Native speakers of English use the negative quantifier none in constructions followed by the singular or the plural form of the main verb in a sentence like None (of the students) is/are present. This article intends to explain why such choice is permissible and under which semantic circumstances. Our explanation is based on a possible relation between quantifier none and the concept of “zero”, “nothingness” or “zeroness” as we would like to name it, as well as the collective interpretation of “zero” as a cardinal with 0 value or the result of a mental subtraction that overlaps with the semantics of the empty set, i.e., a set with no members at all.
References
[1]
Barrow, J. D. (2000). The Book of Nothing. Vintage.
[2]
Barton, N. (2020). Absence Perception and the Philosophy of Zero. Synthese, 197, 3823-3850.
[3]
Bylinina, L., & Nouwen, R. (2018). On Zero and Semantic Plurality. GLOSSA: A Journal of General Linguistics, 3, 98. https://doi.org/10.5334/gjgl.441
[4]
Collins COBUILD (2003). HarperCollins Publishers.
[5]
Concise Oxford English Dictionary (2002). Oxford University Press.
[6]
Cruse, A. (2006). A Glossary of Semantics and Pragmatics. Edinburgh University Press. https://doi.org/10.1515/9780748626892
[7]
Giannakidou, A. (2004). Laurence R. Horn, A Natural History of Negation (The David Hume Series: Philosophy and Cognitive Science Reissues). Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications, 2001. Pp. xlvii+637. Journal of Linguistics, 40, 426-433. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0022226704302744
[8]
Hartmann, J., Herzog, M., & Fritz, A. (2022). Zero—An Unknown Number: Preschoolers’ Conceptual Understanding of Zero. International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education, 14, 353-361. https://doi.org/10.26822/iejee.2022.249
[9]
Horn, L. R. (1972). On the Semantic Properties of Logical Operators in English. PhD Thesis, University of California.
[10]
Kaplan, R. (1999). The Nothing That Is: A Natural History of Zero. Oxford University Press.
[11]
Katsos, N. et al. (2016). Cross-Linguistic Patterns in the Acquisition of Quantifiers. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences in the United States of America (PNAS), 113, 9244-9249. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1601341113
[12]
Knauff, M. (2007). How Our Brains Reason Logically. Topoi, 26, 19-36. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11245-006-9002-8
[13]
Kocab, A., Davidson, K., & Snadeker, J. (2022). The Emergence of Natural Language Quantification. Cognitive Science, 46, e13097. https://doi.org/10.1111/cogs.13097
[14]
McCawley, J. D. (1995). Jespersen’s 1917 Monograph on Negation. WORD, 46, 29-39. https://doi.org/10.1080/00437956.1995.11435936
[15]
Oxford Advanced Learner’s Dictionary (2003). Oxford University Press.
[16]
Sapir, E. (1930). Totality. Language Monograph No. 6: Totality, 6, 7-28. https://doi.org/10.2307/522034
[17]
Seife, C. (2000). Zero: The Biography of a Dangerous Idea. CPI Antony Rowe.
[18]
Vetulani, Z. (1988). On the Null Quantifier. Semiotica, 71, 49-58. https://doi.org/10.1515/semi.1988.71.1-2.49
[19]
Wellman, H. M., & Miller, K. F. (1986). Thinking about Nothing: Development of Concepts of Zero. British Journal of Developmental Psychology, 4, 31-42. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.2044-835X.1986.tb00995.x
