This paper focuses on the interpretation of what has been considered an expletive marker in grammar Greek nominal domain: plural number mass nouns. We present results experimental investigation nouns by native speakers this language, and we propose a speech act analysis according to which at time producing utterances that contain speaker performs two acts: assertion expressive (s)he publicly co...

This paper analyses the semantics of natural language expressions that are associated with the intuitive notion of ‘place’. We note that the nature of such terms is highly contested, and suggest that this arises from two main considerations: 1) there are a number of logically distinct categories of place expression, which are not always clearly distinguished in discourse about ‘place’; 2) the m...

What semantics should we attribute to mass expressions like wisdom and love, which are derived from gradable expressions (wise, to love)? We first examine how these expressions are used, then how they are interpreted in their various uses. We show in particular that, just like with ordinary concrete mass nouns (wine, furniture), sentences where they appear are liable to distributive, collective...

Theories of spoken word production agree that semantic and phonological representations are activated in spoken word production. There is less agreement concerning the role of syntax. In this study we investigated noun syntax activation in English bare noun naming, using mass and count nouns. Fourteen healthy controls and 13 speakers with aphasia took part. Participants named mass and count nou...

The present study dissociated the immediate neural costs from the subsequent neural consequences of integrating time shifts into our mental representations of events. Event-related potentials were recorded as participants read scenarios that included words referring to short temporal shifts (e.g., after one second), moderate temporal shifts (e.g., after one hour), or long temporal shifts (e.g.,...

Much of the recent countability research agrees on the idea that a satisfactory account of individuation in terms of what counts as “one” unit for counting is highly relevant for characterizing a semantics of the mass/count distinction. (What counts as “one” is not necessarily a formal atom in a Boolean algebra or a natural unit associated with natural kinds like cat.) Taking the most parsimoni...

The literature presents two perspectives on the status of nouns naming certain entities as mass or count. On one view, this choice is predetermined by the nature of the entity named. On the other, this choice is arbitrary, though there may be some regularities or at least tendencies in lexicalization as mass or count. Proponents of arbitrariness cite doublets like mail and letters, leaves and f...

The NTCIR1 TMREC group called for participation of the term recognition task which is a part of NTCIR1 held in 1999. As an activity of TMREC, they have provided us with the test collection of the term recognition task. The goal of this task is to automatically recognize and extract terms from the text corpus which consists of 1,870 abstracts gathered from the NACSIS Academic Conference Database...

A recent eye-tracking study reported a reverse effect of a noun's lexical frequency in the context of the resolution of coreferring pronouns. Investigating the neurophysiological basis of this effect, the present electroencephalographic study found differential patterns in theta activation when participants read pronouns referring to nouns of different frequency classes. Evoked theta power afte...