Parts of a Whole: Distributivity as a Bridge between Aspect and Measurement

di Lucas Champollion (Autore)

Oxford University Press, 2017

This book uses mathematical models of language to explain why there are certain gaps in language: things that we might expect to be able to say but can't. For instance, why can we say I ran for five minutes but not *I ran all the way to the store for five minutes? Why is five pounds of books acceptable, but *five pounds of book not acceptable? What prevents us from saying *sixty degrees of water to express the temperature of the water in a swimming pool when sixty inches of water can express its depth? And why can we not say *all the ants in my kitchen are numerous? The constraints on these constructions involve concepts that are generally studied separately: aspect, plural and mass reference, measurement, and distributivity. In this book, Lucas Champollion provides a unified perspective on these domains, connects them formally within the framework of algebraic semantics and mereology, and uses this connection to transfer insights across unrelated bodies of literature and formulate a single constraint that explains each of the judgments above.

• Autore: Lucas Champollion
• Editore: Oxford University Press
• Collana: Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics
• Anno: 2017
• Rilegatura: Hardback
• Pagine: 332 p.
• Dimensioni: 240 x 160 mm
• Peso: 624 gr.
• EAN: 9780198755128

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