Gather / numerous as a mass/count opposition
- PDF / 638,581 Bytes
- 29 Pages / 439.37 x 666.142 pts Page_size
- 71 Downloads / 211 Views
Gather/numerous as a mass/count opposition Jeremy Kuhn1
© Springer Nature B.V. 2020
Abstract Predicates like gather and ones like be numerous have both been described as ‘collective predicates,’ since they predicate something of a plurality. The two classes of predicates differ, however, with respect to plural quantifiers (e.g. all), which are grammatical with gather-type predicates but ungrammatical with numerous-type predicates. Here, I show that the gather/numerous opposition derives from mereological properties that are familiar from the domains of telicity and mass/count. I address problems of undergeneration and overgeneration with two technical innovations: first, I weaken the property of divisibility to Champollion’s concept of stratified reference; second, I provide mechanisms to rule out accidental satisfaction of the logical property. More broadly, I place collective predication in a larger context by building empirical connections to mass/count and collectivity across semantic domains. Keywords Collective predicates · Gather/numerous · Mass/count · Telicity · Mereology · Event semantics
1 Introduction 1.1 Overview Predicates like gather and be numerous are known as ‘collective predicates.’ Broadly speaking, collective predicates are predicates that work perfectly well with plural
Thank you to Brian Buccola, Lucas Champollion, Carmen Dobrovie-Sorin, Lelia Glass, Sonia Kasyanenko, Manuel Križ, David Nicolas, Jérémy Pasquereau, Benjamin Spector, and to audiences at NELS 45, New York University, Paris Diderot University, and Heinrich Heine University Düsseldorf. The research leading to these results received funding from ERC H2020 Grant Agreement No. 788077–Orisem (PI: P. Schlenker). Research was conducted at the Département d’Etudes Cognitives (ENS), which is supported by Grants ANR-10-IDEX-0001-02 PSL and ANR-17-EURE-0017 FrontCog.
B 1
Jeremy Kuhn [email protected] Institut Jean Nicod, Département d’Études Cognitives, Ecole Normale Supérieure (ENS), EHESS, CNRS, PSL Research University, Pavillon Jardin, 29, rue d’Ulm, 75005 Paris, France
123
J. Kuhn
arguments, but are ungrammatical with atomic individuals, as evidenced in the contrast between (a) and (b) in the examples below. (1)
a. b.
The students gathered. * Marco gathered.
(2)
a. b.
The students are numerous. * Marco is numerous.
However, not all collective predicates behave the same. In particular, there are two classes of predicates that differ in their grammaticality with plural quantifiers, such as all, most, and several (Kroch 1974; Dowty 1987; Winter 2001; Champollion 2010). I follow Champollion (2010) in calling these classes gather-type predicates and numerous-type predicates. The contrast is shown in (3) and (4); the former are perfectly grammatical, but the latter are as bizarre as (2b), seeming to suggest that each student is somehow particulate. (3) Gather-type predicates a. All the students gathered. b. Most of the students gathered. c. Several students gathered. (4) Numerous-type predicates a. * All the students are
Data Loading...
