Once and Twice

Abstract

The study of English once and twice yields evidence that each of them is actually a complex phrase containing two visible morphemes and one silent one. Neither is a simple lexical item. The -ce morpheme is akin to a postposition, despite English being primarily prepositional. The silent element associated with once and twice is a silent counterpart of time, represented as TIME. This instance of TIME is singular, even in the case of twice. There appears to be a link between TIME and the syntax of classifiers.

Keywords

• time
• silent
• classifier
• decompositionality
• interpretable