements denoting size (size adjectives in Mandarin (Luo et al. 2017) or Hungarian (Csirmaz & Dékány 2014), the diminutive suffix in Dutch (cf. De Belder 2011, Corver 2021, Borer 2005) or the suffix -om in Russian collective numerals) which allows us to explain the distribution of collective numerals like Dutch met z’n drietjes ‘with the three of us’ or Russian vpjaterom ‘in fivesome’. We show that the structure proposed neatly captures the distribution of ONE, Cardinals, IndNums with respect to their cooccurrence with prepositions (Dutch); and case assignment patterns as well as the availability of approximative inversion and functional classifier-like nouns (Russian).