Mass nouns,vagueness and semantic variation |
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Authors: | Gennaro Chierchia |
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Institution: | 1.Department of Linguistics,Harvard University,Cambridge,USA |
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Abstract: | The mass/count distinction attracts a lot of attention among cognitive scientists, possibly because it involves in fundamental
ways the relation between language (i.e. grammar), thought (i.e. extralinguistic conceptual systems) and reality (i.e. the
physical world). In the present paper, I explore the view that the mass/count distinction is a matter of vagueness. While
every noun/concept may in a sense be vague, mass nouns/concepts are vague in a way that systematically impairs their use in
counting. This idea has never been systematically pursued, to the best of my knowledge. I make it precise relying on supervaluations
(more specifically, ‘data semantics’) to model it. I identify a number of universals pertaining to how the mass/count contrast
is encoded in the languages of the world, along with some of the major dimensions along which languages may vary on this score.
I argue that the vagueness based model developed here provides a useful perspective on both. The outcome (besides shedding
light on semantic variation) seems to suggest that vagueness is not just an interface phenomenon that arises in the interaction
of Universal Grammar (UG) with the Conceptual/Intentional System (to adopt Chomsky’s terminology), but it is actually part
of the architecture of UG. |
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