Premium
Complex Numeral Expressions: A Plea for Grafts
Author(s) -
Meinunger André
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
syntax
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.587
H-Index - 24
eISSN - 1467-9612
pISSN - 1368-0005
DOI - 10.1111/synt.12029
Subject(s) - numeral system , plural , phrase , word (group theory) , plea , computer science , grafting , rotation formalisms in three dimensions , linguistics , arithmetic , mathematics , natural language processing , artificial intelligence , philosophy , physics , geometry , nuclear magnetic resonance , political science , law , polymer
Grafting is a syntactic device developed and defended by van Riemsdijk (2000 and subsequent work) by which two independent input trees are connected via external remerger of internal elements, thus sharing a constituent. Grafting clearly violates standard assumptions about phrase structure. Still, several structures found in natural language are best analyzed in terms of grafting. The present paper discusses one such construction: complex numerals. It shows that the characteristic multidominance of grafting explains the word order, case assignment, plural, paucal, and singular distribution associated with complex numeral combinations better than a coordination approach and is more compatible with more number (or counting) systems found in the world's languages.