Quantification and classification in Romance plural indefinites: from Number to Seinsart?

This chapter investigates the classificational interpretation of French, Italian and Spanish indefinite determiners by focusing on the properties of plurals, a point that has been variedly interpreted in Herslund (2003a, 2003b, 2012) and Stark (2007). Unlike their analyses, which were concentrated on morphosyntactic differences, I will pay more attention to the robust similarities that can be detected with respect to the interactions of the classificational properties of the Noun Phrase and the morphosyntactic category expressed by number. Plurals will be considered within the comprehensive paradigm of indefinite markers, thus systematically charting the whole set of morphosyntactic forms used to denote indefinite single bounded units, mass nouns and plural denotations in French, Italian and Spanish. In these three languages the role of classificational properties in plural indefinite determiners, if present, is always mediated via number. My major point, instead, will be that genuine classificational markers referring to plural denotations can only be found by considering the special behavior of indefinite determiners of Romance dialects (especially Occitan, Franco-Provençal and North-Western Italian) in which plural indefinites tend to reduce the requirement of number marking within the whole morphosyntactic domain of the Noun Phrase and not only on nominal inflectional endings.