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Points of Convergence in Romance Linguistics: Papers selected from the 48th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (LSRL 48), Toronto, 25-28 April 2018
Edited by Gabriela Alboiu and Ruth King
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 360] 2022
► pp. 177–192

Chapter 10
Interpreting reduplicated numerals in Old Ibero-Romance

A syntactic account

| University of Birmingham

Old Ibero-Romance reduplicated numerals in transfer and possession constructions force a distributive reading at the sentential level (OSp. los pecheros deben tres tres meajas “the taxpayers owe three meajas each”). I argue that the distributive construction is best accounted for at the clausal level by an applicative structure (Pylkkänen 2008), where the reduplicated numeral is the internal argument and is encoded at the nominal level by a dedicated distributive layer in the extended functional structure. This analysis captures differences in the construction’s interpretation—a low ApplP for distribution over individuals, and a high ApplP for distribution over events—within a more general theory of event structure, and situates the distributive construction with a wider taxonomy of (independently-motivated) Ibero-Romance applicative structures.

Keywords: distributivity, reduplicated numerals, applicatives, Old Ibero-Romance
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
    • 1.1Background
    • 1.2Data and sources
  • 2.Syntactic environments
  • 3.Accounting for Old Ibero-Romance DDNR
    • 3.1Ditransitive constructions
    • 3.2Extending the analysis
    • 3.3A unified analysis
  • 4.A distributive analysis
    • 4.1Accounting for Old Ibero-Romance RedNum
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Notes
  • References
Published online: 10 March 2022
DOI logo
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.360.10cor
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Corr, Alice
2022. Numeral Reduplication and Clausal Syntax: Grammaticalized Distributivity in Medieval Iberia. Probus 34:2 ► pp. 317 ff. DOI logo

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