Dependent Numerals in Bengali: A Case for Covert Adverbial D-operators

Abstract

The semantic analysis of adnominal dependent numerals is much debated among two theoretical positions regarding the extent of distributivity involved. One school of analyses proposes that a covert Adverbial D operator is key to the licensing of these numerals and another school claims that the D operator is part of the lexical meaning of the numerals. In this work, I use lack of cumulative interpretations of nominals as a diagnostic for distributivity. This is implemented by probing the interpretation of nominal co-arguments of dependent numerals in ditransitive constructions and thereby finding that distributivity can be traced beyond the immediate bounds of the dependent numerals. Based on that evidence, I argue in favor of the covert Adverbial D operator based analysis, against recent influential lexicalist proposals. Thus the work provides a crucial piece in this on-going debate about the semantics of these numerals.