Cover not available

In:Word Classes: Nature, typology and representations
Edited by Raffaele Simone and Francesca Masini
[Current Issues in Linguistic Theory 332] 2014
► pp. 161–180

Get fulltext from our e-platform
JBE logo with link
PDF logo with download linkDownload Book PDF
authorization required

Cardinal numerals

A syntax-semantics interface analysis

ORCiD logo with link | Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale”
 | Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale”
Published online: 24 September 2014
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/cilt.332.09pan
While constituting a semantically homogeneous class, cardinal numerals cross-linguistically display a rich variety of morphosyntactic properties. An approach to such variation, with the aim of identifying a limited range of morphosyntactic statuses to which these properties are related, has been taken through the application of the Role and Reference Grammar (RRG) descriptive-interpretive model. Among the different statuses are those prototypically held by major categories, like nouns and verbs. However, the non-alignment hypothesis within RRG, according to which ontological, lexical and syntactic categories do not necessarily overlap, allows the occurrence of numerals as nucleus of a reference phrase, or nucleus of a clause, to be accounted for. While pointing out elements of similarity in the morphosyntax of numerals and other word classes, the analysis highlights crucial divergences between numerals and adjectives, a word class numerals are frequently equated to in the literature. The languages mentioned here belong to diverse typological and genetic groupings.
References (51)
Anward, Jan. 2006. “Word Classes/Parts of Speech: Overview”. Encyclopedia of Language & Linguistics ed. by Keith Brown, 628–632. Oxford: Elsevier.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Corbett, Greville. 1978. “Universals in the Syntax of Cardinal Numerals”. Lingua 46.355–68. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Crabtree, William A. 2010. Elements of Luganda Grammar – Together with exercises and vocabulary – By a missionary of the Church Missionary Society in Uganda. Manchester: Holyoake Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Croft, William A. 1991. Syntactic Categories and Grammatical Relations: The cognitive organization of information. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2001. Radical Construction Grammar: Syntactic theory in typological perspective. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2007. “The Origins of Grammar in the Verbalization of Experience”. Cognitive Linguistics 18.339–382. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dahl, Osten & Maria Koptjevskaja-Tamm, eds. 2001. The Circum-Baltic Languages: Grammar and typology. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Derbyshire, Desmond C. 1979. Hixkaryana (Lingua Descriptive Studies). Amsterdam: North-Holland.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1985. Hixkaryana and Linguistic Typology. Dallas: Summer Institute of Linguistics.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Devos, Maud. 2008. A Grammar of Makwe (Palma; Mozambique). München & Newcastle: Lincom Europa.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Donohue, Mark. 2005. “Numerals and their Position in Universal Grammar”. Journal of Universal Language 6.1–37.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Dowty, David R. 1979. Word Meaning and Montague Grammar. The semantics of verbs and times in Generative Semantics and in Montague’s PTQ. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Du Plessis, Jan Adriaan & Marianna Visser. 1992. Xhosa Syntax. Pretoria: Via Afrika.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Everett, Daniel L. & Barbara Kern. 1997. Wari: The Pacaas Novos language of Western Brazil. London: Routledge.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Foley, William A. & Robert D. Van Valin. 1984. Functional Syntax and Universal Grammar. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Giusti, Giuliana. 1997. “The Categorial Status of Determiners”. The New Comparative Syntax ed. by Liliane Haegeman, 95–123. London: Longman.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Greenberg, Joseph H. 1978. “Generalizations about Numeral Systems”. Universals of Human Language: Word structure ed. by Joseph H. Greenberg, Charles A. Ferguson & Edith A. Moravcsik, vol. III, 249–296. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1989. “The Internal and External Syntax of Numerical Expressions”. Belgian Journal of Linguistics 4.105–118. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2000. “Numeral”.Morphologie: Ein internationales Handbuch zur Flexion und Wortbildung ed. by Geert Booij, Christian Lehmann & Joachim Mugdan, 770–783. Berlin & New York: Walter de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Gruber, Jeffrey S. 1965. Studies in Lexical Relations. Ph.D dissertation, MIT(published as Gruber, Jeffrey S. 1976. Lexical Structures in Syntax and Semantics. Amsterdam: North Holland).Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hooper, Robin. 1996. Tokelauan. München & Newcastle: Lincom Europa.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Hurford, James R. 1987. Language and Number. The emergence of a cognitive system. Oxford: Blackwell.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2003. “The Interaction between Numerals and Nouns”. Noun Phrase Structure in the Languages of Europe ed. by Frans Plank, vol. XX (= Eurotyp 7), 561–620. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jackendoff, Ray. 1972. Semantic Interpretation in Generative Grammar. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1977. X-Bar Syntax: A study of phrase structure. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1990. Semantic Structures. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Jespersen, Otto. 1969. Analytic Syntax. New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
McCawley, James D. 1971. “Prelexical Syntax”. Report of the 22nd Annual Roundtable Meeting on Linguistics and Language Studies ed. by Richard J. O’Brien, 19–33. Washington: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
von Mengden, Ferdinand. 2010. Cardinal Numerals. Old English from a cross-linguistic perspective. Berlin & New York: Mouton de Gruyter. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Mosel, Ulrike & Even Hovdhaugen. 1992. Samoan Reference Grammar. Oslo: Scandinavian University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Neukom, Lukas. 2001. Santali. München & Newcastle: Lincom Europa.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pannain, Rossella. 2000. “Numerali ed istanze di numerazione: note per un progetto di tipologia areale dei numerali”. AIΩN (Annali del Dipartimento di Studi del Mondo Classico e del Mediterraneo Antico, Sezione linguistica, Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale”) 25.63–103.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2007, “La varietà nella numerazione e la questione della vigesimalità in Italia meridionale”. AIΩN (Annali del Dipartimento di Studi del Mondo Classico e del Mediterraneo Antico, Sezione linguistica, Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale”) 29.73–97.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Pinker, Steven. 1989. Learnability and Cognition: The acquisition of argument structure. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Riccio, Anna. 2007. “Indagine preliminare sul principio dell’armonia tra “sintassi interna” e “sintassi esterna” dei numerali”. AIΩN (Annali del Dipartimento di Studi del Mondo Classico e del Mediterraneo Antico, Sezione linguistica, Università degli Studi di Napoli “L’Orientale”) 29.161–197.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Rijkhoff, Jan. 2002. The Noun Phrase. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Roberts, John R. 1987. Amele. London: Croom Helm.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Romero-Méndez, Rodrigo. 2008. A Reference Grammar of Ayutla Mixe (Tukyo’m ayuujk), Ph.D. dissertation, State University of New York at Buffalo.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Saeed, John. 1982. “The Syntactic Status of Quantifiers in Somali”. Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies 45:3.525–545. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 1999. Somali. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Selkirk, Elisabeth O. 1977. “Some Remarks on Noun Phrase Structure”. Formal Syntax: Papers from the MSSB-UC Irvine conference on the formal syntax of natural language, Newport Beach, California, June 9–11, 1976 ed. by Peter W. Culicover, Thomas Wasow & Adrian Akmajian, 285–316. New York: Academic Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Šipka, Danko & R. David Paul Zorc, ed. 2007. A Comparative Reference Grammar of Bosnian, Croatian, Serbian. Springfield: Dunwoody Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Stampe, David. 1976. “Cardinal Number Systems”. Chicago Linguistic Society 12.594–609.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Timberlake, Alan. 2004. A Reference Grammar of Russian. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Van Valin, Robert D., ed. 1993. Advances in Role and Reference Grammar. Amsterdam & Philadephia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2005. Exploring the Syntax-Semantics Interface. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2008. Investigations of the Syntax-Semantics-Pragmatics Interface. Amsterdam & Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
. 2010. “Role and Reference Grammar as a Framework for Linguistic Analysis”. The Oxford Handbook of Linguistic Analysis ed. by Bernd Heine & Heiko Narrog, 703–738. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Van Valin, Robert D. & Randy J. LaPolla. 1997. Syntax: Structure, Meaning and Function. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Vendler, Zeno. 1967. Linguistics in Philosophy. Ithaca, N. Y.: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Williams, Stephen J. 1980. A Welsh Grammar. Cardiff: University of Wales Press.Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar
Cited by (1)

Cited by one other publication

Pannain, Rossella
2017. Metonymy in numerals. Review of Cognitive Linguistics 15:1 ► pp. 102 ff. DOI logo

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 15 november 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.

Mobile Menu Logo with link to supplementary files background Layer 1 prag Twitter_Logo_Blue