Mass, Count, Plural, and Measurement

Mass, count, plural, and measurement Semantics Nouns seem to come in two kinds mass and count. (1) (2) John and Mary each bought barley. John and Mary each bought a book. If John and Mary are married, what’s the net gain to their community property? If John and Mary get divorced and under the settlement, John is awarded 3/4 of their once-joint assets, what’s Mary left with? Various things distinguish mass and count nouns. (3) (5) (7) John bought four books. Each chair is brown. *John doesn’t have much chair(s). (4) (6) (8) *Mary bought four barley(s). *Each furniture is brown. Mary doesn’t have much furniture. You can do coercions, but you can feel that they’re coercions. They’re interpretations of things that are, e.g., naturally mass as count. (9) John bought three coffees. (10) There is chair all over the room. The stuff that mass nouns refer to is homogenous. If you add soup to soup, what you have as a result is soup. If you split soup in half, what you have now is two portions of soup. Mass nouns refer to stuff that is made up of stuff we’d refer to in the same way. If you add a chair to a chair, you don’t have a chair, you have two chairs. Parts of a chair are not a chair. Making mass nouns countable: How do you count soup? (11) (12) (13) I have two gallons of soup. I have two pounds of soap. I have three pieces of furniture. By providing a measurement, we can begin to count the number of those measurements. These measurements can in some sense be natural or imposed. (14) (15) I found three grains of rice in my pocket. I found three pocketfuls of rice in my closet. Bare plurals are worth considering as well. (16) John and Mary each bought apples. Measurement… (17) (18) One quarter inch of wire One quarter inch wire pseudopartitive compound What do these refer to? How did we know that? (19) 80° water (20) *80° of water (21) Two feet of snow But suppose that someone is laying down a snow-boundary in a line. (22) Ten inches of oil But suppose that we’re reporting the current size of a growing oil slick. Consider measuring the wire. Say we measured a wire and found it to be 5 inches. If we cut it in half, what is the measurement of each bit? Consider measuring the water. Say we measured the water and found it to be 80°. If we split it in two, what is the measurement of each part? There are different kinds of metrics we can use when we measure. Some are monotonic: if a is a part of b, a measures m, and b measures n, then m < n. Length, volume, weight, depth is like this, temperature is not. (23) Three feet of wire. Three feet of snow. *Thirty degrees of water. Measurements like measure of stuff (pseudopartitive) seem to require a monotonic measurement. (24) Twenty pounds of dog. Wait, weight is monotonic, why does that sound so unpleasant? Check the definition of monotonic, what seems to be required? Why does this lead to the unpleasant reading? We can measure things this way using a different construction, compounds: (25) (26) (27) (28) A twenty-pound dog. A half-inch cable. A two hour job. A 20 mph wind. Another question: Why does a half inch cable mean something different from a half inch of cable? What are the parts of cable? Is diameter monotonic? Is mph monotonic? The constraint seems to be like this: If the measurement of the stuff is monotonic, you use measure of stuff (pseudopartitive). Otherwise, you use measure stuff (compound). (29) (30) Two pounds of apples. Two feet of apples. The structure of plurals… If A is a book and B is a book, then A and B are books. A is not books. If C is a book, then A and C are also books. As are B and C. And A, B, and C. Books fl V(the books) A+B+C V(books) A+B A+C B+C (A) (B) (C) fl V(book) This kind of organization is called a semi-lattice by those who like math. Basically, if A, B, and C are the atoms, all sums of the atoms are in the plural. (Actually, the atoms aren’t—A isn’t books, after all) We can think of mass nouns the same way, corn and corn is still corn. Parts of corn is corn. (31) (32) John and Mary lifted the piano. The students lifted the piano. The subject seems to be a collection of some sort here. The responsibility can rest either with the collection or with the individuals. When you have a collection of this sort, you seem to have two ways to view it—either as a group or as a bunch of individuals. (33) Three students wrote a book. When is this true, when three students is viewed as individuals (distributive reading)? (34) "x [ x Œ three students Æ x wrote a book ] On the group reading, three students is treated as a single (collective) individual. (35) ↑[three students] wrote a book. (36) I touched the ceiling. Under what circumstances is this true? (37) The boys touched the ceiling. At least two readings… on the group reading, when is this true? There are actually many readings here… (many circs under which it’s true) (38) (39) (40) The boys and the girls touched the ceiling. The boys and the girls filed into the room. The boys and the girls like each other. Groups and collections (41) (42) (43) (44) (45) The students gathered. The committee gathered. The committee has blue eyes. The students resemble each other. The committee resembles each other.