Number-neutral bare plurals and the multiplicity implicature.
Bare plurals ( dogs) behave in ways that quantified plurals ( some dogs) do not. For instance, while the sentence John owns dogs implies that John owns more than one dog, its negation John does not own dogs does not mean “John does not own more than one dog”, but rather “John does not own a dog”. A...
| Published in: | Linguistics & Philosophy Vol. 32; no. 4; pp. 353 - 408 |
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| Format: | Article |
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Springer Nature
Aug2009
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| Online Access: | View this record in EBSCOhost |
| fields | @attributes: recordID: 1 pdfLink: plink: https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=hlh&AN=48191117&site=ehost-live header: @attributes: shortDbName: hlh uiTerm: 48191117 longDbName: Humanities International Complete uiTag: AN controlInfo: bkinfo: jinfo: jid: 01650157 OJI jtl: Linguistics & Philosophy issn: 01650157 maglogo: N pubinfo: dt: Aug2009 vid: 32 iid: 4 pid: 237 pub: Springer Nature artinfo: ui: 48191117 10.1007/s10988-009-9064-3 ppf: 353 ppct: 55 formats: fmt: @attributes: type: P size: 652KB tig: atl: Number-neutral bare plurals and the multiplicity implicature. aug: au: Zweig, Eytan affil: Department of Language and Linguistic Science, University of York, Heslington, York YO10 4DD UK su: Number (Grammar) Nouns Verb phrases Language & languages Linguistics Schools sug: subj: Number (Grammar) Nouns Verb phrases Language & languages Linguistics Schools keyword: Bare plurals Dependent plurals Events Scalar implicature ab: Bare plurals ( dogs) behave in ways that quantified plurals ( some dogs) do not. For instance, while the sentence John owns dogs implies that John owns more than one dog, its negation John does not own dogs does not mean “John does not own more than one dog”, but rather “John does not own a dog”. A second puzzling behavior is known as the dependent plural reading; when in the scope of another plural, the ‘more than one’ meaning of the plural is not distributed over, but the existential force of the plural is. For example, My friends attend good schools requires that each of my friends attend one good school, not more, while at the same time being inappropriate if all my friends attend the same school. This paper shows that both these phenomena, and others, arise from the same cause. Namely, the plural noun itself does not assert ‘more than one’, but rather the plural denotes a predicate that is number neutral (unspecified for cardinality). The ‘more than one’ meaning arises as an scalar implicature, relying on the scalar relationship between the bare plural and its singular alternative, and calculated in a sub-sentential domain; namely, before existential closure of the event variable. Finally, implications of this analysis will be discussed for the analysis of the quantified noun phrases that interact with bare plurals, such as indefinite numeral DPs ( three boys), and singular universals ( every boy). pubtype: Academic Journal doctype: Article src: R language: English refInfo: copyright: @attributes: flag: Y custom: Linguistics & Philosophy is a copyright of Springer, 2009. All Rights Reserved. item: Linguistics & Philosophy holder: Springer Nature dt: @attributes: year: 2009 holdings: @attributes: islocal: N |
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