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Journal of Semantics Advance Access published online on November 16, 2006
Journal of Semantics, doi:10.1093/jos/ffl006
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© The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org
Received March 26, 2006
Revised June 19, 2006
Accepted September 21, 2006

Article

The Composition of Complex Cardinals

Tania Ionin 1 * and Ora Matushansky 2

1 USC/UIUC
2 CNRS/Université Paris 8

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.
Tania Ionin, E-mail: ionin{at}usc.edu


  Abstract

This paper proposes an analysis of the syntax and semantics of complex cardinal numerals, which involve multiplication (two hundred) and/or addition (twenty-three). It is proposed that simplex cardinals have the semantic type of modifiers (<<e, t>, <e, t>>). Complex cardinals are composed linguistically, using standard syntax (complementation, coordination) and standard principles of semantic composition. This analysis is supported by syntactic evidence (such as Case assignment) and semantic evidence (such as internal composition of complex cardinals). We present several alternative syntactic analyses of cardinals, and suggest that different languages may use different means to construct complex cardinals even though their lexical semantics remains the same. Further issues in the syntax of numerals (modified numerals and counting) are discussed and shown to be compatible with the proposed analysis of complex cardinals. Extra-linguistic constraints on the composition of complex cardinals are discussed and compared to similar restrictions in other domains.


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