Sul tipo italiano "qualche tre chili". Il quantificatore indefinito in unione a numerale

Both in many varieties of regional Italian and in Italo-Romance dialects widespread throughout Italy, the indefinite and indeclinable quantifier qualche “some” can be used as an adverb meaning “roughly, approximately”, when followed by cardinal numerals (e.g. Ho comprato qualche tre chili di mele “I bought about three kilos of apples”). The main purpose of this contribution is to provide an answer to the following issues: (i) why the indefinite quantifier, which as such provides information on approximate quantities, can be found in association with cardinal numerals, i.e. with elements of the language codifying exact quantities; (ii) why an intrinsic (that is, morphologically singular) quantifier can be found in association with plural nouns; (iii) if – and on what basis – a change of morphosyntactic category is conceivable for It. qualche. Comparison with similar uses attested in French and English will show how the pronoun qualc-uno (Fr. quelqu’un, Eng. some-one) may have triggered the creation of indefinite phrases like “some + N”.