A Semantics for the Counting Numerals of Latin

• Published in: Journal of Semantics
• Main Author: OJEDA, ALMERINDO E.
• Format: Text
• Language: English
• Published: Oxford University Press 1997
• Subjects: Articles; greenlandic
• Online Access: http://jos.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/short/14/2/143; https://doi.org/10.1093/jos/14.2.143

In this paper we present a precise semantics for the two series of counting numerals of Latin: the cardinals and the collectives. Couched in the framework of mereological model-theoretic semantics, the proposal is that while a cardinal denotes a set of equinumerous combinations of elements of an individualisation of the model, a collective denotes a set of equinumerous combinations of elements of a partition of the model. Crucial to the success of this simple proposal will be a number of nontrivial assumptions concerning the nature of groups and kinds in linguistic discourse, the semantics of pluralia tantum, and a distinction between specific and collective plurality. The paper also contains a preliminary discussion of the semantics of cardinals and collectives in the Germanic, Baltic, Slavic, and India branches of Indoeuropean and, beyond Indoeuropean, in Finnish, Mongolian, and Greenlandic. An appendix presents the fundamental concepts of Mereological Theory.