Count and Mass Across Languages (Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics)

This Volume Explores The Expression Of The Concepts Count And Mass In Human Language And Probes The Complex Relation Between Seemingly Incontrovertible Aspects Of Meaning And Their Varied Grammatical Realizations Across Languages. In English, Count Nouns Are Those That Can Be Counted And Pluralized (two Cats), Whereas Mass Nouns Cannot Be, At Least Not Without A Change In Meaning (#two Rices). The Chapters In This Volume Explore The Question Of The Cognitive And Linguistic Universality And Variability Of The Concepts Count And Mass From Philosophical, Semantic, And Morpho-syntactic Points Of View, Touching Also On Issues In Acquisition And Processing. The Volume Also Significantly Contributes To Our Cross-linguistic Knowledge, As It Includes Chapters With A Focus On Blackfoot, Cantonese, Dagaare, English, Halkomelem, Lithuanian, Malagasy, Mandarin, Ojibwe, And Persian, As Well As Discussion Of Several Other Languages Including Armenian, Hungarian, And Korean. The Overall Consensus Of This Volume Is That While The General Concepts Of Count And Mass Are Available To All Humans, Forms Of Grammaticalization Involving Number, Classifiers, And Determiners Play A Key Role In Their Linguistic Treatment, And Indeed In Whether These Concepts Are Grammatically Expressed At All. This Variation May Be Reflect The Fact That Count/mass Is Just One Possible Realization Of A Deeper And Broader Concept, Itself Related To The Categories Of Nominal And Verbal Aspect.--publisher's Website. The Count Mass Distinction: Issues And Perspectives / Jila Ghomeshi And Diane Massam -- Lexical Nouns Are Both +mass And +count, But They Are Neither +mass Nor +count / Francis Jeffry Pelletier -- Aspects Of Individuation / Elizabeth Cowper And Daniel Currie Hall -- Collectives In The Intersection Of Mass And Count Nouns: A Cross-linguistic Account / Heike Wiese -- Individuation And Inverse Number Marking In Dagaare / Scott Grimm -- General Number And The Structure Of Dp / Ileana Paul -- Plural Marking Beyond Count Nouns / Saeed Ghaniabadi -- Aspectual Effects Of A Pluractional Suffix: Evidence From Lithuanian / Solveiga Armoskaite -- Decomposing The Mass/count Distinction: Evidence From Languages That Lack It / Martina Wiltschko -- On The Mass/count Distinction In Ojibwe / Eric Mathieu -- Counting And Classifiers / Lisa Lai-shen Cheng -- Countability And Numeral Classifiers In Mandarin Chinese / Niina Ning Zhang -- Semantic Triggers, Linguistic Variation, And The Mass-count Distinction / Alan C. Bale And David Barner -- Classifying And Massifying Incrementally In Chinese Language Comprehension / Natalie M. Klein, Greg N. Carlson, Renjie Li, T. Florian Jaeger, And Michael K. Tanenhaus. Edited By Diane Massam. Includes Bibliographical References (p. [283]-303) And Index. Cover 1 Contents 6 General Preface 10 The Contributors 11 Abbreviations 16 1. The count mass distinction: Issues and perspectives 20 1.1 Setting the stage 20 1.2 Are count and mass conceptually universal and are they mapped to the real world uniformly? 22 1.3 Are count and mass universally expressed in language and are they always expressed in the same way? 23 1.4 If count and mass are not expressed in the same way universally, how are they expressed? 24 1.5 Conclusion 26 2. Lexical nouns are both +MASS and +COUNT, but they are neither +MASS nor +COUNT 28 2.1 Introduction: Informal accounts of +MASS and +COUNT 28 2.2 +MASS and +COUNT as syntax 30 2.3 +MASS and +COUNT as semantics 30 2.4 Problems with the syntactic approach 32 2.5 Problems with the semantic approach 34 2.6 Evaluation, and a flaw in common 36 2.7 A different approach 36 2.8 Related proposals 40 2.9 Cross-linguistic comments 42 2.10 Further advantages 43 2.11 A final philosophical remark 45 3. Aspects of individuation 46 3.1 Introduction 46 3.2 Taxonomy of English nouns 49 3.3 Chinese 53 3.4 Plurality and classifiers 55 3.5 Plural marking in Chinese? 56 3.6 Apparent plural marking in Korean 61 3.7 Individuation in Persian 64 3.8 Conclusions 71 4. Collectives in the intersection of mass and count nouns: A cross-linguistic account 73 4.1 Introduction 73 4.2 Conceptual and morphosyntactic distinctions in the mass/count domain 76 4.3 Variation in syntactic-conceptual mass/count correspondences 85 4.4 Semantics as a mediator of syntactic and conceptual classifications 90 4.5 Conclusions 92 5. Individuation and inverse number marking in Dagaare 94 5.1 Introduction 94 5.2 The semantic basis of inverse number marking in Dagaare 96 5.3 Language internal correlates 106 5.4 Cross-linguistic correlates 109 5.5 A formal account of -ri 113 5.6 Conclusion 116 6. General number and the structure of DP 118 6.1 Introduction 118 6.2 Malagasy 119 6.3 Cross-linguistic considerations 126 6.4 The emerging typology 129 7. Plural marking beyond count nouns 131 7.1 Introduction 131 7.2 Background on Persian noun phrases 132 7.3 Data 133 7.4 Definiteness/Number syncretism 140 7.5 Categorial identity of Persian plural marker 141 7.6 Analysis 143 7.7 Conclusion 147 8. Aspectual effects of a pluractional suffix: Evidence from Lithuanian 148 8.1 The problem: -inė- is not a dedicated aspectual morpheme 148 8.2 Suffix -inė- is Number 150 8.3 The aspectual effects of -inė- are epiphenomenal 158 8.4 Conclusions & further questions 162 9. Decomposing the mass/count distinction: Evidence from languages that lack it 165 9.1 Introduction 165 9.2 The mass/count distinction is not universally associated with categorical properties 166 9.3 The source of the categorical properties of the mass/count distinction 177 9.4 Variation in the content of the categorical properties: [ ± bounded] versus [ ± animate] 181 9.5 Conclusion 188 10. On the mass/count distinction in Ojibwe 191 10.1 Introduction 191 10.2 Number as an inflectional category in Ojibwe 193 10.3 Ojibwe pluralized mass nouns 202 10.4 Basis for a solution 209 10.5 Conclusion 217 11. Counting and classifiers 218 11.1 Introduction: Three puzzles 218 11.2 Count/mass at the classifier level 221 11.3 Chinese classifiers 224 11.4 Do all classifiers individuate or divide? 228 11.5 Plural classifiers 234 11.6 Conclusion 237 12. Countability and numeral classifiers in Mandarin Chinese 239 12.1 Introduction 239 12.2 Decomposing countability 240 12.3 The two features in nouns 246 12.4 The two features in unit words 248 12.5 Comparing with the dichotomous-contrast analysis 250 12.6 Reflections on theories of the relation between CLs and countability 252 12.7 Summary 256 13. Semantic triggers, linguistic variation and the mass-count distinction 257 13.1 Introduction 257 13.2 English, Mandarin, and the mass-count distinction 258 13.3 English and Mandarin heuristics and the age of distinction 267 13.4 Possible triggers for a parametric distinction 270 13.5 Conclusion 278 14. Classifying and massifying incrementally in Chinese language comprehension 280 14.1 Background 280 14.2 Previous research 282 14.3 Experiment One: English measure phrases 284 14.4 Experiment Two: Chinese massifiers 290 14.5 Experiment Three: Chinese count classifiers 294 14.6 Comparing across language and ontology 297 14.6 Conclusions 301 References 302 Index 324 A 324 B 324 C 324 D 324 E 325 F 326 G 326 H 326 I 326 J 326 K 327 L 327 M 327 N 327 O 328 P 328 Q 328 R 328 S 328 T 329 U 329 V 329 W 329 Y 329 Z 329 This volume explores the expression of the concepts count and mass in human language and probes the complex relation between seemingly incontrovertible aspects of meaning and their varied grammatical realizations across languages. This volume explores the expression of the concepts count and mass in human language and probes the complex relation between seemingly incontrovertible aspects of meaning and their varied grammatical realizations across languages. In English, count nouns are those that can be counted and pluralized (two cats), whereas mass nouns cannot be, at least not without a change in meaning (#two rices). The chapters in this volume explore the question ofthe cognitive and linguistic universality and variability of the concepts count and mass from philosophical, semantic, and morpho-syntactic points of view, touching also on issues in acquisition and processing. The volume also significantly contributes to our cross-linguistic knowledge, as it includes chapters with a focus on Blackfoot,Cantonese, Dagaare, English, Halkomelem, Lithuanian, Malagasy, Mandarin, Ojibwe, and Persian, as well as discussion of several other languages including Armenian, Hungarian, and Korean. The overall consensus of this volume is that while the general concepts of count and mass are available to all humans, forms of grammaticalization involving number, classifiers, and determiners play a key role in their linguistic treatment, and indeed in whether these concepts are grammaticallyexpressed at all. This variation may be reflect the fact that count/mass is just one possible realization of a deeper and broader concept, itself related to the categories of nominal and verbal aspect ## Abstract This volume explores the expression of the concepts count and mass in human language and probes the complex relation between seemingly incontrovertible aspects of meaning and their varied grammatical realizations across languages. In English, count nouns are those that can be counted and pluralized (two cats), whereas mass nouns cannot be, at least not without a change in meaning (two rices). The chapters in this volume explore the question of the cognitive and linguistic universality and variability of the concepts count and mass from philosophical, semantic, and morpho-syntactic points of view, touching also on issues in acquisition and processing. The volume also significantly contributes to our cross-linguistic knowledge, as it includes chapters with a focus on Blackfoot, Cantonese, Dagaare, English, Halkomelem, Lithuanian, Malagasy, Mandarin, Ojibwe, and Persian, as well as discussion of several other languages including Armenian, Hungarian, and Korean. The overall consensus of this volume is that while the general concepts of count and mass are available to all humans, forms of grammaticalization involving number, classifiers, and determiners play a key role in their linguistic treatment, and indeed in whether these concepts are grammatically expressed at all. This variation may be reflect the fact that count/mass is just one possible realization of a deeper and broader concept, itself related to the categories of nominal and verbal aspect.