意味論研究会2018年11月7日

In this paper we examine three different constructions in which a mass noun is embedded in what appears to be a count environment but the construction remains uncountable.
The constructions in question involve bare measures, classifier like elements and unexpected pluralisation, (I use here examples from Englsih when possible but we will see that this extends far beyond English):
Q-nouns (Klockman 2017)
John splilled *three/*several/*many lots/loads/heaps of water/mud/sand
Bare measures
John spilled (*three/*many/several) liters and liters of water....
Plural Mass nouns (Greek)
Trehun nera apo to tavani
Run waters from the ceiling
Water is drpopping from the ceiling

We show that these constructions share an important array of properties both morphosyntactic (idiosyncrasies of agreement/prepositional vs morphological genitives/presence vs. absence of determiners etc) and semantic (most prominently that an abundance inference is associated with all these cases).
We develop a semantic analysis of these cases in a disjointness-based ontology and a specific syntax that capitalizes on the fact that these constructions are not always headed by the same element. We account for the inferences in terms of informativeness-based quantity implicatures.