Mass Expressions

Pelletier, Francis Jeffry; Schubert, Lenhart K.

doi:10.1007/978-94-009-1171-0_4

Cited by 83 publications

(11 citation statements)

References 60 publications

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“…When we set out to analyze the occurrence of bare nouns in both Romance and Germanic languages as well as many others, of course, the primary semantic distinction that is traditionally introduced is the one between mass and count nouns (see, e.g., Link, 1983;Krifka, 1989;Landman, 1989Landman, , 1991Pelletier & Schubert, 1989;Gillon, 1992;Bosque, 1996;Schwarzschild, 1996;Chierchia, 1998ab;Tsoulas, 2006;and David, 2008).…”

Section: Lexical Vs Syntactic Coding Of Homogeneitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Lexical coding vs. syntactic marking of homogeneity

Müller

2014

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The purpose of this article is to substantiate the claim that the semantic feature of homogeneity manifests itself differently in different languages. By contrasting data from Spanish and Danish it is shown that homogeneity is lexically coded in Danish nouns, whereas Spanish nouns are lexically neutral to homogeneity. In Spanish the homogeneity interpretation of nouns is determined when they are inserted into a syntactic structure. The empirical relevance of this assumption is assessed by investigating syntactic and semantic aspects related to the occurrence of bare nominals in object position in the two languages under scrutiny. It is well-known that Spanish as a canonical pattern does not semantically license bare singular nouns with count interpretation (BNs) in object position, viz. #Juan repara coche[Juan repairs car], while in Danish the occurrence of BNs in object position is both possible and normal, viz.Ole maler hus[Ole paints house]. It is argued that this contrast is a predictable consequence of the premise that, in Spanish, transitive activity verbs impose a mass reading on any bare object noun whereas, in Danish, BNs maintain their lexically encoded denotation as inhomogeneous entities. However, contrasting with the leading pattern, the so-called HAVE-verbs (Borthen, 2003) actually license Spanish BNs in object position (cf., e.g., Espinal, 2010; Espinal & Mcnally, 2011), viz.Juan tiene perro[Juan has dog]. It is claimed that the occurrence of BNs in these cases is strongly related to the assumption that HAVE-verbs, contrary to activity verbs, are functionally non-eventive and, therefore, do not impose a specific homogeneity reading on the bare noun in object position.

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Section: Lexical Vs Syntactic Coding Of Homogeneitymentioning

confidence: 99%

Lexical coding vs. syntactic marking of homogeneity

Müller

2014

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“…According to the discussion made in , object types are further distinguished into substantial and nonsubstantial types, depending on their countability. Non-substantial types have been called "categorial predicates" , and "super-sortals" in [Pelletier and Schubert 1989].…”

Section: Bodies and Featuresmentioning

confidence: 99%

Semantic matching: Formal ontological distinctions for information organization, extraction, and integration

Guarino

1997

Information Extraction a Multidisciplinary Approach to an Emerging Information Technology

191

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Abstract. The task of information extraction can be seen as a problem of semantic matching between a user-defined template and a piece of information written in natural language. To this purpose, the ontological assumptions of the template need to be suitably specified, and compared with the ontological implications of the text. So-called "ontologies", consisting of theories of various kinds expressing the meaning of shared vocabularies, begin to be used for this task. This paper addresses the theoretical issues related to the design and use of such ontologies for purposes of information retrieval and extraction. After a discussion on the nature of semantic matching within a model-theoretical framework, we introduce the subject of Formal Ontology, showing how the notions of parthood, integrity, identity, and dependence can be of help in understanding, organizing and formalizing fundamental ontological distinctions. We present then some basic principles for ontology design, and we illustrate a preliminary proposal for a top-level ontology develped according to such principles. As a concrete ' example of ontology-based information retrieval, we finally report an ongoing experience of use of a large linguistic ontology for the retrieval of object-oriented software components.

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“…The nominal theory and its interpretation is used to decide the validity of syllogisms of the type discussed by Pelletier and Schubert [1989] and involving CNs MNs and predicables. To achieve this purpose, we need to build semantical counterparts to grammatical transformations of CNs into MNs, MNs into predicables and so on, extending our previous work La Palme Reyes et al [1994 b].…”

Section: Grammatical Transformations and Syllogismsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Pelletier and Schubert [1989] To discuss reports from these subcommittees, a committee of the whole C' is created. This new committee differs from C because the minutes will record all the transactions of C but omit those of C'.…”

Section: Prototypical Cns and Mnsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A categorical view of nouns in their semantical roles

Reyes

Macnamara

Reyes³

et al. 1999

enrahonar

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Prototypical CNs and MNsAll natural languages seem to distinguish at the semantic level between count nouns (CNs) and mass nouns (MNs). Some natural languages, like English, mark the distinction at the syntactic level. Prototypical ofCns is "dog" and of MNs is "matter" (in the sense of physical stulf). One syntactic difference is that CNs take the plural ('dogs') whereas MNs do not. Other syntactic dis¬ tinctions relate to the determiners and quantifiers. One can say a dog, another dog, many dogs, two dogs, etc.; one cannot correctly say *a matter, *another matter, *many matter, *two matter, etc. It seems that the distinction in English grammar was introduced by Jespersen (1924, p. 198).Languages differ in morphology, agreement rules and phrase structure, so one does not expect to find in every natural languages a count/mass distinction with the same linguistic correlates as in English. While many European languages are like English in this connection, not all are. Irish and Latin, for example, lack the ¡definite article, and so one cannot distintiguish CNs from MNs in those languages by the possibility or impossibility of adding the inde¬ finite article to the noun. If we inquire what guides linguists to the decision that there are a count/ mass distinction in languages, the answer cannot simply be grammar. Grammar varies greatly from language to language. Something other than grammar must be contributing to the decision. We submit that the type of reference for prototypical words plays a major role. We think that across variations in grammar there is a semantic uniformity in the interpretation of at least such prototypical nouns as the counterparts of dog and matter and that this semantic uni¬ formity is a good guide to the relevant grammatical facts in each language. We propose to exploit the semantic uniformity as far as possible.This To discuss reports from these subcommittees, a committee of the whole C' is created. This new committee differs from C because the minutes will record all the transactions of C but omit those of C'. This shows that conceptually, C' is different from C. We regard C and C' as "for¬ mal' sups of A and B, a notion to be clarified in a forthcoming paper Besides these examples there are others such as quantity of matter which are important when dealing with functors among the categories of the nominal theory.We interpret the nominal theory as follows: CNs are interpreted as situated sets (or kinds), namely, families of subsets of a given set indexed by situations. A subset indexed by a situation consists of all the members of the given set which are constituent of that situation. Situations are assumed to be pre-ordered by the relation of'having more information' (not to be confused with temporal order), and hence there are obvious connections between the subsets of the family. Morphisms between CNs are interpreted as situated maps, i.e., set-theoretical maps pre¬ serving the relation of constituents of a situation into members of another set which are cons¬ tituents of the same situ...

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Mass Expressions

Cited by 83 publications

References 60 publications

Lexical coding vs. syntactic marking of homogeneity

Lexical coding vs. syntactic marking of homogeneity

Semantic matching: Formal ontological distinctions for information organization, extraction, and integration

A categorical view of nouns in their semantical roles

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