This paper aims at describing Q(uantity)-words, i.e. many/much and few/little, from a typological perspective, and presenting typological generalisations based on it. The typological sample provides support for a mass-count and positive-negative dimension in the domain of Q-words. Both dimensions also intersect. Along the negative dimension, it seems that languages fall into two groups: those having an opaque strategy for few/little and those having only an analytic strategy (not-much/many). Four patterns can be discerned on the basis of the sample, which are each exemplified by means of one language, i.e. English, Dutch, Wolof and Western Armenian. In addition, I make an attempt at developing a nanosyntactic analysis of the data, which aims to show how language variation in the domain of Q-words can be accounted for in terms of varying the size of lexically stored trees (Starke 2014). Finally, I show how one missing type of pattern is underivable on the basis of the analysis proposed.
2017 “The nanosyntax of French negation.” Studies on Negation: Syntax, Semantics, and Variation, ed. by Silvio Cruschina, Katharina Hartmann & Eva-Maria Remberger, 49–80. Vienna: Vienna University Press.
De Clercq, Karen & Guido Vanden Wyngaerd
2017 “Why affixal negation is syntactic.” Proceedings of WCCFL 34, ed. by Aaron Kaplan, Abby Kaplan, Miranda McCarvel & Edward Rubin, 151–158. Sommerville, MA: Cascadilla Press.
Heim, Irene2006 “Little.” Proceedings of SALT XVI, ed. by Masayuki Gibson & Jonathan Howell, 35–58. Cornell University.
Huddleston, Rodney & Geoffrey K. Pullum
2002The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Keenan, Edward L. & Denis Paperno
eds.2012Handbook of Quantifiers in Natural language. Dordrecht: Springer.
Khanjian, Hrayr
2012 “Quantification in Western Armenian.” Handbook of Quantifiers in Natural Language, ed. by Edward Keenan & Denis Paperno, 845–890. Dordrecht: Springer.
Klima, Edward
1964 “Negation in English.” The Structure of Language, ed. by Jerry Fodor & Jerrold Katz, 246–323. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall.
Neeleman, Ad, Hans van de Koot & Jenny Doetjes
2006 “Degree expressions.” The Linguistic Review 211: 1–66.
Partee, Barbara
1989 “Many quantifiers.” Proceedings of ESCOL, ed. by Joyce Powers & Kenneth de Jong, vol. 51, 383–402. Columbus, OH: Department of Linguistics, Ohio State University.
Quirk, Randolph, Sidney Greenbaum, Geoffrey Leech & Jan Svartvik
1985A Comprehensive Grammar of the English Language. London: Longman.
Rett, Jessica
2016 “The semantics of many, much, few and little.” Ms. UCLA.
Rijkhoff, Jan, Dik Bakker, Kees Hengeveld & Peter Kahrel
1992 “Cross-linguistic evidence for number phrase.” Canadian Journal of Linguistics 371: 197–218.
Solt, Stephanie
2015 “Q-adjectives and the semantics of quantity.” Journal of Semantics 32(2): 221–273.
Starke, Michal
2009 “Nanosyntax: A short primer to a new approach to language.” Nordlyd 361: 1–6.
Starke, Michal
2014 “Towards elegant parameters: Language variation reduces to the size of lexically-stored trees.” Linguistic Variation in the Minimalist Framework, ed. by M. Carme Picallo, 140–152. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Starke, Michal
to appear. “Complex left branches, spellout, and prefixes.” Exploring Nanosyntax ed. by Lena Baunaz, Karen De Clercq, Liliane Haegeman & Eric Lander Oxford Oxford University Press
Tamba, Khady, Harold Torrence & Malte Zimmerman
2012 “Wolof quantifiers.” Handbook of Quantifiers in Natural Language, ed. by Edward Keenan & Denis Paperno, 891–940. Dordrecht: Springer.
Wierzbicka, Anna
1996Semantics:primes and universals. Oxford University Press.
2020. The article <i>a(n)</i> in English quantifying expressions: A default marker of cardinality. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 5:1
Caha, Pavel, Karen De Clercq & Guido Vanden Wyngaerd
2019. The Fine Structure of the Comparative. Studia Linguistica 73:3 ► pp. 470 ff.
[no author supplied]
2034. Title Pending 10369. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics
This list is based on CrossRef data as of 4 july 2024. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers.
Any errors therein should be reported to them.