Handbook of Quantifiers in Natural Language: Volume II

Abstract

This article examines quantification in Nen, a Papuan language of the Yam family (aka Morehead-Maro family) from Southern New Guinea. Nen counts some 400 speakers, most living in the single village of Bimadbn. Typologically, Nen is an SOV language with ergative case-marking, agreement on the verb for up to two arguments, and a split in verbal agreement patterns between active and stative predicates. With regard to quantification, the most interesting features of Nen are its complex system for composing number by integrating partial or disjoint number specifications (e.g. ‘non-dual, i.e. singular or more than two’) from a number of morphological sites. For many values this results in non-monotonic processes of composition. Composition from a number of sites is also a feature of temporal semantics, e.g. bidirectional time adverbs (yesterday/tomorrow) whose exact reference is selected by the verbal semantics. Numerals exhibit an unusual senary system, including monomorphemic roots for powers of six up to 65; grammatical number is also unusual, with several lines of evidence suggesting that the dual is the unmarked number with regard to verbal morphology. The language has rich systems of indefinite and negative pronouns and distributive numerals, and an entrenched count vs mass distinction, interestingly linked to a lack of general quantificational interrogatives for mass expressions. The existence of double agreement on the verb eliminates many classic scope ambiguities with regard to universal and existential quantifiers. Finally, an unusual conflation of ‘all’ and ‘most’ in the main relevant D-quantifier is problematic for standard accounts of quantity implicature.