Two lives for numerals: Evidence from Javanese

Abstract

Numerals are standardly viewed to fit various denotations, including those of properties and those of numbers (Landman 2004, i.a.). I contribute new evidence that cardinal numerals of Javanese (Austronesian) morphologically track this semantic distinction. The class of numerals is a morphosyntactically heterogenous class, and I show how these numeral asymmetries challenge a view that numerals universally have basic number denotations. I show that it is analytically beneficial to treat the property denotation of simple numerals (those up to ‘nine’) as semantically basic, just as their morphologically basic form has a distribution consistent with a property-denoting numeral. The function taking property-denoting numerals and returning number-denoting numerals is made overt with the numeral “linker” suffix. I extend the thesis of this paper—that Javanese morphologically encodes the semantic type of numerals—to better understand an apparently exceptional numeral pattern that appears when counting over certain nouns, such as basa ‘language.’ The apparent exception, however, turns out to offer further evidence for the paper’s generalization: Javanese numerals take a predictable form whenever used as arguments, and they take a distinct but also predictable form whenever used as modifiers.