Talk on numeral reduplication in Newar at University of Buenos Aires

A talk entitled “Unifying dependent and independent numeral reduplication in Newar” was presented by Elizabeth Coppock at the University of Buenos Aires, December 17, 2025.

Abstract:  Reduplicated numerals in Newar (to which matching numeral classifiers affix), as in cha-mha cha-mha nyaa `one-clf.anim one clf.anim fish’, like reduplicated numerals in languages where they have already been studied, can serve as dependent indefinites, introducing existential quantification under the scope of a licensing universal. But they have another use as well, one that could be called independent, as it does not rely on the presence of a distinct distributive operator in the sentence. The independent uses come with a universal interpretation. So reduplicated numerals in Newar have both dependent-indefinite and independent-universal uses. I propose a way of unifying them using sequences. The analysis offers a new lens on `simultaneous distributivity’, a phenomenon in which one and the same element marks both the share and the key.

Slides available here.