Viviane Déprez (2006) “On the Conceptual Role of Number”. In New Perspectives on Romance Linguistics, Nishida, Chiyo and Jean-Pierre Y. Montreuil (eds.), 67-83. John Benjamins (original) (raw)
Related papers
On the Syntax of Number in Romance
Studia Linguistica, 2019
Inflectional languages, and Romance languages in particular, display morphological variation in plural marking within the nominal domain. While standard varieties show plural inflection on all the constituents within the DP, other varieties show this plural marking only on some of its constituents. We investigate a set of puzzling data and propose that Number in Romance is not a head, but an adjunct, an optional and bi-valent morphosyntactic feature. We single out the hypothesis that, within the nominal domain, the PLURALIZER is in unmarked cases adjoined to D (i.e., a categorized d root), and in marked cases it is adjoined to a noun or an adjective (i.e., a categorized n/a root). We also discuss that instantiations of plural marking within the nominal domain should be conceived as the output of morphophonological concord, a post-syntactic operation that is sensitive to c-command.
On the Unity of 'Number' in Semantics and Morphology
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.
The lexical-syntactic representation of number
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.
A Contrastive Analysis of the Category of Number in English and Albanian Nominal System
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 " .
2010
In this paper we focus on the ability of ARGUMENT SUPPORTING NOMINALIZATIONS (ASNs) to realize morphological plural. We think that this aspect of their behavior is instrumental in our understanding of their properties and their syntax within one language and across languages. Our factual investigation deals with Romanian, English, German and Spanish, as well as Polish and Bulgarian ASNs. We show that the interplay between the aspectual properties -either inner or outer aspect -and the nominal/verbal characteristics, as justifying the internal structure of ASNs, allows us to characterize the ability of ASNs to accept plural marking across languages. We further argue that a flexible syntactic theory enables us to capture the mixed properties of ASNs. We provide evidence for two parameters of variation. The first parameter is whether ASNs involve a nominalizer or not. If a nominalizer is not included, ASNs lack nominal internal properties. If a nominalizer is included, the second parameter comes in play and allows for language variation with respect to the height of attachment of the nominalizer.
Grammatical number and the scale of individuation
Language, 2018
The noun dog disposes of morphological and syntactic means to be counted, such as pluralization, but the noun water doesn't. Average speakers of English are hardly mystified by this contrast-for dog names a type of object in the world which is easily countable, namely discrete entities, while water refers to a (non-discrete) substance. Despite the strong intuition that grammatical form and ontological type are related, this putative relation is the central point of controversy in the count/mass literature. Many researchers have proposed that semantic categorization does not underlie the count/mass distinction. One argument hinges on crosslinguistic incommensurability: If the count/mass distinction reflects the ontological nature of entities in the world, viz. discrete entities vs. substances, it is unexpected that a particular entity would be named by a countable noun in one language but a non-countable noun in another.
Adjectives, Number and Interfaces: Why Languages Vary (review)
Language, 2006
Reviewed by ELIZABETH COWPER, University of Toronto Denis Bouchard has, for the past twenty years, been someone we can count on to demand that linguistic theory live up to the standards it sets for itself. In particular, he is most eloquent and convincing when he points out the frequent lack of independent motivation for theoretical constructs such as empty categories (Bouchard 1984), theta-roles (Bouchard 1995), and now in his latest offering, uninterpretable features, meta-features, phonologically null functional heads, and syntactic movement. Adjectives, number and interfaces: Why languages vary is a major work with two main stated goals. The first is descriptive: to provide a comprehensive account of adjectival modification in French, and to show the consequences it has for crosslinguistic variation in adjectival modification. The second is theoretical: to explain why languages vary. There is a third goal, not stated at the outset, which B achieves with at least as much success as the other two: to explore what a properly minimalist theory of language must look like, taking seriously Noam Chomsky's idea that legibility at the interfaces is the only condition required, beyond virtual conceptual necessity. The book includes eight chapters, plus an appendix. Chs. 2 and 3 present B's account of adjectival modification in French, along with a fairly extensive comparison of French with English. He briefly discusses where Celtic languages, Walloon, and Romanian fit into the picture he develops. Chs. 4 and 5 explore some specific consequences of his proposals for the syntax and semantics of nominal phrases, primarily in French, but with considerable discussion of English as well. Chs. 1, 6, 7, and 8 constitute essentially a theoretical manifesto and could almost have been published as a separate book. In fact, such a separation might have made the material more accessible and interesting to a larger audience. The book is 458 pages long, and at times is extremely heavy going. It suffers from what appears to have been a complete lack of editorial attention, both as to the organization of information and as to infelicities of style, bad glossing of data, lexical malapropisms, spelling mistakes, typographical errors, and mislabeling of chapters. Frequently, the infelicities of style impede comprehension; a reader who knows French will at times find this knowledge useful in deciphering the text. Despite these problems, however, the material in the book is well worth the effort of reading it. I first discuss the theoretical proposals, and then turn to the discussion of adjectival modification and the structure of nominal phrases. I recommend that readers begin with Chs. 6-8, then go back to Chs. 1-5. Ch. 6 includes an excellent discussion of theoretical simplicity and parsimony. B distinguishes three sorts of simplicity: formal simplicity, functional simplicity, and what he calls general simplicity. Formal simplicity is achieved by reducing the number of tools available to the theory, so as to eliminate redundancy from linguistic descriptions. Pursuing formal simplicity can frequently uncover broader generalizations and can also result in a cleaner account of the data, but, says B, it does not necessarily reduce the expressive power of the theory. 'Eliminating redundancy is secondary in the sense that it does not really constrain rule formulation: it just removes one formulation which is equal in power with another that is maintained. Therefore, there is no reduction in the power of the theory, in what could be formulated in the theory, because the formulation that is maintained can express what was expressed by the formulation that has been removed' (327-28). He takes the elimination of D-structure as an example of formal simplification. Since all information encoded in D-structure can be recovered from other levels of representation, the elimination of D-structure has no effect on the expressive power of the theory. However, elimination of redundant components can sometimes lead to a more explanatory account. The elimination of phrase structure rules in favor of X-bar theory and lexical projection
Constructions and Mixed Categories: Determining the semantic interpretation of person/number marking
In diverse languages considered separately, each for itself and in its own functioning, the analysis of the relative clause shows a formal structure ordered by a certain function that is not always visible. The problem is to uncover that function. This can be arrived at by observing that the relative clause often has, in a given linguistic system, the same formal marks as another syntagm of a denomination so entirely different that no one would think that they could be related. Guided by this formal analogy, the interpretation of the relative clause becomes possible in terms of function. It is the internal relationship which we propose to bring to light first. -Emile Benveniste 1971