Restrictions on the meanings of determiners: typological generalisations and learnability
No language has a determiner meaning something like 'less than half' (e.g., a fost to complement determiner most), nor does any language have a determiner meaning something like what most means, but which is non-conservative (e.g., a grfost). Like the hypothetical fost, but unlike the hypothetical grfost, every natural language determiner is "conservative"—i.e., it lives on the set denoted by its complement NP. Are these two typological gaps equally principled? We look at this question from the perspective of language acquisition, asking whether the two meanings (non-conservative or conservative 'less than half') are equally acquirable. Our experiments suggest that children are able to access the non-existent, yet conservative determiner meaning fost, but not a non-conservative counterpart like grfost.
Hunter, T., J. Lidz, A. Wellwood, and A. Conroy. (2012). Restrictions on the meanings of determiners: typological generalisations and learnability. Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory 19.