Results for 'Mass Nouns'

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  1. Mass Nouns in a Logic of Classes as Many.Nino B. Cocchiarella - 2009 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 38 (3):343-361.
    A semantic analysis of mass nouns is given in terms of a logic of classes as many. In previous work it was shown that plural reference and predication for count nouns can be interpreted within this logic of classes as many in terms of the subclasses of the classes that are the extensions of those count nouns. A brief review of that account of plurals is given here and it is then shown how the same kind (...)
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  2.  50
    Do mass nouns constitute a semantically uniform class?David Nicolas - 2002 - Kansas Working Papers in Linguistics 26.
    Research on mass nouns has focused on concrete terms. So, are there semantic properties shared by all mass terms? We first consider concrete nouns like milk and furniture. Contra Cheng (1973), we show that they can be held to refer distributively (i.e. to apply to any part of what they apply to) only if this property is understood with a new part-relation, that of N-part. In addition, they refer cumulatively: when they apply to each of two (...)
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  3. Mass nouns and "a white horse is not a horse".Chad D. Hansen - 1976 - Philosophy East and West 26 (2):189-209.
    The most famous paradox in chinese philosophy, Kung-Sun lung's "white horse not horse" has been taken as evidence of platonism, Aristotelian essentialism, Class logic, Etc., In ancient chinese thought. I argue that a nominalistic interpretation utilizing the notion of "stuffs" (mass objects) is a more plausible explanation of the dialogue. It is more coherent internally, More consistent with kung-Sun lung's other dialogues, And the tradition of chinese thought which is usually regarded as nominalistic. The interpretation is also strongly suggested (...)
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  4. Mass nouns, vagueness and semantic variation.Gennaro Chierchia - 2010 - Synthese 174 (1):99 - 149.
    The mass/count distinction attracts a lot of attention among cognitive scientists, possibly because it involves in fundamental ways the relation between language (i.e. grammar), thought (i.e. extralinguistic conceptual systems) and reality (i.e. the physical world). In the present paper, I explore the view that the mass/count distinction is a matter of vagueness. While every noun/concept may in a sense be vague, mass nouns/concepts are vague in a way that systematically impairs their use in counting. This idea (...)
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  5.  92
    Plurals, mass nouns and reference: philosophical issues.David Nicolas - forthcoming - In Hilary Nesi & Petar Milin (eds.), International Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Elsevier.
    How do plurals and mass nouns refer? What kind of logic should be used in order to account for the truth-conditions of the sentences they appear in? For linguists, first-order predicate logic is adequate, provided it is supplemented by a notion of mereological sum for plurals and for mass nouns. On the contrary, according to some philosophers, new logics must be used, plural logic for plurals and mass logic for mass nouns. We survey (...)
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  6. (1 other version)Mass nouns and plural logic (extended abstract).David Nicolas - 2007 - In Mass nouns and plural logic (extended abstract). Hal Ccsd. pp. 211-244.
    A dilemma put forward by Schein (1993) and Rayo (2002) suggests that, in order to characterize the semantics of plurals, we should not use predicate logic, but plural logic, a formal language whose terms may refer to several things at once. We show that a similar dilemma applies to mass nouns. If we use predicate logic and sets when characterizing their semantics, we arrive at a Russellian paradox. And if we use predicate logic and mereoogical ums, the semantics (...)
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  7. Mass nouns, Count nouns and Non-count nouns.Henry Laycock - 2005 - In Keith Brown (ed.), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Elsevier.
    I present a high-level account of the semantical distinction between count nouns and non-count nouns. The basic idea is that count nouns are semantically either singular or plural and non-count nouns are neither.
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  8.  22
    Mass nouns, Count nouns and Non-count nouns.Henry Laycock - 2005 - In Keith Brown (ed.), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Elsevier. pp. 534--538.
    I present a high-level account of the semantical distinction between count nouns and non-count nouns. The basic idea is that count nouns are semantically either singular or plural and non-count nouns are neither.
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  9.  65
    Count nouns, mass nouns and their acquisition (1997).David Nicolas - manuscript
    In English, some common nouns, like 'dog', can combine with determiners like 'a' and 'many', but not with 'much', while other nouns, like 'water', can be used together with 'much', but not with 'a' and 'many'. These common nouns have been respectively called count nouns (CNs) and mass nouns (MNs). How do children learn to use CNs and MNs in the appropriate contexts? Gaining a better understanding of this is the goal of this paper. (...)
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  10. Mass Nouns and Plurals.Peter Lasersohn - 2011 - In Klaus von Heusinger, Claudia Maienborn & Paul Portner (eds.), Semantics: An International Handbook of Natural Language Meaning. De Gruyter Mouton. pp. 2.
    Survey of issues pertaining to the semantics of mass and plural nouns.
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  11. Count Nouns and Mass Nouns.H. W. Noonan - 1978 - Analysis 38 (4):167-172.
    The paper argues that one distinction between concrete count nouns and concrete mass nouns is that geach's derelativization thesis is valid for the former but not valid for the latter. That is, Where 'f' is a concrete count noun 'x is (an) f' means 'for some y, X is the same f as y', But where 'f' is a concrete mass noun this is not so; rather, In this case, 'x is f' is tantamount to 'for (...)
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  12. Towards a common semantics for English count and mass nouns.Brendan S. Gillon - 1992 - Linguistics and Philosophy 15 (6):597 - 639.
    English mass noun phrases & count noun phrases differ only minimally grammatically. The basis for the difference is ascribed to a difference in the features +/-CT. These features serve the morphosyntactic function of determining the available options for the assigment of grammatical number, itself determined by the features +/-PL: +CT places no restriction on the available options, while -CT, in the unmarked case, restricts the available options to -PL. They also serve the semantic function of determining the sort of (...)
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  13.  98
    Some remarks about mass nouns and plurality.Helen M. Cartwright - 1975 - Synthese 31 (3-4):395 - 410.
  14.  74
    On some proposals for the semantics of mass nouns.Francis Jeffry Pelletier - 1974 - Journal of Philosophical Logic 3 (1/2):87 - 108.
    Simple mass nouns are words like ‘water’, ‘furniture’ and ‘gold’. We can form complex mass noun phrases such as ‘dirty water’, ‘leaded gold’ and ‘green grass’. I do not propose to discuss the problems in giving a characterization of the words that are mass versus those that are not. For the purposes of this paper I shall make the following decrees: (a) nothing that is not a noun or noun phrase can be mass, (b) no (...)
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  15. Mass nouns, count nouns, and non-count nouns: Philosophical aspects.Henry Laycock - 2005 - In Keith Brown (ed.), Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics. Elsevier. pp. 534--538.
  16.  75
    Conversions of count nouns into mass nouns in French.David Nicolas - 2002
    In many languages, common nouns are divided into two morpho-syntactic subclasses, count nouns and mass nouns. Yet in certain contexts, count nouns can be used as if they were mass nouns. This linguistic phenomenon is called conversion. In this paper, we consider the conversions of count nouns into mass nouns in French. First, we identify a general semantic constraint that must be respected in these conversions, and various cases in which (...)
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  17. Count Nouns - Mass Nouns, Neat Nouns - Mess Nouns.Fred Landman - 2011 - The Baltic International Yearbook of Cognition, Logic and Communication 6:12.
    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 (...)
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  18. The Mass Noun Hypothesis and Interpretive Methodology.Chris Fraser - 2006 - Journal of Chinese Philosophy and Culture 1:58–107.
     
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  19.  9
    A Proposed Semantical Solution to the So‐called ‘Problem of Mass Nouns’.Henry Laycock - 2006 - In Words without objects: semantics, ontology, and logic for non-singularity. New York: Oxford University Press.
    This chapter takes issue with the common assumption that referential expressions and definite descriptions involving ‘mass nouns’ are semantically singular, thereby designating so-called parcels of matter or individual instances of stuff. The trouble is that whereas count nouns are either singular or plural, the so-called mass nouns, because they are non-count, are semantically neither singular nor plural. Russell’s Theory of Descriptions as well as considerations on persistence, identity, and flux are invoked to reinforce this point.
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  20. Needing the other: the anatomy of the Mass Noun Thesis.Lajos L. Brons - 2014 - Argument: Biannual Philosophical Journal 4 (1):103-122.
    Othering is the construction and identification of the self or in-group and the other or out-group in mutual, unequal opposition by attributing relative inferiority and/or radical alienness to the other/out-group. Othering can be “crude” or “sophisticated”, the defining difference being that in the latter case othering depends on the interpretation of the other/out-group in terms that are applicable only to the self/in-group but that are unconsciously assumed to be universal. The Mass Noun Thesis, the idea that all nouns (...)
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  21.  77
    Do Differences in Grammatical Form between Languages Explain Differences in Ontology between Different Philosophical Traditions?: A Critique of the Mass-Noun Hypothesis.Xiaomei Yang - 2011 - Dao: A Journal of Comparative Philosophy 10 (2):149-166.
    It is an assumed view in Chinese philosophy that the grammatical differences between English or Indo-European languages and classical Chinese explain some of the differences between the Western and Chinese philosophical discourses. Although some philosophers have expressed doubts about the general link between classical Chinese philosophy and syntactic form of classical Chinese, I discuss a specific hypothesis, i.e., the mass-noun hypothesis, in this essay. The mass-noun hypothesis assumes that a linguistic distinction such as between the singular terms and (...)
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  22.  90
    Quantity judgments and individuation: evidence that mass nouns count.David Barner & Jesse Snedeker - 2005 - Cognition 97 (1):41-66.
  23.  52
    Problems in the representation of the logical form of generics, plurals, and mass nouns.Lenhart K. Schubert & Francis Jeffry Pelletier - 1987 - In Ernest LePore (ed.), New directions in semantics. Orlando: Academic Press.
  24.  27
    Why superordinate category terms can be mass nouns.Ellen M. Markman - 1985 - Cognition 19 (1):31-53.
  25.  46
    A Piece of Cheese, a Grain ofSand:-The Semantics of Mass Nouns and Unitizers.Cliff Goddard - 2009 - In Francis Jeffry Pelletier (ed.), Kinds, Things, and Stuff: Mass Terms and Generics. New York, US: Oup Usa. pp. 132.
  26. Foundational Issues in the Learning of Proper Names, Count Nouns and Mass Nouns.John Macnamara & Gonzalo E. Reyes - 1994 - In John Macnamara & Gonzalo E. Reyes (eds.), The Logical Foundations of Cognition. Oxford University Press USA. pp. 144-176.
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  27. Mass terms, count nouns, and change.Tyler Burge - 1975 - Synthese 31 (3-4):459-478.
    The paper develops two approaches to mass term and count noun substantivals. One treats them on the model of adjectives, Designating phases of a more basic substratum. The other treats them in a more commonsense way, As multiply designating individuals. The two accounts are tested against two problems originally raised by aristotle and heraclitus respectively. The comparison is aimed at bringing out certain central features of one-Place predication, Or more materially, Features of the notion of kind.
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  28. Stubborn distributivity, multiparticipant nouns and the count/mass distinction.Roger Schwarzschild - unknown
    There are predicates that I call “stubbornly distributive” based on what happens when they are combined with plural count noun phrases. I will use these stubbornly distributive predicates to identify and analyze a certain subset of mass nouns which I call “multi-participant nouns”. Traffic and rubble are multi-participant nouns but furniture and luggage turn out not to be. Importantly, ‘typical’ mass nouns like water are multiparticipant nouns.
     
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  29.  66
    Bare nouns and number in Dëne Sųłiné.Andrea Wilhelm - 2008 - Natural Language Semantics 16 (1):39-68.
    This paper documents the number-related properties of Dëne Sųłiné (Athapaskan). Dëne Sųłiné has neither number inflection nor numeral classifiers. Nouns are bare, occur as such in argument positions, and combine directly with numerals. With these traits, Dëne Sųłiné represents a type of language that is little considered in formal typologies of number and countability. The paper critiques one influential proposal, that of Chierchia (in: Rothstein (ed.) Events and grammar, 1998a; Natural Language Semantics 6: 339–405, 1998b), and presents an alternative (...)
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  30. Mass terms and model-theoretic semantics.Harry C. Bunt - 1985 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
    'Mass terms', words like water, rice and traffic, have proved very difficult to accommodate in any theory of meaning since, unlike count nouns such as house or dog, they cannot be viewed as part of a logical set and differ in their grammatical properties. In this study, motivated by the need to design a computer program for understanding natural language utterances incorporating mass terms, Harry Bunt provides a thorough analysis of the problem and offers an original and (...)
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  31. Mass and Count in Linguistics, Philosophy, and Cognitive Science.Friederike Moltmann (ed.) - 2020 - Amsterdam: Benjamins.
    The mass-count distinction is a morpho-syntactic distinction among nouns that is generally taken to have semantic content. This content is generally taken to reflect a conceptual, cognitive, or ontological distinction and relates to philosophical and cognitive notions of unity, identity, and counting. The mass-count distinction is certainly one of the most interesting and puzzling topics in syntax and semantics that bears on ontology and cognitive science. In many ways, the topic remains under-researched, though, across languages and with (...)
  32. Talk About Stuffs & Things: The Logic of Mass and Count Nouns.Kathrin Koslicki - 1995 - Dissertation, Massachusetts Institute of Technology
    My thesis examines the mass/count distinction; that is, to illustrate, the distinction between the role of "hair" in "There is hair in my soup" and "There is a hair in my soup". In "hair" has a mass-occurrence; in a count-occurrence. These two kinds of noun-occurrences, I argue, can be marked off from each other largely on syntactic grounds. Along the semantic dimension, I suggest that, in order to account for the intuitive distinction between nouns in their (...)-occurrences and their singular count-occurrences, there must be a difference between the semantic role each of them plays. From among the available options, the most attractive one is to analyze nouns in their mass-occurrences as predicates. But, traditionally, nouns in their singular count-occurrences are also analyzed as predicates. I propose, therefore, that there are two different kinds of predicates: mass-predicates, such as "is-hair", and singular count-predicates, such as "is-a-hair". Neither kind is reducible to the other. ;Mass-predicates and singular count-predicates have something in common: they are both predicates. That is, they are related to their extension in the same way, viz. They are both true of whatever falls in their extension and the relation "is-true-of" at play here is, I conjecture, the same in both cases. The two kinds of predicates are also related to each other in a certain way, namely through a one-way entailment relation going from count to mass: everything that is a hair is also hair, but not conversely. And, finally, there are certain truth-conditional differences between them: the singular count-predicate "is-a-hair" is true only of whole individual hairs; the mass-predicate "is-hair" is true of individual hairs as well as hair-sums and hair-parts. ;These truth-conditional differences turn out to have interesting implications, in particular having to do with the part/whole relation and the act of counting. It is often held that mass-predicates are, as part of their meaning, homogeneous, while singular count-predicates are said to lack this property, as part of their meaning. I suggest, instead, that at least distributivity has to be rejected as a semantic property of mass-predicates, on the grounds that, to pick a representative example, water is not infinitely divisible into parts that are themselves water. The second kind of implication, having to do with the act of counting, is as follows. When we wish to associate, say, the world's hair with cardinal number , we need to speak of it in terms of individual hairs, the things of which the singular count-predicate "is-a-hair" is true. If, on the other hand, we are interested in amounts of hair , we need to speak of the world's hair in terms of those things of which the mass-predicate "is-hair" is true. (shrink)
     
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  33. Introduction: Mass and Count in Linguistics, Philosophy, and Cognitive Science.Friederike Moltmann - 2020 - In Mass and Count in Linguistics, Philosophy, and Cognitive Science. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
    The mass-count distinction is a morpho-syntactic distinction among nouns that is generally taken to have semantic content. This content is generally taken to reflect a conceptual, cognitive, or ontological distinction and relates to philosophical and cognitive notions of unity, identity, and counting. The mass-count distinction is certainly one of the most interesting and puzzling topics in syntax and semantics that bears on ontology and cognitive science. This volume aims to contribute to some of the gaps in the (...)
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  34. The semantics of nouns derived from gradable adjectives.David Nicolas - 2004 - In Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 8. pp. 197-207.
    What semantics should we attribute to nouns like "wisdom" and "generosity", which are derived from gradable adjectives? We show that, from a morphosyntactic standpoint, these nouns are mass nouns. This leads us to consider and answer the following questions. How are these nouns interpreted in their various uses? What formal representations may one associate with their interpretations? How do these depend on the semantics of the adjective? And where lies the semantic unity of nouns (...)
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  35. Towards a semantics for mass expressions derived from gradable expressions.David Nicolas - 2010 - Recherches Linguistiques de Vincennes 39:163-198.
    What semantics should we attribute to mass expressions like "wisdom" and "love", which are derived from gradable expressions? We first examine how these expressions are used, then how they are interpreted in their various uses. We then propose a model to account for these data, in which derived mass nouns denote instances of properties.
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  36. Mass Terms.Brendan S. Gillon - 2012 - Philosophy Compass 7 (10):712-730.
    English common nouns, like nouns in many other languages, can be distinguished into count nouns and mass nouns. This article sets out the basic morpho‐syntactic and semantic facts pertaining to these two classes of English nouns. In addition, it summarizes and critically discusses the various theories of the semantics of such nouns.
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  37. The Metaphysics of Mass Expressions.Mark Steen - 2012 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  38.  43
    Events and the ontology of individuals: Verbs as a source of individuating mass and count nouns.David Barner, Laura Wagner & Jesse Snedeker - 2008 - Cognition 106 (2):805-832.
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  39. Introduction to 'Mass and Count in Linguistics, Philosophy, and Cognitive Science'.Friederike Moltmann - 2020 - In Mass and Count in Linguistics, Philosophy, and Cognitive Science. Amsterdam: Benjamins.
    This introduction to 'Mass and Count...' gives an overview of different views of the mass-count distinction as well as an introduction to the papers in the edited volume.
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  40. Is there anything characteristic about the meaning of a count noun?David Nicolas - 2002 - Revue de la Lexicologie 18.
    In English, some common nouns, like "cat", can be used in the singular and in the plural, while others, like "wate"r, are invariable. Moreover, nouns like "cat" can be employed with numerals like "one" and "two" and determiners like "a", "many" and "few", but neither with "much" nor "little". On the contrary, nouns like "milk" can be used with determiners like "much" and "little", but neither with "a", "one" nor "many". These two types of nouns constitute (...)
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  41. The Role of Dimensions in the Syntax of Noun Phrases.Roger Schwarzschild - unknown
    In the formation of extended noun phrases, expressions are used that describe some dimension. Weight is described by each of the prenominal expressions in heavy rock, too much ballast, 2 lb rock, 2 lbs of rocks. The central claim of this paper is that the position of these types of expressions within the noun phrase limits the kinds of dimensions they may describe. The limitations have to do with whether or not the dimension tracks relevant part-whole relations. An analogy is (...)
     
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  42. The semantics of mass-predicates.Kathrin Koslicki - 1999 - Noûs 33 (1):46-91.
    Along with many other languages, English has a relatively straightforward grammatical distinction between mass-occurrences of nouns and their countoccurrences. As the mass-count distinction, in my view, is best drawn between occurrences of expressions, rather than expressions themselves, it becomes important that there be some rule-governed way of classifying a given noun-occurrence into mass or count. The project of classifying noun-occurrences is the topic of Section II of this paper. Section III, the remainder of the paper, concerns (...)
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  43.  68
    The logic of mass expressions.David Nicolas - 2018 - Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
  44. Names, light nouns, and countability.Friederike Moltmann - 2022 - Linguistic Inquiry 54 (1):117 - 146.
    Proper names are generally taken to be count nouns. This paper argues that this is mistaken and that at least in some languages, for example German, names divide into mass and count. Making use of Kayne's (2005, 2010) theory of light nouns, this paper argues that light nouns are part of (simple) names and that a mass-count distinction among light nouns explains the behavior of certain types of names in German as mass rather (...)
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  45. Part Structures, Integrity, and the Mass-Count Distinction.Friederike Moltmann - 1998 - Synthese 116 (1):75 - 111.
    The notions of part and whole play an important role for ontology and in many areas of the semantics of natural language. Both in philosophy and linguistic semantics, usually a particular notion of part structure is used, that of extensional mereology. This paper argues that such a notion is insufficient for ontology and, especially, for the semantic analysis of the relevant constructions of natural language. What is needed for the notion of part structure, in addition to an ordering among parts, (...)
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  46.  30
    Conceptualization of objectiveness and classification of nouns in bulgarian language.S. P. Burov - 2013 - Liberal Arts in Russia 2 (4):309.
    The article examines the interpretation peculiarities of notions about objectiveness through the prism of grammatical characteristics of the noun in Bulgarian language in comparison with Russian. The author suppose that conceptualization of objectiveness primarily related to quantitative categorization. Specific, individual objects are conceptualized as ''a single unit''; specific set of similar specific objects conceptualized as ''many''; fractional objects conceptualized as uncounted items, converse is also true – uncounted items conceptualized as fractional objects. Depending on other characteristics (structure of the object, (...)
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  47. The mereological constancy of masses.Charlie Tanksley - 2010 - Philosophical Quarterly 60 (239):343-354.
    It is controversial whether masses (what mass nouns refer to) exist. But on the assumption that they do, here are two uncontroversial facts about them: first, they satisfy a fusion principle which takes any set of masses of kind K and yields a mass fusion of kind K; secondly, a mass must have all and only the same parts at every time at which it exists. These two theses are usually built into the concept 'mass'. (...)
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  48. The structure of the chinese language and ontological insights: A collective-noun hypothesis.Bo Mou - 1999 - Philosophy East and West 49 (1):45-62.
    Through a comparative case analysis regarding the Chinese language, it is discussed how the structure and functions of a natural language would bear upon the ways in which some philosophical problems are posed and some ontological insights shaped. Disagreeing with Chad Hansen's mass-noun hypothesis, a collective-noun hypothesis is argued for: (1) the denotational semantics and relevant grammatical features of Chinese nouns are like those of collective nouns; (2) their implicit ontology is a mereological ontology of collection-of-individuals with (...)
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  49.  28
    Count Nouns, Sortal Concepts, and the Nature ofEarly Words.Fei Xu - 2009 - In Francis Jeffry Pelletier (ed.), Kinds, Things, and Stuff: Mass Terms and Generics. New York, US: Oup Usa. pp. 191.
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  50. Any Sum of Parts which are Water is Water.Henry Laycock - 2011 - Humana Mente 4 (19):41-55.
    Mereological entities often seem to violate ‘ordinary’ ideas of what a concrete object can be like, behaving more like sets than like Aristotelian substances. However, the mereological notions of ‘part’, ‘composition’, and ‘sum’ or ‘fusion’ appear to find concrete realisation in the actual semantics of mass nouns. Quine notes that ‘any sum of parts which are water is water’; and the wine from a single barrel can be distributed around the globe without affecting its identity. Is there here, (...)
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