Majority quantification and quantity superlatives : a crosslinguistic analysis of most / Carmen Dobrovie-Sorin and Ion Giurgea.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Dobrovie-Sorin, Carmen, 1952- author.

Giurgea, Ion, 1976- author.

Series:

Oxford studies in theoretical linguistics ; 77.

Oxford studies in theoretical linguistics ; 77

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Grammar, Comparative and general--Quantifiers.

Grammar, Comparative and general.

Grammar, Comparative and general--Syntax.

Physical Description:

1 online resource (304 pages) : illustrations (black and white).

Edition:

First edition.

Place of Publication:

Oxford : Oxford University Press, 2021.

Summary:

This text investigates the syntax and semantics of proportional most and other majority quantifiers across languages. Carmen Dobrovie-Sorin and Ion Giurgea draw on data from around 40 languages to demonstrate the existence of two distinct semantic types of most: a distributive type, which compares cardinalities of sets of atoms, and a cumulative type, which involves measuring plural and mass entities with respect to a whole.

Contents:

Cover

Majority Quantification and Quantity Superlatives: A Crosslinguistic Analysis of Most

Copyright

Contents

General Preface

Acknowledgments

List of Abbreviations

1: Introduction

1.1 The results of this book

1.1.1 A distribution-based typology of proportional ....

1.1.2 Syntactic assumptions

1.1.3 Our semantic analyses in a nutshell

1.2 Previous semantic analyses of ....

1.2.1 The GQT analysis of ....

1.2.2 Hackl (2009): proportional .... as a superlative adjective

1.2.3 Higginbotham's (1994) analysis of the mass quantifier ....

1.2.4 On the difference between .... and .... .... ....: Solt (2016)

1.3 Note on empirical coverage and methodology

1.4 Organization of the book

1.5 Appendix: Languages in which ..../....superl does not have the proportional reading

1.5.1 Languages with articles

1.5.2 Languages without articles

1.5.3 Non-partitive majority quantifiers distinct from ....sup

1.5.4 Languages with no special superlative morpheme

1.5.4.1 Romance languages

1.5.4.2 Albanian

1.5.4.3 Russian

1.5.5 Conclusion

2: Distributive MOST

2.1 Proportional MOST and the count/mass distinction: Romanian, Hungarian, Icelandic

2.2 Proportional MOST and kind-referring bare NPs

2.2.1 Proportional .... and the count/mass distinction in English

2.2.2 Kind-referring bare NPs across languages

2.2.3 Summary

2.3 Proportional MOST and (in)compatibility with mass quantification

2.3.1 Background on mass and plural NPs

2.3.2 Possible analyses of .... and the count/mass distinction

2.3.3 Plural marking on the NP restrictor of ....

2.3.4 Object mass NPs and atomicity

2.3.5 On the restriction of ....dist to atomic domains

2.3.6 Derived atoms in the restrictor of ....dist

2.4 Proportional most and (in)compatibility

2.4.1 The data.

2.4.2 Explaining the data

2.4.3 An alternative analysis: Crnic (2009)

2.5 On the syntax of ....dist across languages

2.6 Conclusions

3 Cumulative MOST

3.1 Cumulative majority quantifiers across languages

3.1.1 When majority .... allows mass quantification

3.1.2 The majority quantifier (...) .... in Bulgarian

3.1.3 Languages with cumulative majority quantifiers other than .... or ....

3.1.4 Summary

3.2 The syntax of MOST cum

3.2.1 MOST cum requires the definite article

3.2.2 MOSTcum sits in Spec,MeasP

3.3 Superlative analyses of MOST cum

3.3.1 Hackl's (2009) analysis

3.3.2 Hoeksema's (1983) analysis

3.4 MOST cum as a proportional quantifier

3.4.1 A revised version of Higginbotham's analysis of mass quantifiers

3.4.2 The syntax-semantics interface

3.4.3 On the majority reading of ... .... (Bulgarian)

3.5 Cumulative majority quantifiers in languages without articles

3.6 (In)definiteness with superlative and majority MOST

3.6.1 Generalizations and questions

3.6.2 Some history

3.6.3 The syntax-semantics representation of .... and definiteness

4: MOST in partitives

4.1 The data

4.2 The structure of partitive constructions

4.3 Mass partitives

4.4 Majority quantifiers in partitives

4.4.1 Cumulative majority quantifiers in partitive constructions

4.4.2 Distributive .... in partitives: Romanian

4.4.3 Majority Quantifiers specialized for partitives

4.4.3.1 Two partitive ....s: English and Icelandic

4.4.3.3 MOST/MANY and .... in partitive constructions

4.4.4 Summary

4.5 The semantic analysis of partitive ....

4.5.1 The semantics of ....RP and ....DP

4.5.2 MOSTDP with kind-referring bare nouns

4.6 Some notes on similarities and differences between partitive .... and ...

4.6.1 Distributional differences between .... and ...

4.6.2 ALL as a homogeneity remover

4.6.3 Homogeneous predicates and cumulative quantification

4.6.4 Back to the distributional differences between ... and ....

4.6.5 More on the distribution of ... in English

4.7 Conclusions

4.8 Appendix: On a special superlative reading of ....

5: Majority quantifiers based on nouns

5.1 (THE) LARG(EST) PART across languages

5.2 The noun PART

5.3 The semantic composition of ... ....... ....

5.4 A quantificational analysis of proportional THE LARGEST PART?

5.5 Nouns of the MAJORTY type

5.5.1 The internal structure of MAJORITY nouns

5.5.2 The semantic analysis of MAJORITY nouns

5.5.3 On a peculiar type of relative superlative reading

5.6 Extending the partition-based analysis to partitive (...) ....

5.6.1 A note on the history of the English partitive most

5.6.2 Reanalyzing partitive .... when preceded by the definite article

5.7 Majority quantifiers in Hindi, Latin, and Syrian Arabic

5.7.1 The Hindi majority quantifier

5.7.2 Latin plerusque

5.7.3 A counterpart of Latin plerusque in Syrian Arabic

5.8 Conclusions

6: Conclusions

6.1 Summary of empirical findings

6.2 The "why" questions: degree quantifiers, quantificational determiners, and homogeneity removers

6.3 Compositional issues, the relation between majority interpretations and superlatives, grammaticalization

6.4 "Essentially" quantificational, reference to sums, distributivity, and part-whole relations

References

Index.

Notes:

This edition also issued in print: 2021.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

0-19-183369-X

0-19-250876-8

OCLC:

1243541303