Professor Coppock presents at LangCog

Title: Unifying dependent-indefinite and independent-universal reduplicated numerals in Newar

Abstract: Newar (also known as Nepal Bhasa) is a Sino-Tibetan language spoken in the Kathmandu Valley region of Nepal with a rich classifier system. Classifier-affixed numerals can be reduplicated to produce a distributive reading, in a manner familiar from the literature on reduplicated numerals in Telugu, Hungarian, and Kaqchikel. For example, “My sons caught three-CLF.ANIM three-CLF.ANIM fish” (where CLF.ANIM = animate classifier) means that the sons caught three fish each. In this way, reduplicated numerals produce what is known as “dependent indefinites”, that is, indefinites that depend on the presence of a higher-scoping quantificational operator. But in addition, Newar reduplicated numerals have universal uses, which do not depend on having a quantificational element elsewhere in the sentence, as in “One one letter is correct”, meaning “every letter is correct”. Thus reduplicated numerals in Newar have both ‘dependent-indefinite’ and what we might call ‘independent-universal’ uses. I offer a way of unifying these two uses in a semantics that relies on sequences. This sequence-based analysis offers an iconic treatment of the semantics of reduplication, where the repetition in form is reflected by repetition in the meaning. This is the main point, but there is also a side point: In the course of developing the analysis, we are forced to confront the question of whether to give a Chierchia-like or Krifka-like constituency for the classifier construction; I advocate a structure where the classifier and the numeral form a unit to the exclusion of the noun, a la Krifka.