Resumen

HERRERA JIMENEZ, Rafael. Number marking in Classical Nahuatl attributive numeral constructions. Cuad. Lingüíst. Col. Méx. [online]. 2026, vol.13, e343.  Epub 20-Ago-2026. ISSN 2007-736X.  https://doi.org/10.24201/clecm.v13.343.

In this work, I focus on the number-marking patterns of Classical Nahuatl attributive numeral constructions. In Classical Nahuatl, two such patterns are attested in this type of construction: a concordant one, in which the numerical expression and the nominal agree in number, and a discordant one, in which the number features of the numerical expression and the nominal differ. Drawing on Norris (2014) and Scontras (2022), I propose a formal analysis of the meaning of Classical Nahuatl numeral constructions that accounts for both concordant and discordant agreement patterns. The analysis is based on a corpus comprising historiographic and legal texts from sixteenth-century central Mexico. Broadly speaking, I argue that the existence of these agreement patterns in Classical Nahuatl can be explained by the interaction among 1) the number features [SG] and [PL] and the animacy feature [±ANIMATE], 2) the syntactic position in which these features are merged, 3) the possibility that more than one number feature occurs in a single numeral construction, and 4) the mechanisms by which features spread throughout the structure.

Palabras llave : Classical Nahuatl; semantics; agreement-concord; animacy; syntax; morphology.

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