Plural ‘one’ lagging behind singular ‘one’ in Bulgarian. A syntactic approach
Luca Molinari
October 2024 

This paper analyzes the issue of Bulgarian plural numeral ‘one’ edni whose gram- maticalization process lags behind the one of singular ‘one’ edin. The grammati- calization processes of the two items run in parallel, but edni is “delayed” as it has not shifted from the stage of indefinite determiner to that of article-like element. The explanations present in the literature (historical recentness of edni, its lower frequency of occurrence, and its being contrasted with drugi ‘others’) are shown to be not sufficient to account for this “delay”. A new syntax-based account is pre- sented, building on the proposal that edni spells out a bigger portion of structure than singular edin. This is formalized in two ways: either edni spells out a covert noun, or it has a plural feature on top. It is further assumed that the structural correlate of the shift indefinite determiner > indefinite article-like element is the reanalysis SpecDP > D. The big structure of edni thus slows down such a reanalysis.

Format:	[ pdf ]
Reference:	lingbuzz/008745 (please use that when you cite this article)
Published in:	To appear in Advances in formal Slavic linguistics 2023
keywords:	bulgarian, grammaticalization, numeral ‘one’, plural ‘one’, syntax
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