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27 results

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  • 17 - Polysemy and the Count–Mass Distinction: What Can We Derive from a Lexicon of Count and Mass Senses?

  • from New Empirical Approaches to the Semantics of the Count–Mass Distinction
  • Edited by Tibor Kiss, Ruhr-Universität, Bochum, Germany, Francis Jeffry Pelletier, University of Alberta, Halima Husić, Ruhr-Universität, Bochum, Germany
  • Book:
    Things and Stuff
    Published online:
    21 May 2021
    Print publication:
    10 June 2021, pp 377-397

  • Summary

    In this paper, we discuss the implications for theories of the count/mass distinction that can be derived from the development of a large lexicon of English count and mass noun sense pairs, the Bochum English Countability Lexicon (BECL). The development of a lexicon for count and mass senses makes it possible that research on the count/mass distinction moves away from individual nouns and takes lexical variation into account. We focus on different types of ambiguity. The most important finding is that English shows a rather small class of nouns which are truly ambiguous with regard to the count/mass distinction, but not in any other respect. We suggest that these nouns show how the count/mass distinction is introduced into a language (which rests on the plausible assumption that all nouns begin their lives as mass nouns). The addition of denotational structure to provide individuation leads to an eventual petrification, which accounts for the somewhat surprising fact that there are many more count than mass nouns.

Things and Stuff
  • The Semantics of the Count-Mass Distinction
  • Edited by Tibor Kiss, Francis Jeffry Pelletier, Halima Husić
  • Published online:
    21 May 2021
    Print publication:
    10 June 2021
  • A classical viewpoint claims that reality consists of both things and stuff, and that we need a way to discuss these aspects of reality. This is achieved by using +count terms to talk about things while using +mass terms to talk about stuff. Bringing together contributions from internationally-renowned experts across interrelated disciplines, this book explores the relationship between mass and count nouns in a number of syntactic environments, and across a range of languages. It both explains how languages differ in their methods for describing these two fundamental categories of reality, and shows the many ways that modern linguistics looks to describe them. It also explores how the notions of count and mass apply to 'abstract nouns', adding a new dimension to the countability discussion. With its pioneering approach to the fundamental questions surrounding mass-count distinction, this book will be essential reading for researchers in formal semantics and linguistic typology.

  • “Incompatibility” in Plato's Sophist

  • Francis Jeffry Pelletier
  • Journal:
    Dialogue: Canadian Philosophical Review / Revue canadienne de philosophie / Volume 14 / Issue 1 / March 1975
    Published online by Cambridge University Press:
    05 May 2010, pp. 143-146

  • I want to consider a much-disputed reading of a certain critical area of Plato's Sophist. It is widely agreed by most commentators that in this text, between 255E and 259E there occurs a refutation of Parmenides' dictum that “one cannot say that which is not”, and that this is followed by an application of the foregoing discussion to the problems of sentiential falsity. (For a partial list of commentators, see bibliography.) It is also generally agreed that Plato uses the Form, The Different, for this purpose. What is not generally agreed upon is how Plato uses The Different.

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