The Semantics of Count Nouns

This paper offers an account of the semantics of count nous. I show that neither the atomic/nonatomic distinction nor the homogeneous/non-homogeneous distinction is sufficient to explain the semantic contrast between mass and count nouns, since there are mass nouns which are atomic, and there are count nouns which are homogeneous. Starting from a version of Chierchia's 1998a account of the semantics of mass nouns under which the mass and count domains are atomic, I show that the denotation of singular count nouns is derived via a measure operation which picks out sets of non-overlapping entities which count as one by a recoverable unit of measurement. These entities I call 'semantic atoms'. Since the choice of unit of measurement may be context dependent, the denotation of a count noun may be context dependent too. Grammatical operations, including, but not restricted to, counting require access to sets of semantic atoms, thus count nouns but not mass nouns can be direc...

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2009
• Where: AMSTERDAM
• Authors: Susan Rothstein
• Keywords: AMSTERDAM 2009, Count Noun, Logical Reasoning, Nouns, Semantic