Hagit Borer
- Published in print:
- 2005
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780199263905
- eISBN:
- 9780191718182
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199263905.001.0001
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Semantics and Pragmatics
This book explores the difference between words however defined and structures however constructed. It sets out to demonstrate over three volumes — of which this is the first — that the explanation ...
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This book explores the difference between words however defined and structures however constructed. It sets out to demonstrate over three volumes — of which this is the first — that the explanation of linguistic competence should be shifted from lexical entry to syntactic structure, from memory of words to manipulation of rules. Its reformulation of how grammar and lexicon interact has profound implications for linguistic, philosophical, and psychological theories about human mind and language. The book departs from both language specific constructional approaches and lexicalist approaches to argue that universal hierarchical structures determine interpretation, and that language variation emerges from the morphological and phonological properties of inflectional material. This volume applies this radical approach to nominal structure. Integrating research in syntax, semantics, and morphology, the volume argues that nominal structure is based on the syntactic realization of semantic notions such as classifier, quantity, and reference. In the process, this volume seeks to do away with lexical ambiguity and type-shifting. Among the topics the volume considers are the interpretation of proper names, the mass-count distinction, the weak-strong interpretation of quantifiers, partitive and measure phrases, and the structural representation of the definite article. In the process, the volume explores inter-language variation through the properties of the morpho-phonological system. The languages discussed include English, Chinese, Italian, and Hebrew.Less
This book explores the difference between words however defined and structures however constructed. It sets out to demonstrate over three volumes — of which this is the first — that the explanation of linguistic competence should be shifted from lexical entry to syntactic structure, from memory of words to manipulation of rules. Its reformulation of how grammar and lexicon interact has profound implications for linguistic, philosophical, and psychological theories about human mind and language. The book departs from both language specific constructional approaches and lexicalist approaches to argue that universal hierarchical structures determine interpretation, and that language variation emerges from the morphological and phonological properties of inflectional material. This volume applies this radical approach to nominal structure. Integrating research in syntax, semantics, and morphology, the volume argues that nominal structure is based on the syntactic realization of semantic notions such as classifier, quantity, and reference. In the process, this volume seeks to do away with lexical ambiguity and type-shifting. Among the topics the volume considers are the interpretation of proper names, the mass-count distinction, the weak-strong interpretation of quantifiers, partitive and measure phrases, and the structural representation of the definite article. In the process, the volume explores inter-language variation through the properties of the morpho-phonological system. The languages discussed include English, Chinese, Italian, and Hebrew.
Inés Fernández-Ordóñez
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- October 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780190634797
- eISBN:
- 9780190634827
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780190634797.003.0003
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Syntax and Morphology
Some Ibero-Romance dialects show neuter agreement with uncountable nouns. According to data recently compiled in dialect corpora, mass neuter agreement varies according to word classes, being most ...
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Some Ibero-Romance dialects show neuter agreement with uncountable nouns. According to data recently compiled in dialect corpora, mass neuter agreement varies according to word classes, being most frequent in pronouns and moderate in adjectives. Pronouns, both overt and null, regularly give rise to mass neuter agreement. Both the syntactic position of the predicate (attributive or predicative) and the predicate type (individual-level [IL] or stage-level [SL] predicate) play a role in triggering mass neuter agreement. Mass neuter agreement is strongly associated with SL predicates, and it proposed that it’s an extension of the so-called Romance neuter, or agreement with nonlexical antecedents, for it implies the syntactical cancellation of gender and number. The origins of neuter morphology should be thus found in the demonstrative neuter pronouns, from which it gradually extends in steps regulated by the syntactic distance between mass antecedents and the agreeing predicates.Less
Some Ibero-Romance dialects show neuter agreement with uncountable nouns. According to data recently compiled in dialect corpora, mass neuter agreement varies according to word classes, being most frequent in pronouns and moderate in adjectives. Pronouns, both overt and null, regularly give rise to mass neuter agreement. Both the syntactic position of the predicate (attributive or predicative) and the predicate type (individual-level [IL] or stage-level [SL] predicate) play a role in triggering mass neuter agreement. Mass neuter agreement is strongly associated with SL predicates, and it proposed that it’s an extension of the so-called Romance neuter, or agreement with nonlexical antecedents, for it implies the syntactical cancellation of gender and number. The origins of neuter morphology should be thus found in the demonstrative neuter pronouns, from which it gradually extends in steps regulated by the syntactic distance between mass antecedents and the agreeing predicates.
Alexis Wellwood
- Published in print:
- 2019
- Published Online:
- November 2019
- ISBN:
- 9780198804659
- eISBN:
- 9780191842870
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/oso/9780198804659.001.0001
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Semantics and Pragmatics, Theoretical Linguistics
This book re-imagines the compositional semantics of comparative constructions with words like “more”. It argues for a revision of one of the fundamental assumptions of the degree semantics framework ...
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This book re-imagines the compositional semantics of comparative constructions with words like “more”. It argues for a revision of one of the fundamental assumptions of the degree semantics framework as applied to such constructions: that gradable adjectives do not lexicalize measure functions (i.e., mappings from individuals or events to degrees). Instead, the degree morphology itself plays the role of degree introduction. The book begins with a careful study of non-canonical comparatives targeting nouns and verbs, and applies the lessons learned there to those targeting adjectives and adverbs. A primary distinction that the book draws extends the traditional distinction between gradable and non-gradable as applied to the adjectival domain to the distinction between “measurable” and “non-measurable” predicates that crosses lexical categories. The measurable predicates, in addition to the gradable adjectives, include mass noun phrases, plural noun phrases, imperfective verb phrases, and perfective atelic verb phrases. In each of these cases, independent evidence for non-trivial ordering relations on the relevant domains of predication are discussed, and measurability is tied to the accessibility of such orderings. Applying this compositional theory to the core cases and beyond, the book establishes that the selection of measure functions for a given comparative depends entirely on what is measured and compared rather than which expression introduces the measurementLess
This book re-imagines the compositional semantics of comparative constructions with words like “more”. It argues for a revision of one of the fundamental assumptions of the degree semantics framework as applied to such constructions: that gradable adjectives do not lexicalize measure functions (i.e., mappings from individuals or events to degrees). Instead, the degree morphology itself plays the role of degree introduction. The book begins with a careful study of non-canonical comparatives targeting nouns and verbs, and applies the lessons learned there to those targeting adjectives and adverbs. A primary distinction that the book draws extends the traditional distinction between gradable and non-gradable as applied to the adjectival domain to the distinction between “measurable” and “non-measurable” predicates that crosses lexical categories. The measurable predicates, in addition to the gradable adjectives, include mass noun phrases, plural noun phrases, imperfective verb phrases, and perfective atelic verb phrases. In each of these cases, independent evidence for non-trivial ordering relations on the relevant domains of predication are discussed, and measurability is tied to the accessibility of such orderings. Applying this compositional theory to the core cases and beyond, the book establishes that the selection of measure functions for a given comparative depends entirely on what is measured and compared rather than which expression introduces the measurement
Itamar Francez and Andrew Koontz-Garboden
- Published in print:
- 2017
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780198744580
- eISBN:
- 9780191805837
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780198744580.003.0006
- Subject:
- Linguistics, Semantics and Pragmatics, Syntax and Morphology
This chapter considers the relation between qualities and masses, showing that the order-theoretic difference here posited between them—qualities are ordered by a preorder called size and a ...
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This chapter considers the relation between qualities and masses, showing that the order-theoretic difference here posited between them—qualities are ordered by a preorder called size and a mereological partial order, whereas masses are only ordered by the latter—explains a range of interpretational and distributional contrasts between quality and mass-denoting nouns in various languages, in contexts such as exclamatives and count quantifiers. The result is not only further support for the proposed semantics of qualities, but a genuinely novel contribution to the understanding of abstract mass nouns.Less
This chapter considers the relation between qualities and masses, showing that the order-theoretic difference here posited between them—qualities are ordered by a preorder called size and a mereological partial order, whereas masses are only ordered by the latter—explains a range of interpretational and distributional contrasts between quality and mass-denoting nouns in various languages, in contexts such as exclamatives and count quantifiers. The result is not only further support for the proposed semantics of qualities, but a genuinely novel contribution to the understanding of abstract mass nouns.
