Things and Stuff: The Semantics of the Count-Mass Distinction

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Tibor Kiss (Ruhr-Universität, Bochum, Germany) Francis Jeffry Pelletier (University of Alberta)

Things and Stuff

The Semantics of the Count-Mass Distinction

Tibor Kiss (Ruhr-Universität, Bochum, Germany), Francis Jeffry Pelletier (University of Alberta), Halima Husić (Ruhr-Universität, Bochum, Germany)

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English

Cambridge University Press
03 August 2023

linguistics; Dialect, slang & jargon; Semantics; Sign languages, Braille & other linguistic communication

A classical viewpoint claims that reality consists of both things and stuff, and that we need a way to discuss these aspects of reality.

This is achieved by using +count terms to talk about things while using +mass terms to talk about stuff.

Bringing together contributions from internationally-renowned experts across interrelated disciplines, this book explores the relationship between mass and count nouns in a number of syntactic environments, and across a range of languages. It both explains how languages differ in their methods for describing these two fundamental categories of reality, and shows the many ways that modern linguistics looks to describe them. It also explores how the notions of count and mass apply to 'abstract nouns', adding a new dimension to the countability discussion. With its pioneering approach to the fundamental questions surrounding mass-count distinction, this book will be essential reading for researchers in formal semantics and linguistic typology.

Edited by: Tibor Kiss (Ruhr-Universität Bochum Germany), Francis Jeffry Pelletier (University of Alberta), Halima Husić (Ruhr-Universität, Bochum, Germany)
Imprint: Cambridge University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
Dimensions: Height: 229mm, Width: 152mm, Spine: 23mm
Weight: 635g
ISBN: 9781108932820
ISBN 10: 1108932827
Pages: 441
Publication Date: 03 August 2023
Audience: Professional and scholarly , Undergraduate
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Active

Tibor Kiss has been Professor of Theoretical and Computational Linguistics at Ruhr-Universität Bochum since 1999. He is also co-editor (with Artemis Alexiadou) of Syntax: Theory and Analysis (2015), and wrote a various papers on problems of the syntax-semantics interface, dealing with quantification and word order, prepositions, non-finite complements, and relative clauses. Francis Jeffry Pelletier has been a joint professor of philosophy, linguistics, and computing science, as well as a Canada Research Chair in cognitive science. He is also a Fellow of the Royal Society (Canada). Notable publications include Mass Terms: Some Philosophical Problems (editor, 1979) and The Generic Book (co-edited with Gregory Carlson, 1995). Halima Husić is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Linguistics Data Science Lab, Ruhr-Universität Bochum. Her work has focused on semantics including event nominals, definiteness, and the semantic effects of case alternation. In her recently completed dissertation, she discusses the countability of abstract nouns.