A Swarm of Helicopters, the Last Couple of Weeks: A Constructional Analysis of the Syntax/Semantics Interface for the Classification of N1 as “Collective” or “Quantificational”

This chapter investigates the correlation between the semantic and grammatical properties of N1s of collective origin in binominal “pseudopartitive” constructions, such as a swarm of helicopters or the last couple of weeks. The few existing studies diverge in their conclusions, from rejecting collective status for all metaphorical uses to rejecting only cases of obligatory plural agreement of the verb; one even considers all these uses collective. The present study, taking a constructionist approach to meaning, proposes that such divergences stem from a confusion between word level and construction level. The construction organises its own roles, including a strong quantificational value; at word level, a noun loses collective status only in the few cases in which it no longer contributes a /group/ feature, which is the feature that defines it as “collective” elsewhere in the language. This loss is found to occur only at stage 3 of a proposed Quantification Scale and to involve either semantic or syntactic reanalysis. For each stage, semantic characteristics are found to correlate with grammatical properties which, it is claimed, are the relevant ones to assess the semantic classification of nouns.