Nouns after numerals: singular, plural or neither?
| Authors | |
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| Year of publication | 2021 |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Description | There seems to be a division among languages depending on whether numerals combine with a noun in the singular (e.g., Turkish, Estonian) or plural (e.g., English, Czech). A relatively common approach is to explain this variation by invoking the notion of a "semantic parameter." The idea is that the singular (or plural) in languages of the first type does not mean the same thing as in languages of the other type. In this talk, I suggest an alternative way of thinking about the data. According to this alternative, the noun after numerals always has a special number (call it "counting" number) that should not be unified with the singular or the plural denotation. When the counted noun looks the same as either the singular or plural, this is because the special >>> "counting" number is morphologically realized in the same way as singular or plural (syncretism). The evidence for this idea will be drawn from a variety of languages including South Saami, Serbian, Bulgarian, Ossetic, as well as a particular agreement pattern in Russian feminine paucals. |
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