Parts and Wholes in Semantics

by Moltmann, Friederike

• ISBN13: 9780195095746
• ISBN10: 019509574X
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 1997-08-14
• Publisher: Oxford University Press

Summary

This book develops a unified account of expressions involving the notions of "part" and "whole " in which principles of the individuation of part structures play a central role. Moltmann presents a range of new empirical generalizations with data from English and a variety of other languages involving plurals, mass nouns, adnominal and adverbial modifiers such as as a whole , together , and alone , nominal and adverbial quanitfiers ranging over parts, and expressions of completion such as completely and partly . She develops a new theory of part structures which differs from traditional mereological theories in that the notion of an integrated whole plays a central role and in that the part structure of an entity is allowed to vary across different situations, perspectives, and dimensions.

Table of Contents

1 Introduction	1	(39)
1.1. Part structures in the semantics of natural language	1	(5)
1.2. The analogy between the semantics of plural, mass, and singular count noun phrases	6	(5)
1.3. The traditional view of part structures	11	(5)
1.4. The mass-count distinction: the extensional merelogical account	16	(3)
1.5. A new notion of part structure for natural language	19	(16)
1.5.1. The information-based account of the mass-count distinction	20	(6)
1.5.2. Characterizations of integrated wholes	26	(1)
1.5.3. Formal properties of part structures	27	(2)
1.5.4. Situated part structures	29	(6)
1.6. Summary	35	(1)
Appendix: Comparison with other approaches	35	(5)
1A.1. Notions related to the notion of integrated whole in other semantic approaches	36	(1)
1A.2. The notion of integrated whole and the notion of sortal concept	37	(2)
1A.3. Related approaches to the mass-count distinction	39	(1)
2 The Formal Semantic Framework and the Treatment of Distributivity	40	(21)
2.1. General issues concerning sentence meaning	40	(3)
2.2. Compositional situation semantics for simple constructions	43	(5)
2.3. The treatment of distributivity	48	(13)
2.3.1. The problem of distributivity and types of distributivity phenomena	49	(2)
2.3.2. Ways of treating distributivity	51	(4)
2.3.3. An account of distributivity based on situated part structures and disjunctive lexical meanings	55	(6)
3 Semantic Selection, Part Structures, and Perspectives	61	(43)
3.1. The Accessibility Requirement	62	(25)
3.1.1. The basic data and the generalization	62	(7)
3.1.2. Semantic selection and perspectives	69	(18)
3.2. The Integrated Parts Requirement	87	(15)
3.2.1. The basic data and the generalization	87	(4)
3.2.2. Constructional satisfaction of the Integrated Parts Requirement	91	(10)
3.2.3. Contextual satisfaction of the Integrated Parts Requirement	101	(1)
3.3. Other part-structure-sensitive semantic selectional requirements	102	(2)
4 Part Structures and Quantification	104	(37)
4.1. Quantification with plural and mass NPs	105	(6)
4.1.1. A uniform treatment of plural and mass universal quantification	105	(4)
4.1.2. Further predictions of the account	109	(2)
4.2. Existential quantification over groups and quantities	111	(5)
4.3. Focused quantifiers	116	(7)
4.4. `Generalized' part quantifiers	123	(10)
4.4.1. Adjectival generalized part quantifiers	123	(5)
4.4.2. Generalized part quantifiers of the type all-definite NP	128	(3)
4.4.3. Further properties of generalized part quantifiers	131	(2)
4.5. Each other, same/different, and part quantification	133	(8)
4.5.1. Reciprocals and quantification over parts	134	(1)
4.5.2. Same/Different, its semantic antecedent, and the part structure of its antecedent	135	(6)
5 Metrical and Other Lexical Specifications of Part Structures	141	(22)
5.1. The lexical meaning of frequency expressions	142	(10)
5.1.1. Frequency expressions as part-structure attributes	145	(1)
5.1.2. The lexical meaning of frequency expressions as a part-structure property	145	(4)
5.1.3. Implications of the lexical semantics of frequency expressions	149	(3)
5.2. German mass quantifiers	152	(9)
5.2.1. The metrical determiner manche(s)	152	(4)
5.2.2. German vague count quantifiers and the mass-count distinction	156	(5)
5.3. Conclusions	161	(2)
6 Dimensions of Parts and Wholes and the Part Structure of Events	163	(55)
6.1. Multidimensional part structures of objects and events	163	(1)
6.2. Integrity in different dimensions	164	(11)
6.2.1. Adverbial and adnominal part-structure modifiers	165	(4)
6.2.2. An account based on relativized integrity and perspectives	169	(6)
6.3. Parts in different dimensions	175	(7)
6.3.1. Multidimensional part structures of objects	175	(3)
6.3.2. Multidimensional part structures of events	178	(4)
6.4. Apparent ambiguities with vague event quantifiers and frequency expressions	182	(2)
6.5. Apparent ambiguities with adverbs of completion	184	(17)
6.5.1. The part-quantificational account of adverbs of completion	184	(3)
6.5.2. The multiple readings of adverbs of completion in English	187	(7)
6.5.3. German ganz	194	(3)
6.5.4. Warlpiri quantifier preverbs	197	(2)
6.5.5. Parameters governing the restrictions on the possible readings of expressions of completion	199	(2)
6.6. Apparent ambiguities with concrete event quantifiers	201	(15)
6.6.1. Same/Different in the internal reading	201	(2)
6.6.2. Apparent ambiguities with predicates of concrete events	203	(2)
6.6.3. `Floated quantifiers' ranging over event	205	(1)
6.6.4. Binary distributive event quantifiers	206	(10)
6.7. Conclusions	216	(2)
7 The Mass-Count Distinction for Verbs and Adverbial Quantification over Events	218	(26)
7.1. Verbs and the mass-count distinction	218	(1)
7.2. Adverbial quantifiers as mass quantifiers	219	(11)
7.2.1. Adverbial simple mass quantifiers	221	(7)
7.2.2. Frequency adverbs	228	(1)
7.2.3. Adverbial measure-phrase constructions	229	(1)
7.3. Pronominal reference to events	230	(3)
7.4. N'-Conjunction with deverbal nominalizations	233	(3)
7.5. A possible explanation of the mass-status of verbs	236	(1)
Appendix: Clauses and the mass-count distinction	237	(7)
7A.1. Clauses and the diagnostics of mass categories	237	(1)
7A.2. Pronominal reference to propositions	237	(1)
7A.3. Clauses and agreement	238	(1)
7A.4. Plurals and concealed propositions	239	(1)
7A.5. Requirements on the countability of situations	240	(4)
8 Concluding Remark about Part Structures and Natural Language	244	(1)
Bibliography	245	(6)
Index	251