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Share Paper 2433

Plural Mass Nouns and the Morpho-syntax of Number
Artemis Alexiadou
33-41 (complete paper or proceedings contents)

Abstract

This paper examines the properties of plural mass nouns in Greek. It puts forth a split analysis of plural Number, according to which there are two types of plural, a so-called grammatical plural and a so-called lexical plural. The former is on the Number head and realizes a plural semantic feature. The latter is on n (it is a categorizing head). On this view, plural mass nouns are simple nPs. The paper then examines why argument supporting nominals, which have been argued by Grimshaw (1990) to be mass nouns, are incompatible with the latter type of plural. The explanation offered is that since the nominalizing affix and lexical plural both realize n, they are in complementary distribution.

Published in

Proceedings of the 28th West Coast Conference on Formal Linguistics
edited by Mary Byram Washburn, Katherine McKinney-Bock, Erika Varis, Ann Sawyer, and Barbara Tomaszewicz
Table of contents
Printed edition: $375.00