On the Syntax of Quantity in English

Abstract

Many and few are adjectival modifiers of an unpronounced noun NUMBER and the same holds for much and little as modifiers of AMOUNT. This reflects a broader property of UG, namely that UG excludes the possibility that a single adjective could simultaneously express what is expressed by large/small and what is expressed by number . This property in turn can be seen as a special case of UG imposing a maximum of one interpretable syntactic feature per lexical item (Principle of Decompositionality). The analysis is extended to a few and quite a few , to numerous and to questions of scope and polarity.

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