This paper argues that, given a simple [DP VP] sentence, the availability of a collective interpretation crucially depends on the syntactic and semantic properties of the subject DP, specifically the presence versus absence of a pluralizing function that makes the collective interpretation available. In support of my claim, I present Lebanese Arabic and Western Armenian examples in which an indefinite DP contains a cardinal numeral and there is no overt distributivity operator but the interpretation of the sentence is nevertheless obligatorily distributive, regardless of the predicate. I show that neither a distributivity operator within the DP nor one on the predicate can explain this strictly distributive interpretation. Instead, I argue that in order to allow a collective interpretation, an indefinite DP must denote a quantifier over pluralities, a condition that is not always met in numeral-containing indefinite DPs. While the claims in this paper are based primarily on observations from Lebanese Arabic and Western Armenian, because both are morphologically rich languages, the fact that this constraint is operative in these two unrelated languages, in addition to striking similarities to the Russian gender system, suggest that it is an inherent property of DPs crosslinguistically.

中文翻译：

---

关于数字集体解释的DP依赖性

本文认为，给定一个简单的[DP VP]句子，集体解释的可用性关键取决于主题DP的句法和语义属性，尤其是使集体解释可用的多元功能的存在与否。为了支持我的主张，我提供黎巴嫩阿拉伯语和西亚美尼亚语的示例，其中不定冠词包含基数，并且没有明显的分布算子，但无论谓词如何，对句子的解释都是强制性的。我表明，DP中的分布算子或谓词上的算子都不能解释这种严格的分布解释。相反，我认为为了进行集体解释，不定数DP必须表示复数形式的量词，在包含数字的不定数DP中并不总是满足该条件。尽管本文中的主张主要基于黎巴嫩阿拉伯语和西亚美尼亚语的观察结果，但由于它们都是形态丰富的语言，因此，除了与俄罗斯性别体系具有惊人的相似性外，这种约束在这两种不相关的语言中仍然有效。这是DP跨语言的固有属性。