The lexicon–syntax boundary in English numerals
Cardinals, ordinals and fractionals
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 21695190 |
|---|---|
| Authors | B Reynolds (0000-0003-0073-7195, University of Toronto, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2026 |
| Pages | 1-19 |
| Publication date | 2026-02-04 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | English Language and Linguistics (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 1360-6743 • E-ISSN: 1469-4379 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s1360674325100518 |
| OpenAlex | W7127619945 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 7 |
I argue for a hybrid analysis of English numeratives that (i) treats the extended basic numeratives (0–99) as lexemes but (ii) analyzes larger expressions as syntactic phrases or coordinations with magnitudes ( hundred , thousand , million , ...) as heads and factors ( two hundred , forty-two million , ...) as (obligatory) modifiers. A number of independent diagnostics – including ordinal/fractional morphology, prosodic phrasing and ellipsis/coordination – converge on the existence of a constituent containing all preceding material up to the rightmost base; this directly contradicts the cascading NumP + NP-deletion architecture of Ionin & Matushansky (2006, 2018) when applied to English. The analysis preserves the category assignments of The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language – cardinals as determinatives and nouns, ordinals as adjectives, fractionals as nouns – and refines the functional picture: (i) multiplicative factors ( one hundred ) function as modifiers, never as determiners or complements, and (ii) additions ( one hundred and two ) are coordinates in a coordination. The resulting determinative category is a small closed list, not an open-ended stock of ‘numeral lexemes’. Cardinal nouns split in two: proper when they name, common when they count – a division borne out by distributional diagnostics. The result is a more complete, empirically tighter, morphosyntax-sensitive account of English numeratives that explains why English is lexical below 100 but demands overt syntax above it
Determinative · English grammar · Grammar · Multiplicative function · Noun · Part of speech · Principle of compositionality · Syntax · Multilingual Education and Policy · Phonetics and Phonology Research · Syntax, Semantics, Linguistic Variation
| Highly cited | No |
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