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Article published In: Language and Linguistics
Vol. 26:2 (2025) ► pp.262–293

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Num-Cl adjacency and the morphological movement of numerals in Mandarin

 | Southwest University
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Available under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) 4.0 license.

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

Published online: 7 February 2025
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https://doi.org/10.1075/lali.00201.ran
Abstract
In Chinese, numerals and classifiers are in principle adjacent to each other, forming a prosodic unit. Apparent violation of Num-Cl adjacency is observed when a zero-level adjective modifies the classifier. Such violation is not observed when the adjectives are phrasal. The current study provides a comprehensive description and analysis of different conditions of Num-Cl Adjacency constraints in Mandarin. Specifically, this paper proposes that the Num-Cl adjacency effect is reducible to the numeral lowering at PF, which is motivated by the morphological dependency of numerals rather than a requirement on the linear relation between numerals and classifiers. This analysis accounts for all observations regarding word order between the numeral, the classifier, and the different types of adjectives in a unified way. In addition, it is shown that the numeral-lowering analysis is also applicable to complex numerals and can solve the problem of some approximant numerals.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.The syntactic mechanism under the Num-Cl adjacency in Mandarin
    • 2.1The derivation of pre-classifier adjectives
    • 2.2The derivation of pre-numeral adjectives for classifiers
    • 2.3Interim summary
  • 3.The morphological dependency of numerals
    • 3.1A numeral’s lowering to N0
    • 3.2The prosodic reason for a numeral’s morphological dependency
  • 4.Issues with complex numerals
    • 4.1The morphological movement of numerals inside complex numerals, and exceptions
      • 4.1.1Multiplicative complex numerals
      • 4.1.2Additive complex numerals
    • 4.2The applicability of Ionin & Matushansky’s (2006) approach to Chinese
      • 4.2.1New analysis for duō/bàn
      • 4.2.2Against He’s (2015) several pieces of evidence
  • 5.Conclusion
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • List of abbreviations
  • References
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