Unifying mereological and arithmetic division

Abstract

This paper focuses on the Hungarian suffix -nként, which co-lexifies arithmetic division and mereological division. It is first established that -nként, like per, expresses the notion of division (quotient) in the arithmetic sense. This observation motivates an analysis grounded in quantity calculus, as has previously been argued for per. At the same time, -nként has a wide range of usage, including uses as frequency adverbials and in cases that could be translated with English by, as in by color, among others that could be seen as involving mereological division of an event into subevents. The paper offers a unified analysis, building on several ways of enriching of the arithmetic division analysis, including a homogeneity operator. One lesson from this exercise is that distributivity, implemented via mereological division, can be factored into these two components, viz. arithmetic division and homogeneity.