Complex numerals in Mandarin Chinese are constituents

In this article, three types of data from syntax, semantics, and morpho-phonology are presented to argue that lonin and Matushansky's (IM, 2006) non-constituency analysis of complex numerals may not work in Mandarin Chinese and that the traditional constituency analysis is more plausible. In order to address these data under the constituency analysis, we propose and justify a fine-grained phrase structure for complex numerals in Mandarin Chinese, which can accommodate all these data satisfactorily. We also investigate the cross-linguistic implications of our argumentation by showing that similar morpho-phonological data in many minority languages of China also support the constituency analysis for complex numerals. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.