The mountains are impure: the semantics of lexical plurality

Sophia Nauta; Hanna de Vries; Jenny Doetjes

doi:10.3765/salt.v1i0.5348

The mountains are impure: the semantics of lexical plurality

Sophia Nauta, Hanna de Vries, Jenny Doetjes

ILS - Language, logic and information

Leiden University

Research output: Chapter in Book/Report/Conference proceeding › Conference contribution › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

This paper is concerned with the semantics of so-called plurals of extension, a class of lexical plurals such as mountains, cliffs, skies, Hebrides, and Pyrenees. While similar on the surface to regular plural nouns, they behave differently in certain regards, including their compatibility with determiners, interpretation in half of the N partitives and possibility to occur as weak definites. We will argue that plurals of extension denote predicates over impure atoms, predicting that they
behave as singulars from a semantic point of view and as plurals from a morphological point of view. The analysis will be extended to temporal plurals of extension and plural mass nouns.

Original language	English
Title of host publication	Proceedings of SALT 32
Editors	John R. Starr, Juhyae Kim, Burak Öney
Publisher	Linguistic Society of America
Pages	314-334
Number of pages	21
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.3765/salt.v1i0.5348
Publication status	Published - 29 Dec 2022

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abstract = "This paper is concerned with the semantics of so-called plurals of extension, a class of lexical plurals such as mountains, cliffs, skies, Hebrides, and Pyrenees. While similar on the surface to regular plural nouns, they behave differently in certain regards, including their compatibility with determiners, interpretation in half of the N partitives and possibility to occur as weak definites. We will argue that plurals of extension denote predicates over impure atoms, predicting that theybehave as singulars from a semantic point of view and as plurals from a morphological point of view. The analysis will be extended to temporal plurals of extension and plural mass nouns.",

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N2 - This paper is concerned with the semantics of so-called plurals of extension, a class of lexical plurals such as mountains, cliffs, skies, Hebrides, and Pyrenees. While similar on the surface to regular plural nouns, they behave differently in certain regards, including their compatibility with determiners, interpretation in half of the N partitives and possibility to occur as weak definites. We will argue that plurals of extension denote predicates over impure atoms, predicting that theybehave as singulars from a semantic point of view and as plurals from a morphological point of view. The analysis will be extended to temporal plurals of extension and plural mass nouns.

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ER -

The mountains are impure: the semantics of lexical plurality

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