No CrossRef data available.
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 14 October 2010
The grammar of Finnish licenses two different types of complex numeral expressions.While the two occur in the same range of external syntactic and semantic contexts, theynevertheless exhibit striking differences in internal case-marking properties. Utilizing a sign-based, Construction Grammar approach, an analysis of the two types of numeral expressions is provided in terms of a set of closely related constructions. It is argued that the range and properties of numeral expressions as well as the interactions among them reveal a tight system of organization across constructions, expressed here in terms of a carefully formulated inheritance hierarchy. It is also argued that a close examination of the grammar of Finnish numeral expressions provides important insights into more general grammatical phenomena, including compounding, morphosyntactic feature distribution, inflectional realization, and the semantics of quantification