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Article published In: Linguistics in the Netherlands 2017
Edited by Sander Lestrade and Bert Le Bruyn
[Linguistics in the Netherlands 34] 2017
► pp. 31–46

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The internal syntax of Q-words

 | Ghent University/FWO
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial (CC BY-NC) 4.0 license.

For any use beyond this license, please contact the publisher at rights@benjamins.nl.

Published online: 23 November 2017
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https://doi.org/10.1075/avt.34.03dec
Abstract
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 (. 2014. “Towards elegant parameters: Language variation reduces to the size of lexically-stored trees.” Linguistic Variation in the Minimalist Framework, ed. by M. Carme Picallo, 140–152. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar). Finally, I show how one missing type of pattern is underivable on the basis of the analysis proposed.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The data
    • 2.1Pattern 1: English
    • 2.2Pattern 2: Dutch
    • 2.3Pattern 3: Wolof
    • 2.4Pattern 4: Western Armenian
  • 3.The feature system of Q-words
  • 4.Analysis
    • 4.1Prerequisites for the analysis
    • 4.2The grammar of Q-words
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Note
  • References
References (31)
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