Binominal quantifiers in Dutch, English, French and Spanish: a comparative study of form-function correlations and metaphorization.

The project proposes a comparative study of binominal quantifiers (BQ) in Dutch, English, French and Spanish. BQs are highly frequent quantification devices that hyperbolically indicate the extension of a set of entities. E.g. heaps of people boosts the number of people profiled, whereas many people does not. BQs present the following formal pattern:

(DETERMINER)            NOUN              (PREPOSITION)            NOUN

e.g. een                       heleboel                    Ø                             vrienden

         ‘a’                          ‘heap’                     Ø                             'friends’

e.g.    Ø                         heaps                      of                             people

The formal characteristics of BQs are subject to language-specific constraints. E.g. in contrast to English, French and Spanish, Dutch QNs can occur without preposition or alternate van and aan (een stortvloed Ø/van/aan kritiek ‘a flood Ø/of/on criticism’). The meaning of BQs hinges on the first noun: a gang of thieves and a bunch of thieves conceptualize the thieves differently. Gang/bunch are uttered first and as such impose a specific image on thieves. Three research questions are addressed: (1) Do BQs function similarly across languages? Do differences in the formal make-up affect the basic meaning structure? (2) Do speakers cross-linguistically rely on the same/different images or metaphors to assess the quantity of similar entities? E.g. Spanish críticas ‘criticism’ is preferably introduced by alud ‘avalanche’ and aluvión ‘flood’, while the flood-metaphor is not at all productive with the English counterpart, as criticism rather combines with deal, lot or barrage. (3) What determines the speaker’s choice for a particular metaphor?