Universals in the Syntax of Cardinal – Noun Constructions
Universals in the Syntax of Cardinal – Noun Constructions

Summary/Abstract: The present paper analyzes cardinal numerals in a number of unrelated languages, i.e. Semitic, Bantu, Formosan, Romance, Slavic with a view to showing that there is crosslinguistic variation between the syntactic behavior of lower numerals and the syntactic behavior of higher numerals. In Romanian, lower numerals are those with values between 1 and 19, while higher numerals are those with values from 19 onwards. In this respect, the paper can be considered a revival of Corbett’s universals (1978) and a refutation of uniform treatments of cardinals. The paper shows that lower and higher numerals cross-linguistically are best analyzed in terms of different syntactic structures. The syntactic structure for lower numerals is that of specifier-head while the syntactic structure for higher numerals is that of head-complement. The arguments in favor of this analysis come from the domains of case-assignment. In this respect, ‘de’- ‘of’ with higher cardinals in Romanian is seen as a Genitive case-assigner, while morpho-syntactic plurality is present on the quantified noun.

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