French Determiners and Quantifiers

[JBG+25]

A small lexicon of French determiners and quantifiers, structured to parallel English.Determiners so that the two can be compared directly in cross-linguistic studies. The genuinely quantificational words are Syntax.Determiner.Quantifier records (marked like a Pronoun, carrying only the morphosyntax synonyms diverge on); the definite/indefinite articles (les, un) are Articles. Only form and language-specific feature combinations differ from English.

This fragment is the minimum needed by Studies/JereticEtAl2025.lean. The notable gap relative to English: French has no lexical dual universal quantifier (no counterpart of both). The expression les deux is the nearest equivalent and is encoded here as a Quantifier with numberRestriction := some .dual, marking that — unlike tous, which is plural-restricted — it realizes the dual core concept (JereticEtAl2025.CoreConcept.Id.dual).

Quantificational determiners

Marked Quantifier records: form, the selectional numberRestriction (root Number), and selectsMass.

def French.Determiners.tous : Quantifier

tous — universal, plural. The French universal of [Che07a]'s puzzle: anti-dual despite the lack of any French both. The paper's analysis: anti-duality is implicated via competition with the indirect alternative les deux (les_deux).

Equations

• French.Determiners.tous = { form := "tous", numberRestriction := some Number.plural, selectsMass := true }

def French.Determiners.chaque : Quantifier

chaque — universal, singular distributive (≈ English each).

Equations

• French.Determiners.chaque = { form := "chaque", numberRestriction := some Number.singular }

def French.Determiners.aucun : Quantifier

aucun — negative, singular. NOT anti-dual: French has no expression simple enough to act as an indirect alternative (aucun des deux and ni l'un ni l'autre are both more complex). See JereticEtAl2025 §5.2.

Equations

• French.Determiners.aucun = { form := "aucun", numberRestriction := some Number.singular }

def French.Determiners.les_deux : Quantifier

les deux — definite dual ('the two'). The pronounceable expression that serves as an indirect alternative for the unpronounceable tous les NP.dual (paper Fig. 1 + §4.1). Restricted to dual domains; marked here as a Quantifier so its dual numberRestriction is readable (the dual core-concept witness), paralleling English both.

Equations

• French.Determiners.les_deux = { form := "les deux", numberRestriction := some Number.dual }

def French.Determiners.quelques : Quantifier

quelques — existential, plural.

Equations

• French.Determiners.quelques = { form := "quelques", numberRestriction := some Number.plural }

def French.Determiners.un : Article

un — indefinite article, singular.

Equations

• French.Determiners.un = { form := "un", definiteness := Features.Definiteness.Definiteness.indefinite, exponent := Determiner.Exponent.dedicatedMorpheme }

def French.Determiners.les : Article

les — definite plural article.

Equations

• One or more equations did not get rendered due to their size.

def French.Determiners.toujours : Quantifier

toujours — universal temporal ('always'). Parallel to English always (which decomposes as all+ways); JereticEtAl2025 §5.4 contrasts: English always is anti-dual via competition with both times; French toujours, despite morphological decomposition tous+jours, is NOT anti-dual because les deux fois ('the two times') is more complex than toujours.

Equations

• French.Determiners.toujours = { form := "toujours", numberRestriction := some Number.plural }

def French.Determiners.allQuantifiers : List Quantifier

All French quantifier entries (definite articles les/un excluded).

Equations

• One or more equations did not get rendered due to their size.

def French.Determiners.allArticles : List Article

All French article entries.

Equations

• French.Determiners.allArticles = [French.Determiners.un, French.Determiners.les]