Counting, Measuring And The Semantics Of Classifiers

This paper makes two central claims. The first is that there is an intimate and non-trivial relation between the mass/count distinction on the one hand and the measure/individuation distinction on the other: a (if not the) defining property of mass nouns is that they denote sets of entities which can be measured, while count nouns denote sets of entities which can be counted. Crucially, this is a difference in grammatical perspective and not in ontological status. The second claim is that the mass/count distinction between two types of nominals has its direct correlate at the level of classifier phrases: classifier phrases like two bottles of wine are ambiguous between a counting, or individuating, reading and a measure reading. On the counting reading, this phrase has count semantics, on the measure reading it has mass semantics. References Borer, H. 1999. ‘Deconstructing the construct’. In K. Johnson & I. Roberts (eds.) ‘Beyond Principles and Parameters’, 43–89. Dordrecht: Kluwer publications. Borer, H. 2008. ‘Compounds: the view from Hebrew’. In R. Lieber & P. Stekauer (eds.) ‘The Oxford Handbook of Compounds’, 491–511. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Carlson, G. 1977b. Reference to Kinds in English. Ph.D. thesis, University of Massachusetts at Amherst. Carlson, G. 1997. Quantifiers and Selection. Ph.D. thesis, University of Leiden. Carslon, G. 1977a. ‘Amount relatives’. Language 53: 520–542. Chierchia, G. 2008. ‘Plurality of mass nouns and the notion of ‘semantic parameter”. In S. Rothstein (ed.) ‘Events and Grammar’, 53–103. Dordrecht: Kluwer. Danon, G. 2008. ‘Definiteness spreading in the Hebrew construct state’. Lingua 118: 872–906. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.lingua.2007.05.012 Gillon, B. 1992. ‘Toward a common semantics for English count and mass nouns’. Linguistics and Philosophy 15: 597–640. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/BF00628112 Grosu, A. & Landman, F. 1998. ‘Strange relatives of the third kind’. Natural Language Semantics 6: 125–170. http://dx.doi.org/10.1023/A:1008268401837 Heim, I. 1987. ‘Where does the Definiteness Restriction Apply? Evidence from the Definiteness of Variables’. In A. ter Meulen & E. Reuland (eds.) ‘The Linguistic Representation of (In)definiteness’, 21–42. Cambridge: MIT Press. Krifka, M. 1989. ‘Nominal reference, temporal constitution and quantification in event semantics’. In R. Bartsch, J. van Bentham & Peter van Emde Boas (eds.) ‘The Linguistic Representation of (In)definiteness’, 75–155. Dordrecht: Foris. Landman, F. 2003. ‘Predicate-argument mismatches and the Adjectival theory of indefinites’. In M. Coene & Y. d’Hu