Hana Filip and Peter Sutton
- Area: LaLo
- Level: A
- Week: 1
- Time: 09:00 – 10:30
- Room: C3.06
Abstract
This course examines the grammatical and semantic phenomena tied to countability. Countability is a cross-categorial notion which is indirectly reflected in the syntax and semantics of various expressions of quantity and number. In English, for instance, count, but not mass, nouns, are straightforwardly used in count cardinal constructions: three apples vs. #three rice(s). Similarly, we have: jump twice (telic) vs. #swim twice (atelic). Our main focus is on the mass/count distinction among nouns, but we also explore similarities/differences with parallel phenomena in the verbal domain, where countability matters to the telic/atelic distinction and the semantics of the grammatical im/perfective aspect. This course will introduce participants not only to classic analyses of these phenomenona in mereology/lattice theory and its enrichments with event semantics, but also to cutting edge analyses relying on mereotopology, vagueness, gradience, overlap, that have all begun to emerge as recurrent themes in countability research across domains.
Slides
Day 1
Day 2
Day 3
Day 4
Day 5
Primary Readings
If you cannot access the primary readings from the links below, please contact Peter Sutton
- Email: peter (dot) r (dot) sutton (at-sign) icloud (dot) com
Day 1
- Champollion, Lucas, and Manfred Krifka (in press). Mereology. In: P. Dekker and M. Aloni (eds), Cambridge Handbook of Semantics. Cambridge University Press
Day 2
- Rothstein, Susan (2010). Counting and the mass/count distinction. Journal of Semantics, 27(3):343–397.
- Chierchia, Genaro (2010). Mass Nouns, Vagueness and Semantic Variation. Synthese, 174:99–149.
Day 3
- Landman, Fred (2011), Count Nouns – Mass Nouns – Neat Nouns – Mess Nouns, The Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, 6:1–67.
- Sutton, Peter and Hana Filip (2016), Mass/Count Variation, a Mereological, Two-Dimensional Semantics.
Day 4
- Krifka, Manfred (1989). Nominal Reference, Temporal Constitution and Quantification in Event Semantics. In: Renate Bartsch and J. F. A. K. van Benthem and P. van Emde Boas (eds.) Semantics and Contextual Expression, pp. 75–115, Foris Publications.
Day 5
- Filip, Hana (2008). “Events and Maximalization.” Theoretical and Crosslinguistic Approaches to the Semantics of Aspect, edited by Susan Rothstein. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Pp.217-256.
