Numerals, number and individuation

Abstract

It is a pleasure to acknowledge my intellectual debt to Adam Evgen'evič; I have learned a good deal from his careful and extensive work on numerals in different Slavonic languages. A natural question arising from that work is the way in which numerals and grammatical number interact, a question we shall consider in section 2. Adam Evgen'evič's research shows that the interaction is somewhat surprising (section 3), specifically that noun phrases with higher numerals are less likely to control plural agreement than are those with lower numerals. We consider the implications of this finding in terms of individuation (section 4). And then we go on to show how in the light of the Slavonic situation we can better understand puzzling data from languages unrelated to Slavonic, namely Bayso and Arabic (section 5).

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