Exceptions in Relational Plurals

Dynamic Semantics of Plurals

Mass Nouns and Plurals

Determinerless (or “bare”) mass and plural noun phrases also show a parallel alternation in interpretation, depending on the predicate with which they combine. If the predicate is stagelevel (in the terminology of Carlson 1977a,b), the noun phrase is understood as existentially quantified, as in (4)a. and b., which are roughly equivalent to Some water leaked into the floor and Some raccoons wer...

Russian Genitive Plurals are Impostors

(1) a. Inflectional paradigms aspire to “avoid homophony”. The Russian nominative singular and genitive plural endings reflect a transderivational attempt to minimize homophony across inflectional endings. b. Inflectional paradigms require transderivational reference: one cannot compute the Russian genitive plural without knowing what the nominative singular ending is. c. Markedness-based neutr...

Properties, Plurals and Paradox

It has been argued that an objectual semantics for plurals falls victim to Russell's paradox, and that a nominalistic semantics should therefore be preferred (Boolos 1984); similar considerations have sometimes been extended to other types of abstract reference, in particular to property talk. We suggest that this line of argument is mistaken: deeply entrenched features of ordinary language gua...

Natural Language Plurals in Logic Programming Queries

This paper presents a representation for natural language plurals in knowledge base queries, implementing collective, distributive, cumulative, and multiply distributive senses of the plural by means of higher predicates. The underlying semantics is based on Franconi’s theory of collections. The collective reading of a plural applies the predicate to the whole collection; the distributive readi...