Accounting for counting: A unified semantics for measure terms and classifiers

Scontras, Gregory

doi:10.3765/salt.v0i0.2656

Cited by 7 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 9 publications

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“…Finding sensitivity to both singular and plural agreement errors, we concluded that number in the native baseline is a multi-valued feature (both singular and plural are specified feature values; cf. Sauerland 2003;Scontras 2013a;. Finding sensitivity only to agreement errors involving feminine adjectives, we concluded that gender is single-valued (feminine is the specified feature value, while masculine serves as the absence of gender specification, consistent with the classic analysis proposed by Harris 1991; see also Kramer 2015).…”

supporting

confidence: 83%

In support of representational economy: Agreement in heritage Spanish

Scontras

Polinsky

Fuchs

2018

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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This paper investigates the morphosyntax of number and gender agreement in English-dominant heritage speakers of Spanish. Our study builds on the experimental paradigm of agreement attraction developed by Fuchs et al. (2015) and elicits responses to agreement failures to diagnose the potentially-independent contributions of number and gender features. By comparing the structuring of these agreement categories in native and heritage Spanish, we document a case of grammatical divergence: heritage speakers restructure their agreement categories, favoring fewer feature values and less structure. The principled nature of this restructuring demonstrates that the loss of agreement in heritage languages is not superficial or accidental, but rather follows from predictable structural changes.

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supporting

confidence: 83%

In support of representational economy: Agreement in heritage Spanish

Scontras

Polinsky

Fuchs

2018

Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics

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“…With respect to number marking, we follow Krifka (1989); Sauerland (2003); Scontras (2013Scontras ( , 2014 and assume the separation of morpho-syntactic number from semantically interpretable number. Morpho-syntactic number is the result of uninterpretable agreement between a probing Num head and a goal NP: Agree(Num,NP).…”

Section: Preliminariesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Debunking Multiform Dimensionality: many, Romance tant-PL, & morpho-syntactic opacity

Maria

Toquero-Pérez²

2022

SALT

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The interpretation of much/many has been argued to be regulated by Uniform Dimensionality (Hackl 2000; Solt 2009): much is underspecified but many encodes cardinality. However, given some data where many denotes ‘volume’, Snyder (2021) proposes the need for Multiform Dimensionality: both much and many are underspecifed. After reviewing the English data, and in light of novel cross-linguistic data, we argue that neither generalization is fully accurate. Instead, following Wellwood (2015, 2018), we argue for an alternative, Abstract Uniform Dimensionality, which we propose to be universal: MUCH always measures cardinality when it scopes over semantically interpretable plural. We derive the universal by proposing that MUCH can occupy different positions in the NP, only one of which has semantic plural in its scope. Variation is thus not semantic, but morpho-syntactic.

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“…In the semantic literature, it is commonly assumed that the distinction between obligatory classifier languages such as Mandarin and non-classifier languages such as English is due to a difference in the semantics of nouns (e.g., Chierchia 1998Chierchia , 2010Borer 2005;Rothstein 2010;Li 2011;Scontras 2013). According to this standard approach, all nouns in classifier languages are mass-like in the sense that they have uncountable denotations.…”

Section: Classifiers and Nominal Denotationsmentioning

confidence: 99%