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3 - Counting Aggregates, Groups and Kinds: Countability from the Perspective of a Morphologically Complex Language

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2021

By
Scott Grimm  and
Mojmír Dočekal
Edited by
Hana Filip
Hana Filip
Affiliation:
Heinrich-Heine-Universität Düsseldorf
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Summary

Thischapter focuses on data from Czech, specifically, derived aggregates and complex numerals. Derived aggregates such as list-í (leaf- í- NOM.SG, ‘foliage’) are derived from a count noun (e.g., list) and the suffix -í. Furthermore, aggregates derived with -í are non-count. Grimm and Dočekal discuss three types of complex numerals that are also morphologically derived: derived group numerals, complex numerals for aggregates, and taxonomic numerals. As well as using these data to bolster the support for a view in which aggregates are a distinct kind of non-countable entity from substances, the authorsargue the complexity of the morphosyntactic resources a language can limit the extent to which nouns in that language are mass/count flexible. These data are then modeled in a neo-Krifkan framework, enriched with mereotopology that accounts for taxonomic and group numeral constructions, the sense in which derived aggregates denote clustered individuals (individuals formed of parts that stand in relatedness relations to one another), and why the counting of derived aggregates in Czech is only possible with complex numerals for aggregates.

Keywords

aggregatescomplex numeralsCzechtaxonomic and group numeral constructionsmereotopology
Type
Chapter
Information
Countability in Natural Language , pp. 85 - 120
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2021

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