numerals and quantifiers

[Claire Bowern]

Hi list members,
I'm doing some work with a student at the moment on the structure of 'numeral' systems in Australian languages. As you probably know, these systems are restricted, and some Australian languages have been claimed to lack numerals entirely, having instead a system of vague quantifiers or number-marked indefinite determiners.
This seems to me to raise some interesting questions about the syntax of quantifiers in such languages (how they co-occur with other words which we would want to call determiners, for example). One of the features of some of these systems is that the terms can be combined. 
Could readers of this list point me to examples of languages elsewhere in the world where unambiguous determiners or quantifiers can be productively combined? That is, I'm looking for examples of languages where words like "few-some" would mean "some quantity more than few and more than some but less than many". I know there are languages where quantifiers can be reduplicated - examples of them would also be welcome.
Thanks! (I'll post a summary)
Claire



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Claire Bowern
Associate Professor
Yale University
370 Temple St
New Haven, CT