Number classifying to number marking: Change in English countability

Abstract

It is herein argued that, from Old English (OE) to Present Day English (PDE), (i) number marking has narrowed from a complex function specifying either atoms or quantities to its present day status specifying only atomicity in addition to number, and (ii) numericals have been reanalyzed from AP heads to specifiers, n⟨n⟩ of the functional measure phrase, MP, that takes a cardinality or measure function as its head. This analysis situates OE as a “number classifying language” wherein number marking specifies atoms or contextually specified partitions, and in doing so militates against previous claims that OE ‘is a classifier language’ and ‘had no count–mass distinction’.