morphological? - KOPS - Universität Konstanz

. DET Xaine de DEF N COUNT e.g. plusieurs dizaines de ces chats
(10) a Elle a vu une quinzaine *(de chats) ‘She saw fifteen or so cats’
b. Elle a acheté un kilo *(de prunes) ‘She bought a kilogram (of plums )’.
It can be argued (i) that the LFR that constructs these X-aine forms marks them with the
specific feature [+approx], which is required by the syntactic constructions (9) in which
they appear; (ii) that the semantics of these X-aine expresses an approximate number,
cf. (11):
(11) aine 2’(cardinal’) = ‘ ± n c’ (n is contextually fixed and is small)
As noted in relation to (7), the semantics of these derived Ns is fully realized only at the
NP level:
(12) a. [Xaine] APPROX de N COUNT = ‘|N COUNT| = ± n c’
b. une centaine de camions = ‘|lorry| = 100 ± 5’
3. Theoretical challenge
Prototypical derivational rules involve only lexemes that are major categories (base: A,
N, V; derived: A, N, V, ADV). If we agree with Aronoff (Aronoff 1976) that
grammatical categories cannot be used as derivational bases, then we have to explain
why numerals, which have the distribution of quantifiers functioning as specifiers, can
be used as bases in derivation. This is the main theoretical challenge we have to face
with the expressions under discussion. From the empirical point of view, ordinal
adjectives can be formed from bases which apparently are phrases, as shown in (13),
(14). How can derivational morphology cope with these facts?
(13) trente et un trente et unième ‘31 rst ’
quarante et quelques quarante et quelquième ’40 th or so’
(14) deux ou trois deux ou troisième verre ‘2 nd or 3 rd glass’
douze ou treize au douze ou treizième siècle ‘at the 12 th or 13 th century’
3.1. The solution I propose is to assume that numerals constitute a category of their own
(named CARD). The theoretical challenge can then be solved by saying that evn though
numerals are not (prototypical) lexemes but rather a minor category (Emonds 1985),
they nevertheless share all the properties of an optimal sign: their category is
unequivocal, their semantics is crystal clear, and they are potentially a universal type of
sign, since they play an indispensable role in communication. These properties, I
suggest, fully qualify them to participate as bases in lexeme-building morphology. This
is all the more true insofar as classifying elements according to an order and being able
to express their rank constitute fundamental human activities. Semiotically, the
correlation between numerals and ordinal adjectives is a basic correlation and,
obviously, morphology is perfectly suited to express this correlation. In brief, even
though from the perspective of morphology, derivation based on numerals is not a
prototypical pattern, from the semiotic point of view it poses no difficulty.
3.2. Expressions (14a), as in deux ou trois verres, can be analysed either as instances of
Right Node Raising, on the model of (15), or as instances of a lexical coordination, on
the model of (16) (Abeillé 2006).
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