This chapter analyses the relation between mass noun phrases and measure readings within Landman’s theory of Iceberg semantics. Landman not only applies Iceberg semantics to different noun classes, but also generalizes the theory to apply to DPs and different interpretations of measure phrases. These developments are then used to address the main puzzle in the paper: ‘when mass counts’. Based on data mostly from Dutch and German, Landman proposes an explanation for why not only neat mass nouns, such as furniture, admit of cardinality comparison readings with quantifiers, such as most, and are felicitous with stubbornly distributive adjectives, such as big, but why it is also the case that mess mass nouns, such as meat, can also get cardinality comparison readings in the same contexts. For the latter case, the key to the analysis is to make use of contextual portioning, a process that is independently motivated in the portion readings of measure phrases.

Chapter 6 is dedicated to the non-canonical genitive case-marking on objects in Balto-Slavic languages, concentrating primarily on Russian facts. It deals with the genitive/accusative alternation on direct objects and, to a lesser degree, the genitive/nominative alternation on subjects. First, Genitive of Negation and Intensional Genitive are discussed. The two phenomena, which involve genitive case-assignment to the object of a negated or intensional verb, are unified under the term Irrealis Genitive. The chapter considers those properties that affect the choice of case, including definiteness, scope, number, abstractness, and a range of syntactic and semantic analyses that have been proposed to account for the case alternations. Second, we take a look at Partitive Genitive. Here, the genitive object is interpreted quantificationally, indicating an indeterminate amount of the matter denoted by the noun. Characteristics of the phenomenon, such as homogeneity of the object and perfectivity of the verb, are listed, and two accounts are considered: one positing that the non-canonical genitive is assigned by a phonologically empty quantifier and the other treating genitive objects as nominal measure predicates. The chapter also discusses the relation between non-canonical genitive case and DOM.