ON THE CONCEPTUAL ROLE OF NUMBER

Formal Approaches to Number in Slavic and Beyond, 2021

In this introduction, we provide a general overview of a variety of phenomena related to the encoding of the cognitive category of number in natural language, e.g., number-marking, collective nouns, conjunctions, numerals and other quantifiers, as well as classifiers, and show how Slavic data can contribute to our understanding of these phenomena. We also examine the main strands of the study of number in language developed within formal linguistics, linguistic typology, and psycholinguistics. Finally, we introduce the content of this collective monograph and discuss its relevance to current research.

Number interacts with two distinct processes in language: Quantization and Individuation. In Individuation, an operation that maps a nominal concept to the individual objects that materialize it, the role of number is to provide a criterion of division mapping properties onto object instances. But contextual localization, we argue can provide an alternative criterion of division. That is, just as objects can be individuated through their properties or their location in space (Xu and Carey 1996), so, we propose, can Carlsonian kinds be mapped onto object level realizations through number division or spatial location. Languages opt for different modes of individuation a choice that has empirical consequences on nominal syntax and morphological number marking.

Number is an important aspect of lexical syntax. While there has been substantial research devoted to number agreement at the level of the sentence, relatively less attention has been paid to the representation of number at the level of individual lexical items. In this paper, we propose a representational framework for the lexical syntax of number in spoken word production that we believe can account for much of the data regarding number in noun and noun phrase production. This framework considers the representation of regular and irregular nouns, and more unusual cases such as pluralia tantum (e.g. scissors), zero plurals (e.g. sheep) and mass nouns (e.g. garlic). We not only address bare noun production but also the production of determiner + noun phrases. While focusing on examples from English, we extend the framework to include languages with grammatical gender such as German.

Semantics and Pragmatics, 2020

I develop an account of the semantics and nominal number marking of the numeral+noun construction in Turkish, Western Armenian and English that combines insights from Scontras' (2014) approach to the same data with Martí's (2017, 2020) treatment of grammatical number, based on Harbour (2014). Fundamental to my approach are two of Harbour's number features, [±atomic] and [±minimal], their compositional semantics, and a syntax where these features take the phrase that contains the numeral, which I call NumeralP, as their sister, following Scontras. The morphological number marking we find on noun phrases with numerals across languages is thus viewed as a result of the principled interplay of the spell out of number features, their place, and that of numerals, in the syntactic structure of noun phrases, and their semantic import. Numerals are provided with a uniform semantics, no matter the language, and the semantics assumed for Turkish and Western Armenian noun phrases is empirically justified. I compare my proposal to Scontras (2014) and to Bale, Gagnon & Khanjian (2011a), highlighting in particular the empirical and theoretical shortcomings of the latter. The proposed account fully grounds the semantic notions of minimality and atomicity in the morpho-syntax, uncovers a new domain where the effects of [±minimal] may be detected (cf. Harbour 2011, 2016), and demonstrates that an inclusive-only approach to plurality is not necessary in the account of the data.

Studies in Language Companion Series, 2014

This paper presents an account of number marking in two Baïnounk languages, Gubëeher and Gujaher, also taking data from the Baïnounk language Guñaamolo into account. Number distinctions in these languages are coded epiphenominally through the paradigmatic relationships and combinatorial semantics of prefixes and roots within the nominal classification system. In addition, number can be marked through a dedicated plural suffix of the form -Vŋ. In line with observations made for Bantu and other Atlantic languages, we analyse number marking within the noun class system (and, to some extent also through the number suffix) as derivational, not inflectional. Additionally, we demonstrate that number values do not reside in noun class prefixes themselves, but arise through the paradigmatic relationships holding between prefix and root and between prefix-root combinations in a paradigm. This account goes against a widespread analytical template of assigning singular and plural values to prefixes and assuming number correspondences between them.

2006

This paper advances the case that linguistics requires a unified theory of number, serviceable to both semantics and morphology, by proving that the morphological concept of augmentation and the semantic concept of cumulation are near logical equivalents. From this emerge an inventory of number features incorporating the categories ‘paucal’ and ‘unit augmented’, a typology of number systems crosslinguistically, and indication of other areas of likely convergence between semantic and morphological research.

English and Albanian as members of the Indo-European trunk of languages undoubtedly share certain characteristics, common for all members of this family of languages, but as two structurally different languages, they also show significant differences. The main aim of this paper is to highlight not only some of the differences, but also similarities in regard to the grammatical category of number in English and Albanian nominal system. The paper is based on various English and Albanian grammar books, written by prominent authors, which provide an abundance of data examined through the contrastive method. The results indicate that nouns in these two languages show differences which concern several aspects of the grammatical category of number. Some of these differences concern the way these two languages treat nouns in the singular and plural number, the ways of forming the plural number, and their usage with articles and numerals. One essential difference, however, concerns the collective and compound nouns which show an almost complete discrepancy in these two languages due to the ways they write these nouns, and the ways these nouns function in these languages. Nevertheless, in spite of the differences, there are also some similarities that concern mainly the ways of forming the plural number, but also the group of nouns used only in the singular called " singularia tantum " , and those used only in the plural " pluralia tantum " .

In this paper the authors address morphology of English number in the cognitive perspective by showing how semantic changes originate in conceptual processes that exploit morphological forms of number to express a vast range of lexico-grammatical senses in the process of communication. In attempting to provide an account of this issue a cognitively-based theory of morphological representation is situated within a general context of cognitive linguistics. An account of morphological concept is presented, the process of morphological representation is modeled, factors, influencing the process of forming sense are singled out. Finally the authors lay special emphasis on the fact that the possibility of number forms to express variety of meanings is caused by conceptual processes which underlie the morphological representation.

Lingue e linguaggio, 2014

This paper proposes a pair of morphosyntactic number features, [Discrete] and [Non-Atomic], and shows how they can contribute to an understanding of how grammatical number is expressed cross-linguistically. Starting with English, where mass nominals pattern syncretically sometimes with plural count nominals and sometimes with singular ones, we use these features to improve upon a previous account (Cowper & Hall 2002), and then extend the analysis to mass-count syncretisms in Lingala and Manam and to classifiers in Western Armenian and Mandarin. We account for the crosslinguistic variation using a consistent set of features and a highly constrained theory of morphological exponence, and argue that the variation arises from differences in the syntactic structures in which the features appear and the paradigmatic systems of contrast in which they participate.

Journal of Pragmatics, 2002