Countability in Natural Language

Bringing together an international group of researchers, this innovative volume presents the state-of-the-art in research into countability.

Hana Filip (Edited by)

9781107178663, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 1 July 2021

314 pages, 8 b/w illus. 2 tables
23.5 x 15.9 x 2 cm, 0.59 kg

This book focuses on current theoretical and empirical research into countability in the nominal domain, and to a lesser extent in the verbal domain. The presented state-of-the-art studies are situated within compositional semantics combined with the theory of mereology, and draw on a wealth of data, some of which have hitherto been unknown, from a number of typologically distinct languages. Some contributions propose enrichments of classical extensional mereology with topological and temporal notions as well as with type theory and probabilistic models. The book also presents analyses that rely on cutting-edge empirical research (experimental, corpus-based) into meaning in language. It is suitable as a point of departure for original research or material for seminars in semantics, philosophy of language, psycholinguistics and other fields of cognitive science. It is of interest not only to a semanticist, but also to anybody who wishes to gain insights into the contemporary research into countability.

1. Proportional Many/Much and Most Carmen Dobrovie-Sorin, and Ion Giurgea
2 . Quantity Systems and the Count/Mass Distinction Jenny Doetjes
3. Counting Aggregates, Groups and Kinds: Countability from the Perspective of a Morphologically Complex Language Scott Grimm, and Mojmír Do?ekal
4. Individuating Matter over Time Manfred Krifka
5. Reduplication as Summation Charles Lam
6. Iceberg Semantics for Count Nouns and Mass Nouns: How Mass Counts Fred Landman
7. Indexical Inference: Counting and Measuring in Context Alice G.B. ter Meulen
8. Counting and Measuring and Approximation Susan Rothstein
9. The Count/Mass Distinction for Granular Nouns Peter R. Sutton, and Hana Filip
Index.

Subject Areas: Grammar, syntax & morphology [CFK], Semantics, discourse analysis, etc [CFG], Linguistics [CF]