Silent Years, Silent Hours

This chapter investigates the syntax of expressions of age and time. English sentences like At the age of seven, John... and it's already past six are argued to contain unpronounced YEAR(S) and unpronounced HOUR(S), respectively. Differences in this area of syntax between English and French or Italian may, in the spirit of comparative syntax work, be relatable to independent differences concerning number agreement. The proposal that few always modifies NUMBER is supported by the fact that in some cases (characterized by few being separated from number) few can to some degree of acceptability modify overt number. The study of expressions of age and time provides evidence in favor of postulating silent counterparts of the nouns year and hour (and age and time).