Topic
Count noun
About: Count noun is a research topic. Over the lifetime, 120 publications have been published within this topic receiving 4935 citations. The topic is also known as: countable noun & discrete noun.
Papers published on a yearly basis
Papers
1 Jan 1998
TL;DR: It is proposed that mass nouns come out of the lexicon with plurality already built in and that that is the (only) way in which they differ from count nouns, and a new account of the distribution of mass and count quantifiers is offered, one that takes into consideration possible crosslinguistic variations in such distribution.
Abstract: The main thesis I would like to develop and defend in this paper is that mass nouns come out of the lexicon with plurality already built in and that that is the (only) way in which they differ from count nouns. On the basis of this hypothesis (let us dub it the Inherent Plurality Hypothesis), I will offer a new account of the distribution of mass and count quantifiers, one that takes into consideration possible crosslinguistic variations in such distribution. I will also address, in a preliminary and somewhat speculative way, the issue of languages (such as Chinese) that are said not to have count nouns. One conclusion that we will reach is that there is some limited variation in the way in which the syntactic structure of NPs is mapped onto its denotation across different languages. If crosslinguistic variation is to be accounted for in terms of parametric differences, then the mass/count distinction seems to provide evidence for a semantic parameter. In the rest of this introduction, I will first try to give in a highly informal way an idea of the main thesis to be defended. Then I will briefly review the main data to be accounted for. Looking ahead to the overall organization of the paper, in section 2 I give some background assumptions on the nature of plurality. In section 3 I will present in detail the Inherent Plurality Hypothesis and show how it accounts for the data presented below. In section 4, I will consider further empirical consequences of the Inherent Plurality Hypothesis and see how it compares to a sample of other current influential approaches. Finally, in section 5, I will tackle the issue of languages allegedly without count nouns.
632 citations
TL;DR: This paper assessed whether the ontological distinction between objects and non-solid substances conditions projection of word meanings prior to the child's mastery of count/mass syntax and found that the ontology underlying natural language is induced in the course of language learning, rather than constraining learning from the beginning.
631 citations
TL;DR: It is proposed that atomicity in the count domain is atomicity relative to a context k, where k is a set of entities that count as atoms (i.e. count as one) in a particular context.
Abstract: This article offers an account of the mass/count distinction and the semantics of count nouns, and argues that it is not based on an atomic/non-atomic nor on a homogeneous/non-homogeneous distinction. I propose that atomicity in the count domain is atomicity relative to a context k, where k is a set of entities that count as atoms (i.e. count as one) in a particular context. Assuming for simplicity Chierchia's (1998a) and Rothstein's (2004) theory of mass nouns, in which they denote atomic Boolean semi-lattices closed under the complete join operation, we define an operation COUNT k that applies to the mass noun denotation N mass and derives the count noun meaning: a set of ordered pairs where d is a member of N ∩ k and k is the context k relative to which the operation applied. So, there is a typal distinction between mass nouns, which are of type , and count nouns, which are of type . The grammatical differences between count and mass nouns follow from this typal distinction. This allows us to encode grammatically the distinction between semantic atomicity, that is, atomicity relative to a context k, and natural atomicity, that is, inherent individuability. We show a number of ways in which this distinction is grammatically relevant.
318 citations
TL;DR: The results suggest that very young children possess considerable knowledge about conditional relations between kinds of perceptual properties that may aid children in forming new categories and thus in discovering new word meanings.
Abstract: The ease with which young children learn object nouns suggests that they possess strategies to identify properties critical to lexical category membership. In previous work, young children used a same-shape criterion to extend new count nouns. The present research tested the generality of this shape bias. 2- and 3-year-olds were asked either to extend a novel count noun to new instances, or to choose unnamed objects to go together. The objects varied in shape, size, and texture. For half of the subjects, the objects had eyes--a property strongly associated with certain material kinds. If young children know this association, they should attend to texture as well as shape in classifying objects with eyes. With named objects only, both 2- and 3-year-old children classified eyeless objects by shape and objects with eyes by both shape and texture. The results suggest that very young children possess considerable knowledge about conditional relations between kinds of perceptual properties. Knowledge of such conditional relations may aid children in forming new categories and thus in discovering new word meanings.
283 citations
TL;DR: It is proposed that lexical roots are not specified as mass or count by combining with a functional head, and some roots that have individuals in their denotations can be used as mass nouns to denote individuals.
Abstract: Comparative judgments for mass and count nouns yield two generalizations. First, all words that can be used in both mass and count syntax (e.g., rock, string, apple, water) always denote individuals when used in count syntax but never when used in mass syntax (e.g. too many rocks vs. too much rock). Second, some mass nouns denote individuals (e.g., furniture) while others do not (e.g., water). In this article, we show that no current theory of mass-count semantics can capture these two facts and argue for an alternative theory that can. We propose that lexical roots are not specified as mass or count. Rather, a root becomes a mass noun or count noun by combining with a functional head. Some roots have denotations with individuals while others do not. The count head is interpreted as a function that maps denotations without individuals to those with individuals. The mass head is interpreted as an identity function making the interpretation of a mass noun equivalent to the interpretation of the root. As a result, all count nouns have individuals in their denotation, whereas mass counterparts of count nouns do not. Also, some roots that have individuals in their denotations can be used as mass nouns to denote individuals.
197 citations
Related Topics (5)
Performance Metrics
| Year | Papers |
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| 2021 | 4 |
| 2020 | 2 |
| 2019 | 1 |
| 2018 | 2 |
| 2017 | 1 |
| 2016 | 4 |