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Mass nouns, plurals and non-singular logics| old_uid | 1695 |
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| title | Mass nouns, plurals and non-singular logics |
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| start_date | 2006/11/03 |
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| schedule | 11h-13h |
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| online | no |
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| summary | In this paper, I propose to adopt a non-singular logic in order to account for the semantics of mass nouns, like "water", "gold" and "furniture". I first expose the dilemma that has been put forward in favor of the use of non-singular logics for dealing with plurals (Schein 1993, Rayo 2002). I then establish that this dilemma does not apply to mass nouns. However, there subsists an important conceptual and ontological difference between singularism and non-singularism. A singularist treatment of mass nouns must postulate the following. Each time a mass noun "N" applies both to an entity x and to an entity y, there exists another entity z, corresponding to x and y considered together, to which "N" also applies. No such extra entity is required if one uses a non-singular logic. This essential difference and the parallelisms between plurals and mass nouns justify the adoption of a non-singular logic to represent mass nouns. |
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| responsibles | Stojanovic |
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