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.
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Cited by
Cited by 4 other publications
Caha, Pavel, Karen De Clercq & Guido Vanden Wyngaerd
2019. The Fine Structure of the Comparative. Studia Linguistica 73:3 ► pp. 470 ff.
D'Antuono, Nicola
2024. The syntax of emphatic negation in Modern Irish. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 9:1
Klockmann, Heidi
2020. The article <i>a(n)</i> in English quantifying expressions: A default marker of cardinality. Glossa: a journal of general linguistics 5:1
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