The syntax and semantics of approximate indefinites in Spanish

Abstract

In Spanish, combining an indefinite plural article and a cardinal number leads to an approximative interpretation similar to that provided by approximators like ‘approximately’. In this paper, we advance a syntactic and semantic analysis of these structures. We show that the construction shares a number of properties with structures containing explicit approximative elements, so it justified to assume that a particular constituent contributes the approximative meaning. We propose that an approximative morpheme Approx is combined with the cardinal number; the morphological realization of this morpheme is as the plural affix on the indefinite article. We advance a denotation for Approx, and elaborate the necessary assumptions on the functioning of numerals for our analysis to work at a general level.