Semantics for Counting and Measuring

Abstract

The use of numerals in counting differs quite dramatically across languages. Some languages grammaticalise a contrast between count nouns (three cats; three books) vs 'non-count' or mass nouns (milk, mud), marking this distinction in different ways. Others use a system of numeral classifiers, while yet others use a combination of both. This book draws attention to the contrast between counting and measuring, and shows that it is central to our understanding of how we use numerical expressions, classifiers and count nouns in different languages. It reviews some of the more recent major linguistic results in the semantics of numericals, counting and measuring and theories of the mass/count distinction, and presents the author's new research on the topic. The book draws heavily on crosslinguistic research, and presents in-depth case studies of the mass/count distinction and counting and measuring in a number of typologically unrelated languages. It also includes chapters on classifiers, constructions and on adjectival uses of measure phrases.

New perspectives on the count–mass distinction: Understudied languages and psycholinguistics

“…As mentioned, some theories have pointed out that the count/mass contrast is mapped from a substance/object distinction (Chierchia, , ; Link, ) while other authors claim that this is not necessarily the case (cf. B. Gillon, ; Landman, , ; Rothstein, , ). Rothstein (), for example, explored the idea that the interpretation of nouns can be impacted by context and that natural atomicity is not required for grammatical counting.…”

Preliminary remarks on the nominal phrase in Cape Verdean: The semantics of bare nouns cross-linguistically

“…14 Classifiers in English are type <e,t>, while in Mandarin they are type <e, <e, t>>. 15 See Liebesman (2016) and Rothstein (2017) for criticisms of Chierchia's notion of mass. primitive ontological domain is constituted by kinds; the lexicon only has kinds, but kinds are sorted into different types as well (Substance versus Object kinds, for instance).…”

“…This includes not only an increased interest in bare noun phrases across languages, but also in the relationship between mass and count nouns, plural morphology and the role of classifiers and/or measure phrases (see Chierchia 2010;Rothstein 2017; to appear). Chierchia (1998a;1998b) classified languages according to the possibility of bare nouns in argument position.…”

“…The same pattern is found with numerals, and other quantifiers: by default, the noun does not carry the plural inflection, as in (14b) (15) show that CV is not a bare language, if we assume Chierchia's typology, even though the bare noun is the default phrase. The literature on nouns reports that, in Mandarin, a classifier is obligatory with numerals, independently of the noun being count or mass (Chierchia 1998a;Cheng & Sybesma 1998;Rothstein 2017 In Mandarin, the classifier is obligatory but this is clearly not the case in CV. The examples in (14a) and (15) show that in CV, as in English, classifiers are needed only with mass nouns.…”

“…The literature on the topic is extensive. See Chierchia (2010;, Rothstein (2017). 11 Example (15) from Chierchia (2010: 107).…”