Repository logo
  • Log In
    New user? Click here to register.Have you forgotten your password?
University College Dublin
  • Colleges & Schools
  • Statistics
  • All of DSpace
  • Log In
    New user? Click here to register.Have you forgotten your password?
  1. Home
  2. College of Arts and Humanities
  3. School of Languages, Cultures and Linguistics
  4. Languages, Cultures and Linguistics Research Collection
  5. Plural mass nouns and the compositionality of number
 
  • Details
Options

Plural mass nouns and the compositionality of number

File(s)
FileDescriptionSizeFormat
Download verbum.pdf329.95 KB
Author(s)
Acquaviva, Paolo 
Uri
http://hdl.handle.net/10197/3898
Date Issued
2004
Date Available
08T14:57:42Z November 2012
Abstract
It is true that, as is well known since Allan (1980), mass and count are best seen as preferences rather than absolute values for lexical items; for instance, clothes cannot be governed by a numeral, but it tolerates the count quantifier a few. Even so, the existence of plurals that, at the very least, share some properties with mass nouns, raises questions about the chain of reasoning I have sketched out above. In fact, the assumption that plural nouns must refer to collections of individuals is simply wrong, even in languages where the number category would appear to correlate straightforwardly with the contrast between one and more than one. My first goal here will be to substantiate this empirical claim (section 2). Secondly, I will address in section 3 a theoretical question that cannot even be posed, let alone answered, without realizing that plural nouns can be non-count: the relation between semantic and morphological structure in mass plurals, whose interpretation does not seem to accord with the interpretation of the plural affix. How can a noun modified by this affix fail to denote non-singleton sets and still retain a compositional interpretation? The answer is that mass plurals are indeed semantically plural, but they refer to manifold complexes of non-individual parts. The familiar onemany contrast of book vs. books is not a primitive, defining trait of plurality, but a consequence of the semantics of the noun and of the way plurality combines with it. Variation along either of these two dimensions can bring about different readings—which are the empirical concern of this paper.
Sponsorship
Not applicable
Type of Material
Journal Article
Publisher
Presses Universitaires de Nancy
Journal
Verbum
Volume
26
Issue
4
Start Page
387
End Page
401
Copyright (Published Version)
2004 Editions Universitaires de Lorraine
Keywords
  • Countability

  • Plural

  • Number

  • Compositionality

Subject – LCSH
Grammar, Comparative and general--Number
Grammar, Comparative and general--Mass nouns
Compositionality (Linguistics)
Language
English
Status of Item
Peer reviewed
ISSN
01825887
This item is made available under a Creative Commons License
https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/1.0/
Owning collection
Languages, Cultures and Linguistics Research Collection
Views
2154
Last Week
1
Last Month
1
Acquisition Date
Jan 29, 2023
View Details
Downloads
808
Last Month
590
Acquisition Date
Jan 29, 2023
View Details
google-scholar
University College Dublin Research Repository UCD
The Library, University College Dublin, Belfield, Dublin 4
Phone: +353 (0)1 716 7583
Fax: +353 (0)1 283 7667
Email: mailto:research.repository@ucd.ie
Guide: http://libguides.ucd.ie/rru

Built with DSpace-CRIS software - Extension maintained and optimized by 4Science

  • Cookie settings
  • Privacy policy
  • End User Agreement