Abstract for Rahul Balusu's talk

Distributive reduplication in Telugu
Rahul Balusu (New York University)
November 1, 2005 (Tuesday)
6:30 PM - 8:00 PM; Room 7102, The CUNY Graduate Center

This talk addresses the phenomenon of distributive reduplication in Telugu. In Telugu as in some of the other Dravidian languages, reduplication of numerals forces a distributive interpretation. The distributive interpretations that are possible in reduplicated numeral (RedNum) constructions are of three types - what can be called participant key reading, temporal key reading and spatial key reading. The constructions in which the RedNum DP occurs also vary in their syntactic status. They can be in constructions with universals which are themselves always associated with a D(istributivity)-operator, or they can be in constructions with plurals, or singulars. Plurals do not automatically associate themselves with a D-operator, and even if they do, that D-operator is distinct from the one that the universals are associated with. The focus of this talk will be to explain the obligatory distributivity that is associated with RedNum constructions and to produce a unified account of the diverse group of constructions involving RedNum, and to account for the readings that are possible with each kind of construction - universals, singulars, plurals. I will argue that RedNum is associated with a D-operator whose sorting key (Choe 1987) is always an event or an event aspect, i.e. that not only the temporal and spatial but the participant key readings are also event key readings. I also propose that RedNum is associated with a plurality requirement.