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Semantics

Countability Shifts and Abstract Nouns

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Abstract

The paper addresses the problem of nouns which have frequent mass and count uses. After a review of the literature and a brief classification of possible meaning shifts, it focuses on the multifarious class of abstract nouns (e.g. "fear/fears"), analyzing their relation with kinds and the presence of an extent readings ("a certain speed" = a certain AMOUNT of speed), drawing from corpus searches and the Bochum Countability Lexicon.

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Doron, Edit ; MULLER, Ana . The Cognitive Basis of the Mass-Count Distinction: evidence from bare nouns. In: Patricia Cabredo-Hofherr; Anne Zribi-Herz. (Org.). Crosslinguistic Studies on Noun Phrase Structure and Reference. 1 ed. Leiden: Brill, 2013, v. , p. 73-101.
Ana Muller

In Patricia Cabredo Hofherr (ed.) Languages with and without articles. in press.

Recent literature has mostly emphasized the non-reducibility of the linguistic mass-count distinction to the cognitive atomicity-homogeneity distinction (Chierchia 1998, Rothstein 2010, among others). The present paper argues on the basis of the distribution of bare nouns in two unrelated languages, Karitiana, a native Brazilian language, and (Modern) Hebrew, that the mass-count distinction reflects the cognitive distinction of the individuability of units. Nevertheless, we do not revert to the naïve view that takes this linguistic distinction to reflect a cognitive distinction between homogeneous matter which lacks units for counting and discrete entities which have atomic units and thus can be counted.We argue instead that the linguistic mass-count distintion corresponds to the cognitive distinction between stable or non-stable units with respect to a context. On the basis of Karitiana, we argue first for the general point that countability is independent of a formal linguistic mass-count distinction. Next, on the basis of Hebrew, we substantiate the claim that the linguistic mass-count distinction is based on the contrast between stable and non-stable units relative to a context.

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How do languages classify their nouns? Cross-linguistic variation in the manifestation of the mass count distinction
Martina Wiltschko
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METONYMIC EXTENSION AS THE PROCESS UNDERLYING THE CHANGE OF COUNT AND MASS PROPERTIES OF NOUNS
Grzegorz Drożdż

The chapter deals with the metonymic basis of the change of the count-mass property encountered in concrete nouns. The issue is analysed from two perspectives: the Conceptual Metonymy Theory (CMyT) (Dirven and Ruiz de Mendoza 2010:39) and Cognitive Grammar (Langacker 1987, 1990, 2000, 2008, etc.). Although they both stem fro m the general Cognitive Linguistics movement, each of them approaches the issue differently. The CMyT, being derived from Lako ff and Johnson's Cognitive Metaphor Theory (Lakoff, Johnson 1980), sees the change of grammatical properties of nouns as one of the cases of semantic extension motivated by conceptual metonymies. Langacker (2000:199), on the other hand, sees metonymy as one of the prevalent processes taking place in language, and provides two types of tools for describing it, i.e. the metonymy-based reference point relationship and construal aspects. Langacker also indicates certain patterns that apply whenever nouns alter their grammat ical property. The chapter concludes with a comparison of both approaches.

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On Abstract Nouns and Countability An Empirical Investigation into the Countability of Eventuality Denoting Nominals
Halima Husić

Tibor Kiss Linguistic Data Science Lab Ruhr-Universität Bochum Universitätsstr. 150 44801 Bochum Studies in Linguistics and Linguistic Data Science [ˈstʌdiːz ˈɪn lɪŋˈɡwɪstɪks ənd lɪŋˈɡwɪstɪk ˈdeɪtə ˈsaɪəns]

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A Sense-based Lexicon of Count and Mass Expressions: The Bochum English Countability Lexicon
Halima Husić, Tibor Kiss

The present paper describes the current release of the Bochum English Countability Lexicon (BECL 2.1), a large empirical database consisting of lemmata from Open ANC (http://www.anc.org) with added senses from WordNet (Fellbaum, 1998). BECL 2.1 contains ≈ 11,800 annotated noun-sense pairs, divided into four major countability classes and 18 fine-grained subclasses. In the current version, BECL also provides information on nouns whose senses occur in more than one class allowing a closer look on polysemy and homonymy with regard to countability. Further included are sets of similar senses using the Leacock and Chodorow (LCH) score for semantic similarity (Leacock & Chodorow, 1998), information on orthographic variation, on the completeness of all WordNet senses in the database and an annotated representation of different types of proper names. The further development of BECL will investigate the different countability classes of proper names and the general relation between semantic similarity and countability as well as recurring syntactic patterns for noun-sense pairs. Our current work on those patterns concerning mass nouns is briefly discussed pointing to further research. The BECL 2.1 database is also publicly available via http://count-and-mass.org.

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On some proposals for the semantics of mass nouns
Francis Pelletier

Journal of Philosophical Logic, 1974

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A Statistical Investigation into the Cross-Linguistic Distribution of Mass and Count Nouns: Morphosyntactic and Semantic Perspectives
R. Kulkarni, Susan Rothstein, Alessandro Treves

We collected a database of how 1,434 nouns are used with respect to the mass/count distinction in six languages; additional informants characterized the semantics of the underlying concepts. Results indicate only weak correlations between semantics and syntactic usage. In five out of the six languages, roughly half the nouns in the database are used as pure count nouns in all respects; the other half differ from pure counts over distinct syntactic properties, with fewer nouns differing on more properties, and typically very few at the pure mass end of the spectrum. Such a graded distribution is similar across languages, but syntactic classes do not map onto each other, nor do they reflect, beyond weak correlations, semantic attributes of the concepts. Considerable variability is seen even among speakers of the same language. These findings are in line with the hypothesis that much of the mass/count syntax emerges from language-and even speaker-specific grammaticalization.

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O N the Structural and Typal Differences Between Mass and Count Nouns : E Vidence from R Omance
Anna Moro

2012

There is an ongoing debate regarding the syntactic and seman tic nature of the mass versus count-noun distinction. If we concentrate solely on the sem antic side of the debate, we can distinguish two families of approaches. The first approach, represented, for instance, by Link (1983) and Chierchia (1998), among others, argues that the di fference between mass and count can be reduced to homogeneity or vagueness. According to the ther approach, the difference is typal (Krifka, 1989, Rothstein, 2010). This paper contribut es o the debate by considering new data from Romance dialects which provide empirical support f or he latter family of approaches. Our starting position is based on two assumptions. First, we assume – following Borer (2005) and Rothstein (2010), among others – that real world homogene ity (or cumulativity for that matter) does not necessarily correspond to a grammatical represent ation of homogeneity (or cumulativity, respectively). Furthermore, we assume that there...

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Computations in the mental lexicon: Noun classes and the mass/count distinction
Heike Wiese

Zwischen Kern und Peripherie: Untersuchungen zu Randbereichen in Sprache und Grammatik, 2014

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Count nouns vs. Mass nouns
Susan Rothstein

This paper reviews the literature on the mass/count distinction, focusing on the relationship between individuability and countability, and the role of language variation in understanding the mass/count contrast.

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A Vagueness Based Analysis of Abstract Nouns
Halima Husić

Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 24, 2020

The count/mass distinction is a widely discussed topic across languages and linguistic theories have covered a great part of peculiarities which appear in relation to this phenomenon. Abstract nouns have often been left out of consideration, possibly due to the fact that their reference is abstract and the application of some relevant features of count or mass reference, such as cumulativity, divisiveness or atomicity, does not seem to be possible. This paper presents a thorough study of lexical features of a subset of abstract nouns and their distribution in COCA which suggests that countability in abstract nouns has to be determined relative to their semantic category. Focusing on eventuality denoting nominals which comprise a substantial part of abstract nouns, I argue that these nouns resemble concrete nouns in that the countability distinctions are expressed in surprising similarity. I find that the core feature underlying the distinction between abstract count and abstract mass nouns is the vagueness of the minimal components, an approach pursued by Chierchia (2010) for concrete nouns. The minimal components of the count eventualities appear to be stable in all precisifications, unlike those of mass eventualities which are not determined and vary.

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An Overview of the Count/Noncount Distinction of English Nouns
Masahiro Kodera

2020

Research on the count/noncount distinction of English nouns has a long history, but the distinction has never been sufficiently described. Count and noncount nouns are defined in two domains: morpho-syntax and semantics. The definition, however, varies from linguist to linguist. In this research, we take the view that the distinction is essentially syntactic, and count nouns are defined morpho-syntactically as those that satisfy two conditions: i) to inflect for number to mark a singularplural contrast and take both a singular and a plural verb that agree with the number of a subject NP (including those with identical singular and plural forms) ; ii) to occur in direct construction with the cardinal numerals. Noncount nouns are defined as those that do not satisfy these two conditions. Research on the count/noncount distinction has been mainly on concrete nouns. Various semantic criteria have been proposed (e.g. atomicity, homogeneity, arbitrary divisibility, boundedness) to identify referential properties that are to be shared by all count nouns or all noncount nouns. For proto-typical count and noncount nouns, a noun's semantic, syntactic and morphological properties are aligned, and the proposed criteria work very well. However, mismatches between countnoncount syntax and semantics are often observed: some nouns have the semantics of a count noun but the syntax of a noncount noun (e.g. furniture, toast) while others have the semantics of a noncount noun but the syntax of a count noun (e.g. cloud, mountain, ripple). None of the proposed criteria sufficiently accounts for the mismatches. Conceptualization (or alternative construals) and communicative function are proposed to account for the mismatches. However, there are some nouns whose count or noncount status cannot be explained by alternative construals or communicative function. When all these criteria fail, grammatical convention remains as the only solution. Little research has been done on abstract nouns, and the proposed criteria for the count/noncount distinction of concrete nouns do not apply to abstract nouns because abstract nouns provide no perceptual information about their referential properties. Also, researchers use their own intuitions to provide examples to support their arguments. It is not hard to find counterexamples since their arguments are based on a very limited number of data. It is necessary to use large corpora such as the Bank of English to explore the count/noncount distinction of abstract nouns by looking into collocational patterns.

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On abstract nouns and countability
Halima Husić

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Die vorliegende Dissertation befasst sich mit der Zählbarkeit abstrakter Substantive, die in der Literatur zur Semantik von Substantiven kaum berücksichtigt wurden. Die Erforschung einer Teilmenge von Abstrakta anhand der Annotation von lexikalischen Merkmalen und einer gezielten Korpusstudie ermöglicht einen Einblick in das Sortenpotential dieser Nomina. Aus dieser Untersuchung lässt sich eine Reihe von Generalisierungen ableiten, anhand derer eine semantische Analyse der Zählbarkeit bei Ereignisnominalisierungen bereitgestellt wird. Das wesentliche Kriterium, das zählbare Ereignisse von nicht-zählbaren unterscheidet ist die Vagheit der Atome, die in Abhängigkeit zur Aktionsart des zugrundeliegenden Ereignisses bestimmt wird. Mit der Ausarbeitung der Zählbarkeit in Ereignissen stelle ich erste Anregungen für eine kompositionelle Analyse vor. Demzufolge trägt diese Ausarbeitung wesentlich zur Diskussion der Zählbarkeit und Ereignissemantik in der aktuellen Forschung bei.

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Count nouns, mass nouns and their transformations: a unified category-theoretic semantics
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All natural languages seem to distinguish at the semantic level between count nouns (CNs) and mass nouns (MNs). Some natural languages, like English, mark the distinction at the syntactic level. Prototypical of CNs is ‘dog’ and of MNs is ‘matter’ (in the sense of physical stuff, not in the sense of concern or affair). One syntactic difference is that usually CNs take the plural (‘dogs’) whereas MNs do not. Other syntactic distinctions relate to the determiners and quantifiers. One can say a dog, another dog, many dogs, two dogs, etc.; one cannot correctly say *a matter, *another matter, *many matter, *two matter, etc. It seems that the distinction in English grammar was introduced by Otto Jespersen [6, p198].

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The article deals with two of the long-standing problems in English linguistics: whether it is possible that each noun can have both count and mass senses, and the problem of determining a complete list of the regularities of count-to-mass and mass-to-count changes. While there have been numerous attempts to solve each of these problems, this article shows the results of applying Cognitive Grammar to them. The analysis covers a set of concrete nouns representative of English-sixty nouns with different ontological properties and all frequencies of occurrence. These are nouns that are classified by dictionaries as solely count and solely mass. Because of its usage-based character, the analysis scrutinises over 1,700 real-life utterances produced by native speakers of English. The analysis shows that even such nouns possess senses whose properties are the reverse of the properties of the nouns' basic senses. A thorough examination of the nouns' basic and extended senses leads to certain grammatical regularities of count-to-mass and mass-to-count changes. The analysis not only systematises the grammatical regularities determined so far and solves many problems that can be noticed about them, but also proposes novel regularities.

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Related topics

  • Semantics
  • Lexical/conceptual semantics
  • Abstract Nouns
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