The Syntax-Semantics Group will be meeting on Tuesday, September 9, at 3-4pm in Room 117 of the McGill linguistics department. Online participants can join with this link: https://mcgill.zoom.us/meeting/register/bQ4IXlJxTTShVcMHOosNtQ
Austin Kraft (McGill) will be presenting “Two lives for numerals: Evidence from Javanese.” Here is the abstract:
A prominent treatment of numerals is that they lead multiple semantic lives: (i) they can denote properties of individuals, and (ii) they can denote primitive numbers (Landman 2004, among others). Which denotation is basic and which is derived remains an open question cross-linguistically (Bylinina and Nouwen 2020, Wągiel and Caha 2021). Based on original elicitation with speakers of Javanese (Austronesian) spoken in Pemalang, Central Java, I argue for the existence of a pathway from basic property denotations to derived number denotations. Evidence includes a series of structural asymmetries between morphologically simple numerals and morphologically complex numerals. An opposing analysis, in which all numerals have basic number denotations, leads to under- or over-generation with respect to these asymmetries. Along the way, I show that Javanese complex numerals are constituents, bearing on diverging predictions from Ionin and Matushansky 2018 on the one hand and Tatsumi 2025 on the other.