22.2747, Qs: Quantifier-floating Numerals

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LINGUIST List: Vol-22-2747. Tue Jul 05 2011. ISSN: 1068 - 4875.

Subject: 22.2747, Qs: Quantifier-floating Numerals

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1)
Date: 02-Jul-2011
From: Dustin Chacón [dustin.alfonso at gmail.com]
Subject: Quantifier-floating Numerals
 

	
-------------------------Message 1 ---------------------------------- 
Date: Tue, 05 Jul 2011 11:07:29
From: Dustin Chacón [dustin.alfonso at gmail.com]
Subject: Quantifier-floating Numerals

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Hi everyone,

I have seen in a handful of languages the ability to strand numerals in a 
manner reminiscent of quantifier float in English. For example, in 
Bengali, the following is possible:

chele kalke dujon bangladeshe jabe
boy tomorrow two.Cl to Bangladesh will go
''tomorrow, two boys will go to Bangladesh''

However, the only languages im familiar with that do something like this 
are head-final classifier languages. I'm curious to see how widespread 
of a phenomenon this is, and whether it might be tied in some 
meaningful way to numeral classifier marking, head finality, or both.

Is this possible in your pet language(s)? What does number marking 
look like in that language, are there numeral classifiers, and what is the 
(predominant) word order like? Are you aware of any meaningful 
semantic distinctions between num-floating and not? 

I'd be more than happy to write a summary of what you kind folks tell 
me. Thanks!

Dustin Chacón 

Linguistic Field(s): Morphology
                     Syntax
                     Typology







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