Mass Nouns Research Articles

Where the Mass Counts: Common Cortical Activation for Different Kinds of Nonsingularity

Typically, plural nouns are morphosyntactically marked for the number feature, whereas mass nouns are morphosyntactically singular. However, both plural count nouns and mass nouns can be semantically interpreted as nonsingular. In this study, we investigated the hypothesis that their commonality in semantic interpretation may lead to common cortical activation for these different kinds of nonsingularity. To this end, we examined brain activation patterns related to three types of nouns while participants were listening to a narrative. Processing of plural compared with singular nouns was related to increased activation in the left angular gyrus. Processing of mass nouns compared with singular count nouns was related to increased activity bilaterally in the superior temporal cortex and also in the left angular gyrus. No significant activation was observed in the direct comparison between plural and mass nouns. We conclude that the left angular gyrus, also known to be relevant for numerical cognition, is involved in the semantic interpretation of different kinds of nonsingularity.

<i>Edges, heads and projections: Interface properties</i> (review)

Reviewed by: Edges, heads and projections: Interface properties Anna Bondaruk Anna Maria Di Sciullo and Virginia Hill, eds. 2010. Edges, heads and projections: Interface properties. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins. Pp. viii + 265. This book is a collection of ten papers divided evenly into two parts: “Edges” and “Heads and projections”. The main aim of the book is to bring together the research relating to the role of edges as well as of heads and projections in current theoretical approaches to the study of syntax and the interfaces. In the first paper in Part I, “Why edges are needed”, Boeckx discusses the three meanings of edge present in current syntactic theorizing and tries to find a common denominator for them. The notion edge in the first sense corresponds to the left periphery of the clause as proposed by Rizzi (1997), which underlies the discourse-oriented interpretational effects. In the second sense, edge is understood as the edge of a phase (Chomsky 2000), and an edge feature of the phase head is held responsible for triggering the so-called indirect feature-driven movement. The third sense of edge figures in current understanding of the operation Merge (Chomsky 2008), where the edge feature is taken to be a trigger for Merge. Boeckx argues that all three senses can actually be unified. He notes that they correspond to the three positions where a moving element can surface, i.e., in the first merge position (the third sense), in the intermediate landing site (the second sense), and in the ultimate landing site (the first sense). He observes that these three positions correspond to three projection levels (minimal, intermediate, and maximal) and concludes that edges are necessary for the same reason that projections are necessary. In the paper entitled “Bare nouns with different edges”, Ihsane analyses the semantic and structural differences between non-coordinated and coordinated plural and mass bare nouns, as well as indefinites with the determiner du/des ‘of the’ in French. She first examines the readings associated with these three classes of NPs and observes that du/des-NPs can have three different readings: namely, referential, quantificational, and property-denoting; non-coordinated plural bare and mass nouns can have only the property-denoting reading; and finally, coordinated plural or bare nouns can have the property-denoting and quantificational readings. Ihsane links the meaning differences among these classes of NPs with their syntactic structure. She proposes three types of projections at the left edge of the nominal phrase: Property Phrase, Quantifier Phrase, and Subject-reference Phrase. She argues that those NPs [End Page 153] which have all three readings require all three projections at their left periphery, whereas the NPs with two readings project only two of these projections, and finally, the NPs with just one reading have only one projection at their left edge. In “Implicit agentivity without agents in the syntax”, Cabredo Hofherr and Dobrovie-Sorin analyse passive and middle structures with se in languages such as French and European Portuguese. They argue against Raposo and Uriagereka (1996), who posit the existence of two different types of se in the two relevant structures, one [+arg] and the other [−arg]. The authors propose instead that both constructions host the same type of se. The difference between them, they argue, follows from the position occupied by the theme DP, which is in Spec, IP in middles, but remains in a VP-internal position in passives. An important contribution of the paper lies in distinguishing two types of implicit agents, i.e., those that are syntactically active and those that are syntactically inactive. The authors argue that neither of these agent types is projected in the syntax, but the former is projected at LF if Spec, IP is semantically empty—that is, either filled with the expletive or not projected at all. The agent is then present at LF in eventive se-passives in both French and European Portuguese, but is absent in middles, which lack agentivity and express just a property. Munaro’s paper called “On the edge of particles, interjections and short answers” confronts Chomsky’s (2008) contention that interjections lack an edge feature. Working with data from Italian, she shows that interjections...

TWO SORTS OF BARE NOUNS IN BRAZILIAN PORTUGUESE

It is a consensus in the literature that the so called Bare Singular (BS, from now on) in Brazilian Portuguese (BrP) is not semantically singular (Munn & Schmitt 1999, a.o.), but a number neutral count noun. In this paper, we explore the hypothesis that it is not a count noun. We reach such a conclusion by comparing the bare singular with both the bare mass noun and the bare plural count noun. We show that the behavior of the bare singular in BrP does not parallel that of the bare plural, but strongly parallels that of the bare mass noun. Based on such facts we propose that there are just two sorts of bare nouns in BrP: Bare Mass and Bare Plural. The Bare Mass denotes either the kind or a mass predicate, whereas the Bare Plural always denotes a plural predicate. These different semantics explain their different behavior. As conclusion, we show some unexpected results from our approach. The outline of the paper is as follows. We begin by showing that the prima facie arguments against treating bare singulars as mass nouns are not valid. Our claims are based on the fact that the literature has compared bare singular nouns with non-atomic mass nouns, and has shown that they behave differently with respect to the relevant tests. However, comparing bare singulars with naturally atomic mass nouns such as mobília ‘furniture’ gives different results. We then show, in section 2, that the bare singular displays the same distributional restrictions as the bare mass noun both in episodic and generic contexts, a fact that, as far as we know, has gone unnoticed in the literature. This strengthens the case for treating them alike. In section 3 we give a semantics for mass nouns and count nouns in the framework of Rothstein 2010a, b which allows for a unified analysis of bare singulars and mass terms, that differs from that attributed to the bare plural. In section 4, we explain the data from earlier sections in the light of the analysis, and propose a semantics for bare plurals which explains their behavior in BrP. Finally, we also show that our account predicts that so called ‘bare singulars’ can occur with mass determiners, and we give arguments to show that this prediction is correct. Moreover its behavior in comparative contexts also supports our hypothesis that it is a mass.

Bare singular noun phrases are mass in Brazilian Portuguese

This paper argues that bare singular noun phrases in Brazilian Portuguese are mass nouns denoting kinds. We show that the prima facie arguments against treating bare singulars as mass nouns do not hold water, since they contrast atomic bare singulars with substance mass nouns such as ouro ‘gold’, rather than with atomic mass nouns such as mobília ‘furniture’. We show that in fact bare singulars and atomic mass nouns show the same properties with respect to distributive predicates and reciprocals. We then show that in distribution and interpretation, bare singulars behave like mass nouns and not like bare plurals. We give an analysis of the semantics of bare singulars/mass nouns in the framework of Rothstein (2010), treating them as kind denoting terms, while proposing that bare plurals are generated as plural predicates NPs, as proposed by Krifka (2004), and show how this explains the differences in distribution and interpretation. We conclude that bare singulars can be the complements of mass quantifiers such as muito ‘much’ and quanto ‘how much’, in which case these behave semantically exactly like mass nouns: quanto livro with the bare singular asks about the overall measurements of a quantity of books in terms of volume or weight and is thus an expression of measure, while quantos livros with the plural count noun asks only for the cardinality of the set of books under discussion and thus is a question about counting.

The syntactic and semantic processing of mass and count nouns: an ERP study.

The present study addressed the question of whether count and mass nouns are differentially processed in the brain. In two different ERP (Event-Related Potentials) tasks we explored the semantic and syntactic levels of such distinction. Mass and count nouns typically differ in concreteness, hence the effect of this important variable was factorially examined in each task. Thus the stimuli presented were: count concrete, count abstract, mass concrete or mass abstract. The first experiment (concrete/abstract semantic judgment task) involved the interaction between the N400 concreteness effect and the Mass/Count condition, revealing a substantial effect between mass and count nouns at the semantic level. The second experiment (sentence syntactic violation task) showed a Mass/Count distinction on left anterior negativity (LAN) and on P600 components, confirming the difference at the syntactic level. This study suggests that the brain differentiates between count and mass nouns not only at the syntactic level but also at the semantic level. Implications for our understanding of the brain mechanisms underlying the Mass/Count distinction are discussed.

Remembering Mass: Response to Yang Xiaomei

I am honored that Professor Yang has lavished such attention on my decades-old argument and I am pleased to respond. I’ve changed. Decades ago when the argument was fresh, I resisted answering critics who misconstrued my argument. Instead, I had a series of long conversations with them, including but not limited to those to whom Professor Yang appeals. I remember the conversations fondly because they started many life-long friendships—particularly with Christoff Harbsmeier, BAO Zhi Ming, Henry Rosemont, Roger Ames, and Angus Graham. All the conversations are rich in my memory but the pivotal one for my current change in strategy was with Christoff (inevitably, over a beer—a tradition we both cherish and repeat at every opportunity). Christoff and I met after he generously invited me to discuss drafts of his article criticizing my “mass noun hypothesis.” I pointed out that he had formulated and criticized a Whorfian version of what was a Quinian (and Wittgensteinian) argument. Although I thought his attack on Whorf weak, I ignored the issue since, for me, he was attacking a straw man, i.e., his own mass noun hypothesis. He responded that if he had misstated my argument, I should respond to him in detail in print otherwise his presentation of my argument “would stand.” I argued that responding would simply consist of my repeating myself; that philosophers and other academics could (and would) read his article and my book for themselves and would see how the two were different. After multiple beers and lengthy vigorous discussion we parted friends agreeing to disagree. In my youth, I cherished more faith in the objectivity of philosophy and the power of reason. Age has made me realistic about the politics of academic discourse. Christoff and I reprised the moment in Amsterdam last November (over beer, of course) and I admitted to Christoff that he had won the bet. Almost all published comments since his Dao (2011) 10:541–546 DOI 10.1007/s11712-011-9237-y

Pairing Words with Syntactic Frames: Syntax, Semantics, and Count-Mass Usage

Two experiments examined English speakers' choices of count or mass compatible frames for nouns varying in imageability (concrete, abstract) and noun class (count, mass). Pairing preferences with equative (much/many) and non-equative (less/fewer) constructions were compared for groups of teenagers, young adults, and older adults. Deviations from normative usage were, for all ages, larger for count than for mass nouns, for the non-equative than for the equative construction, and for abstract count than for concrete count nouns. These results indicate that mass syntax is not a developmental default, support proposals that mass syntax is more flexible than count syntax, verify the non-prescriptive use of less with count nouns, and extend the interaction of syntax and semantics in noun classification to older ages, with older adults showing a reduced reliance on semantics. Knowledge of frame compatibility and knowledge of noun class are also shown to be largely independent.

Investigando as habilidades de processamento linguístico infantil: a aquisição da distinção massivo/contábil em português brasileiro

Este trabalho investiga o papel das informações sintáticas e semânticas presentes no input linguístico no processo de aquisição da distinção entre nomes massivos e contáveis em português brasileiro (PB), em especial as informações relativas à expressão do número gramatical. Para o reconhecimento da distinção mass/count em PB, é importante a manifestação morfológica relativa a número que se manifesta nos elementos do Determiner Phrase (DP). Pode-se assumir a hipótese de que uma criança seja capaz de perceber a presença/ausência do morfema de número, tomando esta oposição como indicativa de expressão massiva ou contável. Por outro lado, a presença de nomes nus em posições argumentais no PB torna o input ambíguo no que se refere a mass e count nouns. Tal situação constitui um problema para a criança que adquire o PB. Nesse caso, assumiu-se a hipótese de que a criança usa informação não morfológica, mas sim semântica (contextual), na interpretação de DP´s ambíguos. Portanto, os objetivos deste estudo são a) verificar se a criança toma a presença do morfema de número como indicativa de leitura contável; e b) verificar como a criança procede na interpretação de DP´s ambíguos. Usando o paradigma metodológico da Seleção de Imagens, testaram-se dois grupos de crianças (um na faixa de 36 meses de idade média, e outro na faixa de 60 meses) e um grupo de adultos, com os resultados sustentando a idéia de que tanto informação morfossintática quanto informação semântico-contextual são relevantes na aquisição de nomes massivos e contáveis em PB.

Diminutive-formation in German

In German, mass nouns can be turned into count nouns by means of two alternative strategies: either by using them in connection with a numeral classifier, or by adding the diminutive morpheme (-chen). In this paper, I argue that the two strategies are structurally exactly parallel, with both kinds of elements (numeral classifiers and diminutive -chen) being exponents of an individuating functional head. The (superficial) difference is that -chen—which I show is a clitic-like element—triggers obligatory movement of the nominalized root to its Spec. By contrast, this movement is optional with a (non-deficient) numeral classifier, yielding both ‘analytic’ and ‘compound’ forms. The picture that emerges from the discussion is a unified analysis of count structures in German.

Language typology and the acquisition of bare noun/DP contrasts

Language typology and the acquisition of bare noun/DP contrasts Ana T. Pérez-Leroux, Anna Gavarró Algueró, and Thomas Roeper 1. Introduction If compositionality (the assumption that the meaning of an utterance is determined by the meaning of its parts and the way they combine) is an inherent property of the human language, we expect children to attribute meaning to even small differences in sentence form. The input contains minimal contrasts as in (1), whose interpretation may not be easy to disambiguate in a given discourse context. Our goal is examine how children acquire these minimal distinctions. 1. a. Someone is wearing gloves. b. Someone is wearing the gloves. Formally, these cases differ in the presence of a determiner in contrast with a bare form. Referentially, (1a) includes (1b), so for every context where (1b) is true (1a) is also true. The definite DP has a distinct signature in the input, as it is more frequent at second mention of a referent (Sneed 2008). The bare noun is less specified, and thus less falsifiable. We propose to explore the acquisition of nominal mapping in terms of the semantic competition between bare nouns and DPs. We present a comparative study of two languages: Catalan, where these nominal contrasts occur in restricted positions, and English, where the contrast is instantiated in both subject and object position. To this purpose, we replicated in English Gavarró et al.'s (2006) study on the acquisition of bare/DP objects in Catalan. 2. DP/Bare Noun Contrasts The now-familiar typology in Chierchia (1998) states that languages vary according to how nominal categories are mapped into semantic types. In his Nominal Mapping Parameter (NMP), nouns are associated with two independent features that determine their denotation. The feature [+arg(ument)] indicates N is kind-denoting and has a mass syntax; the feature [+pred(icate)] determines that a N is predicate-denoting and has a countable syntax. In Chinese, and other classifier languages, Ns are mapped as [+arg, -pred] and thus can be arguments in their own right. In Romance languages, Ns are mapped as [-arg, +pred] and need a determiner to function as arguments. In Germanic languages, Ns are mapped as [+arg, +pred]: when Ns are [+pred] they [End Page 413] require a D, as in Romance count nouns; when [+arg] they act like mass nouns. In Romanian, Catalan, Spanish and Italian, bare objects appear in the immediate domain of a P or V head. This is productive for mass and plural count nouns, and lexically restricted for bare singular count nouns (Bosque 1996, Dobrovie-Sorin et al. 2006). Chierchia's approach analyzes the bare objects in (2) differently despite their comparable distribution and interpretation. Milk in (2a) is treated as a bare noun, while llet in (2b) is a DP with a null determiner head. 2. a. Children drink milk. b. Catalan: Els nens beuen llet. The-PL children drink milk. 3. Acquisition of Bare/DP Contrasts Research on the acquisition of DPs has identified typological variation in the timing of the acquisition of determiners. Lleó and Demuth (1999) showed that young Spanish children achieved adult levels of article production earlier than German-speaking children and proposed that prosodic differences across languages determine children's rates of determiner insertion. Guasti, Gavarró, de Lange, and Caprin (2008) examined determiner production in Catalan, Italian, and Dutch children under the age of 3, divided in groups according to linguistic development rather than age. While articles or protoarticles emerged at the same age across languages, there was a clear contrast in the overall rates of use and the pace of development, following the predictions of the NMP. At the initial stage, Catalan and Italian children had article omissions in roughly half of the NPs produced, but dropped substantially under 16% by the second stage. In contrast, Dutch children started with higher omission rates (92%) in the first stage and retained substantial omission rates in the later stage (39%). Guasti and colleagues note that Dutch is statistically different from Catalan and Italian, and conclude that differences in acquisition rates for the various language types exist beyond the effect of prosodic factors. Bilingual children learning Germanic and Romance languages exhibit comparable...

On Count/Mass Distinction in Slovene

This paper is a model-theoretic investigation into the count/mass distinction in Slovene. It overviews and accounts for Slovene nouns, while also invalidating Chierchia (2004)’s theoretical prediction that no language marks mass morphologically. I provide analyses of countability in the nominal domain of Slovene on semantic and morphosyntactic levels. Section 1 introduces the background notions and assumptions and thus provides the syntacticand semantic-theoretic foundation upon which this paper rests. Section 2 overviews some cross-linguistic data from Greek, Lingala, Zuni and English that are problematic for the semantic theory of countability. Greek shows mass plurals (i.e. mass nouns that may pluralise) and Lingala, Zuni and English show mass/plural syncretism (i.e. nouns that are both plural and mass). This provides me with a cross-linguistic context within which the empirical evidence from Slovene may be mapped. Section 3 seeks to present the Slovene data: in the first part, count/mass distinction is presented paradigmatically, i.e. on the basis of Chierchia’s (1998a) ten-property system. The second part addresses some count/mass phenomena that fall outside of the aforementioned system and specific to Slovene: mass extension and plural/mass margin. Section 4 deals with theoretical accounts of the data presented in the previous section. This section also comes in two parts: the first gives a semantic (lexical-compositional) account, and second translates the latter into morphosyntactic structures (using the tools and assumptions from Distributed Morphology). Section 5 concludes the research by proposing that the count/mass distinction and various mass phenomena in Slovene may be accounted for phasally (Chomsky, 2001, et seq., Marantz, 2008). Acknowledgements · Thanks to George Tsoulas and Eytan Zweig, who have constantly shown interest, support and uncompromising critique I unknowingly but desperately needed in the making of this paper. I am also very thankful to Maria G. Janssens! Thanks to Gennaro Chierchia for providing me his latest manuscript. I would also like to thank the two anonymous Slovene Linguistic Studies reviewers for useful commentary and criticism. Many thanks to Tanja Pogacnik and Polona Burnik (Punad! ) for their informing my data.

Predication in Conceptual Realism

Conceptual realism begins with a conceptualist theory of the nexus of predication in our speech and mental acts, a theory that explains the unity of those acts in terms of their referential and predicable aspects. This theory also contains as an integral part an intensional realism based on predicate nominalization and a reflexive abstraction in which the intensional contents of our concepts are “object”-ified, and by which an analysis of predication with intensional verbs can be given. Through a second nominalization of the common names that are part of conceptual realism’s theory of reference (via quantifier phrases), the theory also accounts for both plural reference and predication and mass noun reference and predication. Finally, a separate nexus of predication based on natural kinds and the natural properties and relations nomologically related to those natural kinds, is also an integral part of the framework of conceptual realism.

Towards a semantics for mass expressions derived from gradable expressions

What semantics should we attribute to mass expressions like wisdom and love, which are derived from gradable expressions (wise, to love)? We first examine how these expressions are used, then how they are interpreted in their various uses. We show in particular that, just like with ordinary concrete mass nouns (wine, furniture), sentences where they appear are liable to distributive, collective, and intermediate construals. We then propose a model to account for these data, in which derived mass expressions denote instances of properties. The model is general enough to apply both to concrete and derived mass nouns. This establishes that mass nouns have a uniform semantics. Another feature of the account is that, to explain the gradability of mass expressions, it makes use of degrees and measure functions only when these are overtly expressed, in expressions like a lot of wisdom and two litres of wine.

The Aspectual Influence of the Noun: (A)telicity, (A)symmetry, Incrementality and Universality

AbstractSince Verkuyl (1972), we have known that a noun phrase can affect the (a)telicity of the verbal predicate. Since then, there have been both semantic and syntactic accounts of this aspectual influence of the noun (AIN). This raises the question of whether the AIN is best accounted for in semantic or syntactic terms, that is, whether it is more appropriately treated as semantic or syntactic in nature. In this article, I outline a representative range of semantic and syntactic approaches to the AIN with an eye to which of these accounts best handles three related observations: the independence of incrementality and the AIN, an asymmetry in aspectual contribution by count and mass nouns, and the non‐universality of the AIN.

Bare singular and bare mass nouns in Brazilian Portuguese: First results of an empirical survey

The paper investigates the behavior of Bare Singulars (BS) and Bare Mass (BM) nouns in Brazilian Portuguese (BrP) in two acceptability experiments. The traditional view on the BS (Munn & Schmitt, 2005) argues that its syntax and semantics differs from that of BM nouns, because they behave differently when combined with predicates of individuation, reflexives and reciprocals. Individuating predicates select for atomic individuals, and mass nouns do not denote atoms in a semi-lattice structure, is the explanation. Relying on Basso (2007), two experiments were conducted to verify the hypothesis predicted by the traditional view. Behind our enterprise is the intuition that BS are in some sense massive (Camacho & Pezatti, 1996). The experiments were applied to 200 speakers. The predictions of the traditional view are not fulfilled: BM nouns are acceptable by more than a half of the speakers, and some BS sentences are unacceptable. The second experiment evaluated whether the distribution of acceptability was due to natural atomicity (Rothstein, 2008). Although there seems to be some influence, the results are not conclusive.

Counting and the Mass/Count Distinction

This article offers an account of the mass/count distinction and the semantics of count nouns, and argues that it is not based on an atomic/non-atomic nor on a homogeneous/non-homogeneous distinction. I propose that atomicity in the count domain is atomicity relative to a context k, where k is a set of entities that count as atoms (i.e. count as one) in a particular context. Assuming for simplicity Chierchia's (1998a) and Rothstein's (2004) theory of mass nouns, in which they denote atomic Boolean semi-lattices closed under the complete join operation, we define an operation COUNT k that applies to the mass noun denotation N mass and derives the count noun meaning: a set of ordered pairs where d is a member of N ∩ k and k is the context k relative to which the operation applied. So, there is a typal distinction between mass nouns, which are of type , and count nouns, which are of type . The grammatical differences between count and mass nouns follow from this typal distinction. This allows us to encode grammatically the distinction between semantic atomicity, that is, atomicity relative to a context k, and natural atomicity, that is, inherent individuability. We show a number of ways in which this distinction is grammatically relevant.

Count Nouns - Mass Nouns, Neat Nouns - Mess Nouns

In this paper I propose and formalize a theory of the mass-count distinction in which the denotations of count nouns are built from non-overlapping generators, while the denotations of mass nouns are built from overlapping generators. Counting is counting of generators, and it will follow that counting is only correct on count denotations. I will show that the theory allows two kinds of mass nouns: mess mass nouns with denotations built from overlapping minimal generators, and neat mass nouns with denotations built from overlapping generators, where the overlap is not located in the minimal generators. Prototypical mass nouns like meat and mud are of the first kind. I will argue that mass nouns like furniture and kitchenware are of the second type. I will discuss several phenomena—all involving one way or the other explicitly or implicitly individual classifiers like stuks in Dutch—that show that both distinctions mass/count and mess/neat are linguistically robust. I will show in particular that nouns like kitchenware pattern in various ways like count nouns, and not like mess mass nouns, and that these ways naturally involve the neat structure of their denotation. I will also show that they are real mass nouns: they can involve measures in the way mess mass nouns can and count nouns cannot. I will discuss grinding interpretations of count nouns, here rebaptized fission interpretations, and argue that these interpretations differ in crucial ways from the interpretations of lexical mass nouns. The paper will end with a foundational problem raised by fission interpretations, and in the course of this, atomless interpretation domains will re-enter the scene through the back door.

Who thinks that a piece of furniture refers to a broken couch? Count-mass constructions and individuation in English and Spanish

Differences between languages in count (e.g., cup) and mass (e.g., rice) nouns have been shown to impact cognition, but few studies have directly examined how the morphology associated with count and mass constructions is acquired and linked to differences in meaning. Two experiments examined the relation between English and Spanish plural morphology and the interpretation of nouns as individuated objects. In Experiment 1, English- and Spanish-speaking children and adults participated in two tasks. One task examined how participants produced plurals for nouns. Results from this task indicated that both language groups make a distinction in their use of plural morphology for count and mass nouns between 5 and 7 years of age. However, that morphological distinction was stronger and occurred earlier among English speakers. A second task examined whether the count (but not the mass) nouns in each language denoted individuated objects. Speakers of both languages tended to treat all nouns as referring to individuated objects at 5 years of age. Beginning at 7 years of age, English speakers made a reliable distinction between the referents of mass and count nouns. Speakers of Spanish however, treated both types of nouns as referring to individuated objects in this task throughout development. Experiment 2 examined the interpretation of nouns by adult speakers of both languages using a different task, and the results offer converging evidence that Spanish speakers are more likely than English speakers to interpret nouns as referring to individuated objects. The reason for the difference between English and Spanish is discussed in terms of the proportion of count and mass nouns acquired early in development and as a function of developing concepts.

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.

Lexical access of mass and count nouns

Two psycholinguistic experiments were carried out in Italian to test the role played by the feature that distinguishes mass nouns from count nouns, as well as by the feature that distinguishes singular nouns from plural nouns. The first experiment, a simple lexical decision task, revealed a sensitivity of the lexical access system to the processing of the features Mass and Plural as shown by longer reaction times. In particular, nouns in the plural yielded longer reaction times than in the singular except when the plural form was irregular. Furthermore, the feature Mass also affected processing, yielding longer reaction times. In the second experiment, a sentence priming task, both the Plural and the Mass effects did not surface when a grammatical sentence fragment was the prime. These data show a direct correlation between the linguistic ‘complexity’ of plural/mass nouns and processing time. They also suggest that this complexity does not affect normal fluent spoken language where words are embedded in a semantic and syntactic context.