Moni or monta? The collective vs. distributive opposition between two forms of the quantifier 'many' in Finnish

Abstract

<p>Abstract. In this work I explore the semantics of two case forms of the Finnish quantifier<br />moni ‘many’: the regular nominative moni and the regular partitive <i>monta </i>[<i>mon-ta</i><br />many-PARTITIVE], which however has taken on a function similar to that of the nominative<br />of numerals and is thus not a functional partitive anymore. This development has<br />apparently motivated the rise of the pleonastic <i>montaa </i>[<i>mon-ta-a</i> many-PARTITIVE-PARTITIVE]<br />to unambiguously mark the partitive. I argue that an important difference between<br /><i>moni </i>and <i>monta </i>is the opposition between a distributive and a collective meaning:<br />in ambiguous contexts, <i>moni </i>is clearly distributive and <i>monta </i>collective. I compare<br />the two with the nominative form of the near-synonymous quantifier <i>usea </i>‘several; a<br />number of', which in similar contexts displays ambiguity between the distributive and<br />collective readings. The analysis sheds new light to the division of labor between the<br />two (functional) nominative forms of moni, showing that they divide the functions of<br />the nominative in an idiosyncratic way.<br /></p>