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Most - massique et comptable| old_uid | 12841 |
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| title | Most - massique et comptable |
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| start_date | 2013/10/07 |
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| schedule | 10h30-12h |
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| online | no |
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| location_info | salle D 143 |
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| summary | It is currently assumed that most can quantify over mass domains. This view is confronted with counterexamples that point to the necessity of distinguishing between two types of most, which respectively take set-denoting and entity-denoting restrictors. I will argue that entity-restrictor most can quantify over mass domains, in clear contrast with set-restrictor most, which can only quantify over count domains. These empirical generalizations, which will be shown to hold in English, Romanian, Hungarian and German, bring in new insights into our understanding of genericity: generic sentences built with most can rely not only on a set-restrictor most but also on a kind-restrictor most, which is a particular type of entity-restrictor most. My explanation of the observed generalizations is inspired by Szabolcsi & Zwarts' (93) algebraic semantic account of weak islands: set-restrictor most compares the cardinalities of two complement sets, but mass domains have the structure of non-atomic join semi-lattices, on which complements are not defined. Entity-restrictor most, on the other hand, compares two complement parts of an object, and two complement parts of an object can be defined. The proposal is shown to extend to adverbs of quantification, which are correctly predicted to be able to take either sets or objects in their restriction. |
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| responsibles | Soare, Ferret |
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