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13 - Overlap and Countability in Exoskeletal Syntax: A Best-of-Both-Worlds Approach to the Count–Mass Distinction

from Compositional Analyses and Theoretical Issues

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 May 2021

Tibor Kiss
Affiliation:
Ruhr-Universität, Bochum, Germany
Francis Jeffry Pelletier
Affiliation:
University of Alberta
Halima Husić
Affiliation:
Ruhr-Universität, Bochum, Germany
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Summary

In this chapter, we will offer a new way of analysing the syntax and semantics of the mass/count distinction at the syntax-semantics interface, by synthesising the constructionist framework originating in Borer (2005) with the (lexicalist) `iceberg semantics' proposed in Landman (2011, 2016. We believe that this synthesis has several conceptual and empirical advantages over existing frameworks. It combines the flexibility and morphosyntax-driven nature of constructivism with an explicit role for human conceptual categories such as INDIVIDUAL and SUBSTANCE. It allows us to distinguish between different kinds of mass/count shifts and makes explicit why some of them are harder than others. Furthermore, it clarifies the distinction between stuff-reference, number neutrality and non-countability, three distinct (although interdependent) nominal properties that are often explicitly or implicitly conflated in existing accounts of the mass/count distinction.

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Chapter
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Things and Stuff
The Semantics of the Count-Mass Distinction
, pp. 305 - 318
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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