Monotonicity in a Numeral Classifier language

Abstract

While many languages require an obligatory plural morpheme to make reference to plural individuals, numeral classifier languages generally do not (Greenberg 1972; Sanches & Slobin 1973; Doetjes 2012: a.o.). This led some researchers to conclude that noun denotations in numeral classifier languages are inherently plural. In this paper, I show that one can find a syntactic environment which requires a plural reading or a mass reading of a noun phrase in a numeral classifier language. The core empirical finding is that the postnominal measurement construction in Japanese (i) does not allow a singular reading, and (ii) sometimes triggers count-to-mass coercion. This suggests that the constraint that measure phrases select a non-quantised denotation (Krifka 1989) is non-trivially satisfied in Japanese even though Japanese is argued to have inherently cumulative common noun denotations. To solve this, I propose two possible analyses. The first option is to assume the stratified measurement reference (Champollion 2017) and the second option is to assume that Japanese distinguishes singular count nouns, plural nouns and mass nouns in its syntax (Watanabe 2006; 2017). I discuss the implications of these options in light of the previous literature and provide further data which may suggest that Japanese makes an atomicity distinction both in its lexicon and its syntax.