The interpretation of the mass-count distinction across languages and populations: Introduction

Abstract

In this special collection we bring together experimental studies on the semantic and cognitive correlates of the syntactic mass-count distinction in different (learner) populations and typologically diverse languages. Although the theoretical distinction between mass and count has been investigated extensively in many different adult languages, experimental research on how this distinction is interpreted by different types of learners and speakers is far rarer. The aim of the current special collection is thus to provide a unique set of highly controlled cross-linguistic and cross-population data that helps us further examine various theories of the syntactic masscount distinction and the interactions between language, cognition and the world.

Time-measurement constructions in English

“…Although the relationship between grammatical countability and meaning is complex, countable nouns usually represent individual entities with clear boundaries, or sets of such bounded entities, while uncountable nouns usually represent entities that are unbounded, at least in the given context (cf. Jackendoff 1996); there is empirical evidence that the ontological and cognitive distinction between uncountable 'stuff' and countable 'things' is largely reflected in the linguistic distinction between mass and count nouns, even though the mapping is not one-to-one nor consistent across all languages (Lin et al 2018). In English, noun phrases with uncountable head nouns and no determiner virtually always represent unbounded entities (Jackendoff 1991(Jackendoff , 1996.…”

Pluralia tantum nouns and the theory of features: a typology of nouns with non-canonical number properties

“…In a recent contribution, Sutton and Filip (2017) account for the variability in the treatment of particular nouns in terms of the competing pressures of individuation and reliability. While the discussion has been primarily in terms of familiar languages, the substantial cross-linguistic variation is beginning to be addressed: Doetjes (2012) extends the discussion, Pelletier (2011, 2012) emphasises the language-specific nature of the count-mass distinction, and Lin et al (2018), and the papers in their collection, target typologically diverse languages. 34 For nouns which are below the threshold for number-differentiability on the Animacy Hierarchy there are different possibilities (we should not assume that they will be singular).…”