The Syntax Of Complex Cardinals

This thesis targets at the complex cardinals with the aim of trying to provide an universal account to the syntax of complex cardinals. The thesis argues against taking the NP-internal cardinals as the basic forms of complex cardinals and defends the constituency of complex cardinals.Among the investigations that have been done on the complex cardinals, most representative is the analysis conducted by Ionin & Matushansky in 2006 on the syntax of complex cardinals involving multiplication and addition. Based on the case-related property of some numerals in languages like Russian and Finnish, Ionin & Matushansky (2006) proposed:1) Numeral cardinals are not separate constituents. The NP-internal cardinals are taken as the basic forms of numeral cardinals. Mathematical cardinals are derived from nominalizations.2) Complex cardinals are not frozen lexical words, instead they are constructed in syntax. Complex cardinals are formed incrementally through recursively selecting a nominal projection as its complement. The greatest problem of Ionin & Matushansky's proposal lies in its narrowness. Case feature is not an universal language property, thus is not persuasive. In this thesis, Ionin & Matushansky's proposal will be applied to Mandarin Chinese, the Min Dialects(Huangliu Dialects of Hainan Province and Ningde Dialect) and other minority languages in China(Naxi Language, Dai Language, Dong Language, Li language, Mulam language, Jingpo Language, Luomian Dialect of Buyi Language and Bai Language) for examination. In those languages, case feature is totally devoid, what's more, according to the different contexts they appear, some numerals in those languages appear in two or more forms, which serve as good materials for the examination of Ionin & Matushansky's proposal on the syntax of complex cardinals.Through applying Ionin & Matushansky's proposal to those languages, we find that their theory on the syntax of complex cardinals is pretty problematic for it fails to account for the specific usages found on some numerals. On the basis of this, this thesis proposes:1) Ionin & Matushansky's assumption of taking NP-internal cardinals as the basic forms of complex cardinals are untenable. Complex cardinals are phrases themselves which can stand alone as separate constituents; 2) the syntax of complex cardinals are formed through X-bar theory. Due to the completeness and regularity of the numeral system in Mandarin Chinese, the complex cardinals in it are taken as representative to demonstrate their syntactic structures.Besides,the thesis also discusses the structure of "??""??""??".whether thev are units like"?""?""?""?",or they are compound elements.