Prepositional numerals

Abstract

Many languages use prepositions to qualify numerals, as in around ten or between ten and twenty. In this article we study the syntactic and semantic properties of these prepositions. We will argue that they take numerals as arguments and form full-fledged PPs that can function as numerals themselves. This leads us to reconsider the status of numerals. # When we think of numerals, the construction that usually comes to mind first is that of a bare numeral modifying a noun:(1) John speaks ten languages Theories about the syntax and semantics of numerals are usually based on this simple and common construction. However, the lack of agreement about the status of numerals suggests that this empirical basis might be too narrow (Section 1). We believe that it is necessary to study a wider range of constructions featuring numerals and in this article we will look at one construction in particular, in which a numeral is combined with a preposition (Section 2): www.elsevier.com/locate/lingua Lingua 116 (2006) 811-835

The structure of approximative numerals in German

“…This follows both from my analysis that an die 'up to' is an adverb and hence fixed in its shape, as well as from Corver & Zwarts' (2006) analysis that an die 'up to' projects a PP containing only the numeral, because via Minimality the preposition blocks case assignment from outside. 4 An anonymous reviewer points out that the argument makes use of the idea that coordination is based on categorial identity of the two conjuncts, even though problems with this approach are well-known (Sag et al 1985).…”

“…my baby had every day always on the around the fourty degrees fever 'My baby had up to approximately 40°C fever every day.' Since under Corver & Zwarts' (2006) approach approximative modifiers are heads of PPs, stacking of approximative numerals has to involve multiple PPs. There are three strategies to implement this idea technically, and all three turn out to be unsatisfactory.…”

“…14 An anonymous reviewer observes that if adverbs are analyzed as adjuncts, then the data in (78) also follow from Corver & Zwarts' (2006) analysis: the adverb ungefähr 'approximately' is adjoined to the numeral in (78a) but to NP in (78b). I agree but Corver & Zwarts' (2006) analysis wrongly predicts that the adverb ungefähr 'approximately' can also adjoin to the DP selected by the preposition an 'on'.…”

“…prepositions, 1 the question is how to structurally represent such prepositions within the approximative numeral. Based on Dutch, Corver & Zwarts (2006) argue that approximative numerals are PPs, as shown in (2) for the examples (1b) and (1c). The structure of approximative numerals as in (1) is hence subsumed under a structure that is independently required, namely one for approximative numerals that contain an adverb as their approximative modifier.…”

“…In section 3, I provide three arguments that show that approximative numerals differ from bona fide PPs but pattern with approximative numerals containing adverbs as their approximative constituent. For Corver & Zwarts (2006), the resulting constituents are NumPs whereas for me they are NPs. As both issues are orthogonal to the topic of this paper, namely the internal structure of approximative numerals, I chose to leave out the phrasal status of numeral+NP constituents and to label numerals as NUM in order to make no commitment about their internal make-up.…”