16h00
visioconférence
Teresa Peralta (ENALLT, UNAM, Ciudad de México)
A minimalist approach to recursion and the syntactic structure of numerical terms (abstract/résumé pdf)
Among the many issues than researchers have addressed regarding the nature of numerical terms (NT, from now on), they have studied their syntactic structure. In this area, there are different and sometimes contradicting proposals (Zweig (2005), Ioning and Matushansky, (2006/2018); Stavrou and Terzi (2008), and Di Scullio (2012,2015, 2017) among many others).
Our proposal discusses Di Scullio’s analysis and present one characterization for numerical additive and multiplicate NT that assumes that it is not necessary not desirable two posit different structures: one for small NT on the one hand, and another for large NT on the other hand.
This characterization considers at least four main issues:
- (1) that there is one recursive mechanism that accounts for the structure of NT, which can include an explicit or implicit operator rendering a direct or indirect recursion;
- (2) that this recursive mechanism is always asymmetric and hierarchical and has syntactic and semantic consequences for the properties of such structures;
- (3) that there is a functional projection for addition and one for multiplication as well as non- interpretable features that need to be checked, and finally
- (4) that the categorial status of NT is that of determinatives.
References
- Di Sciullo, A. M. (2012) Biolinguistics, Minimalist Grammars, and the Emergence of Complex Numerals. En EVOLANG 9. Workshop in Theoretical Linguistics/Biolinguistics, pp 13-18. Kyoto
- Di Sciullo, A. M. (2015) On the domain specificity of the human language faculty and the effects of principles of computational efficiency: contrasting language and mathematics. En Revista LinguiStica. Vol. 11, número 1, Junho 2015, p 57-70. DOI: http://10.17074/2238 975X.2015v1n1p57
- Di Sciullo, A. M. (2017) Asymmetry and the language faculty. En Revista LinguiStica. Volumen 13, número 2, Julho 2017. Pp 88-104. DOI: http://DX.DOI.ORG/10.31513/linguistica.2017.v13n2a14030
- Ionin, Tania y Matushansky, Ora. 2006. The Composition of Complex Cardinals. Journal of Semantics 23, 315-360.
- Ionin, T. y Matushansky, O. (2018) The syntax and semantics of cardinal-containing expressions. Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press.
- Stavrou, M. y Terzi, A. (2008) Cardinal Numerals and other numerical expressions. En C. B. chang y H. J. Haynie (eds) Proceedings of the 26th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguisctics, pp. 429-437.
- Zweig, Eytan. 2005. Nouns and adjectives in numeral NPs. En L. Bateman y C. Ussery (eds.) Proceedings of NELS 35, GLSA Publications, Amherst, Mass: 663-675.
