Time: 1:00 - 2:00pm Venue: Scape 3.01
We are pleased to welcome Dr Matushansky for an ad-hoc LingLunch. Details below.
Ora Matushansky
Univeristeit Utrecht
o.m.matushansky@uu.nl
Floating Number
Number is generally assumed to be located in a functional projection, NumP, taking the noun phrase as its complement, and little attention is given to the interaction between the plural feature in Num0 and the plural morphology on the noun. I will fill this gap by arguing that number morphology on the noun arises from agreement and therefore does not indicate that the noun itself is semantically plural. To do so, I will demonstrate (a) that number marking on nouns combining with cardinals is conditioned by the same factors that condition agreement (e.g., animacy or definiteness), and (b) assuming plurality under a cardinal gives rise to incorrect truth-conditions. I will then float the possibility that, unlike semantic pluralization, the syntactic number feature may be a property of a maximal projection rather than a head.