Evidence for mass and count in Inuttut
While it is clear that some languages have a grammatical mass/count distinction (e.g. English), in other languages (e.g. Inuktitut) it is not so obvious. In this paper, I show that Inuttut (Labrador Inuktitut) has a subtle grammatical mass/count distinction: while number, numerals, and most quantifi...
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2012
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crjohnbenjaminsp:10.1075/lv.12.2.03gil 2024-06-09T07:47:20+00:00 Evidence for mass and count in Inuttut Gillon, Carrie 2012 http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/lv.12.2.03gil http://www.jbe-platform.com/deliver/fulltext/lv.12.2.03gil.pdf en eng John Benjamins Publishing Company Linguistic Variation volume 12, issue 2, page 211-246 ISSN 2211-6834 2211-6842 journal-article 2012 crjohnbenjaminsp https://doi.org/10.1075/lv.12.2.03gil 2024-05-15T13:26:39Z While it is clear that some languages have a grammatical mass/count distinction (e.g. English), in other languages (e.g. Inuktitut) it is not so obvious. In this paper, I show that Inuttut (Labrador Inuktitut) has a subtle grammatical mass/count distinction: while number, numerals, and most quantifiers do not disambiguate between mass and count nouns, in a few places, the morphology or the semantics disambiguates between mass and count. Thus, Inuttut is not a counterexample to Doetjes (1997) or Chierchia (2010), who both argue that all languages distinguish between mass and count. I further argue against Borer (2005) who claims all nouns in all languages are underlyingly neutral, and are assigned mass interpretation by default in the absence of individuation. I show that Inuttut nouns cannot all be underlyingly neutral and/or mass by default. Keywords: mass; count; classifiers; Inuktitut; number; numerals; quantifiers Article in Journal/Newspaper inuktitut Inuttut John Benjamins Publishing Company Linguistic Variation 12 2 211 246 |
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John Benjamins Publishing Company |
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crjohnbenjaminsp |
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English |
description |
While it is clear that some languages have a grammatical mass/count distinction (e.g. English), in other languages (e.g. Inuktitut) it is not so obvious. In this paper, I show that Inuttut (Labrador Inuktitut) has a subtle grammatical mass/count distinction: while number, numerals, and most quantifiers do not disambiguate between mass and count nouns, in a few places, the morphology or the semantics disambiguates between mass and count. Thus, Inuttut is not a counterexample to Doetjes (1997) or Chierchia (2010), who both argue that all languages distinguish between mass and count. I further argue against Borer (2005) who claims all nouns in all languages are underlyingly neutral, and are assigned mass interpretation by default in the absence of individuation. I show that Inuttut nouns cannot all be underlyingly neutral and/or mass by default. Keywords: mass; count; classifiers; Inuktitut; number; numerals; quantifiers |
format |
Article in Journal/Newspaper |
author |
Gillon, Carrie |
spellingShingle |
Gillon, Carrie Evidence for mass and count in Inuttut |
author_facet |
Gillon, Carrie |
author_sort |
Gillon, Carrie |
title |
Evidence for mass and count in Inuttut |
title_short |
Evidence for mass and count in Inuttut |
title_full |
Evidence for mass and count in Inuttut |
title_fullStr |
Evidence for mass and count in Inuttut |
title_full_unstemmed |
Evidence for mass and count in Inuttut |
title_sort |
evidence for mass and count in inuttut |
publisher |
John Benjamins Publishing Company |
publishDate |
2012 |
url |
http://dx.doi.org/10.1075/lv.12.2.03gil http://www.jbe-platform.com/deliver/fulltext/lv.12.2.03gil.pdf |
genre |
inuktitut Inuttut |
genre_facet |
inuktitut Inuttut |
op_source |
Linguistic Variation volume 12, issue 2, page 211-246 ISSN 2211-6834 2211-6842 |
op_doi |
https://doi.org/10.1075/lv.12.2.03gil |
container_title |
Linguistic Variation |
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12 |
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2 |
container_start_page |
211 |
op_container_end_page |
246 |
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1801378321636786176 |