Our new postdoc, Heidi Klockmann, will give a talk on May 29th, at 4pm in SH 3.104.

Title: From N to Q: The morphosyntax of Polish and English quantificational expressions

Abstract:

Quantificational expressions like numerals (two, three, a hundred), quantifiers (a few, a dozen), and pseudopartitives (a bunch, a lot, a ton) often show a surface resemblance to the lexical category noun. In Polish, for example, numerals 5 and 1000 require the quantified noun to surface with the genitive ((1), (2)), like a binominal expression (compare (3)):

(1) Pięć ptaków

Five birds.GEN

‘Five birds’

(2) Tysiąc ptaków

Thousand birds.GEN

‘A thousand birds’

(3) Klucz ptaków

Key birds.GEN

‘A flock of birds (flying in a V)’

In English, similarities arise in the need for an indefinite article and a particle of: pseudopartitives require both (4), certain numerals and quantifiers only the indefinite (6), and other expressions, nothing at all (6).

(4) A bunch of birds

(5) A dozen birds

(6) Fifteen birds

In this talk, I discuss the morphosyntax of select Polish and English quantificational expressions, exploring their similarities to and differences from lexical nouns. I propose an analysis which decomposes the notion of “noun,” thereby allowing lexical items to have a subset of nominal properties; I illustrate how this can be used to account for the resemblance to nouns. I further suggest that such similarities may arise from a grammaticalization path from noun to quantifier.