Entities, events, and their parts : The semantics of multipliers in Slavic
| Authors | |
|---|---|
| Year of publication | 2020 |
| Type | Article in Proceedings |
| Conference | Current Developments in Slavic Linguistics. Twenty Years After (based on selected papers from FDSL 11) |
| MU Faculty or unit | |
| Citation | |
| Web | Webové stránky publikace |
| Doi | http://dx.doi.org/10.3726/978-3-653-07147-4 |
| Keywords | multipliers; subatomic quantification; counting; mereology; atomicity |
| Description | In this chapter, I present novel data concerning quantification in the adjectival domain. I examine semantic properties of Slavic multipliers such as Polish podwójny, Czech dvojitý, Russian dvojnoj, and Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian dvostruki (all ‘double’) which seem to involve what I call subatomic quantification. Unlike cardinal numerals, multipliers do not count entities or events, but rather their particular parts. Since Slavic multipliers are derivationally complex, I argue that they are in fact compositional. Building on the system of Krifka (1989, 1990, and 1995), I propose an analysis which accounts for a representative subset of data. The main claim is that in Slavic numeral roots simply denote numbers whereas specialized morphemes restrict the domain of quantification by introducing a special measure function yielding a number of self-sufficient parts, i.e., elements which have a property of a whole, constituting an individual or event denoted by a noun. |
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