[HPSG-L] Call for Papers, Conference on Count and Mass Nouns

[Tibor Kiss]

Hi everybody,

I have a feeling that this CFP may not have reached you yet.

With kind regards

Tibor


Call for Papers

The Count-Mass Distinction: A Linguistic Misunderstanding?

May 7-9, 2018, Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum, Germany

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Invited speakers: 

Gennaro Chierchia (Harvard University, USA) 

Jenny Doetjes (Universiteit Leiden, The Netherlands) 

Susan Rothstein (Bar Ilan University, Israel)

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Numerous publications bear witness that the count/mass distinction is
a prominent topic in linguistic research. Despite its prominence, the dis-
tinction is elusive, and several key issues have not yet been resolved. On
the semantic side, some authors presuppose that count nouns make atomic
denotations available in language (cf. Link 1983; Chierchia 1998, 2000; Roth-
stein 2010). Some of these approaches have been challenged by the homo-
geneous structure of count nouns like fence and wall. Additionally there
are the so-called fake mass nouns, object mass nouns or superordinates such
as furniture, silverware or lingerie that provide denotations with an atomic
structure but unlike count nouns they do not make their atoms available in
language. Even though Rothstein (2010) manages to solve these problems by
introducing contextually related atomicity, it remains unclear what the very
concepts count and mass mean apart from making atomic structure available.
In Rothsteins approach, the burden is shifted to a contextual function, which,
however, seems to be present in every usage of at least some nouns. 

While the aforementioned approaches are based on compositional semantic analy-
ses, syntactic approaches such as Borers 2005 treatment of plurals as divisions
have shed new light on interesting areas, but fail to integrate composition-
ality. A peculiar puzzle for the role of number in syntax and semantics is
the fact that mass nouns sometimes can denote pluralic entities, but require
singular number agreement in many languages. This observation has severe
implications for approaches as diverse as the Minimalist Program (Chom-
sky 2005) and HPSG (Pollard and Sag 1994) both approaches assume that
number is an interpretable feature. The uncertainty around the count/mass
distinction is further exacerbated by the observation that a binary distinc-
tion may not be able to account for the full range of data. 

Although Allan (1980) has already shown that nouns do not necessarily occur in all contexts
that are usually labeled syntactically as count or mass, the variation among
nouns has been ignored with the exception of so-called dual life nouns, i.e.
nouns that are both count and mass. Recent empirical research by Kiss et
al. (2016) has put this issue on the fore again, by pointing out nouns that
may be pluralized, but may not occur together with an indefinite determiner
(e.g. additive, disadvantage, therapy and punishment), and also nouns that
may occur together with an indefinite determiner, but may not be pluralized
(blush, bosom and front). Similar problems emerge if immediate grammatical
consequences of a count/mass distinction are considered. 

Many grammarians assume e.g. that singular count nouns require the presence of a determiner;
but a closer look into the literature reveals that the relationship between
determiners and nouns is either one of stipulation (if not circularity), or even
reversed, so that we could instead conclude that determiners of a certain
type need count nouns as their complement, but not that the nouns actu-
ally require the presence of a determiner (as e.g. in Chierchia 1998). 

Finally, broader typological research has shown that the count/mass distinction is not
a necessary property of the grammar system (cf. Wiltschko 2012, Mathieu
2012, Lima 2014, 2016). Many linguists and philosophers have some intu-
itive idea of a count/mass distinction, but formal theories eventually have to
map their count/mass distinction to another arbitrary property. Lost in this
process is the possibility that a binary distinction may be observationally
and descriptively inadequate. 

The purpose of this conference is to critically
examine what we know about the count/mass distinction, and ideally to pro-
vide ideas and evidence that puts research on the count/mass distinction on
a new level even if this means that the count/mass distinction is replaced
by alternative concepts. 

Here is a non-exclusive list of topics that should be addressed at this conference:

– What do we gain if we replace the locus of the count/mass distinction from the lexical 
level to the phrasal level or to the sub-lexical level, i.e. by evoking ''senses''?

– Is it possible to provide a formal account of the count/mass distinction that does 
not rely on a functional relation between singularities and pluralities?

– What impact would it have on the count/mass distinction if we examined grammatical 
properties of count nouns independently (i.e. considering occurrences with indefinite 
determiners and plural inflections as independent properties shared by a subset of the nouns)? 

– What should be the status of ''readings'' of noun-occurrences that have played a role in 
the mass/count literature: grinding (''armadillo all over the road''), portioning 
(''three beers on the table''), sorting (''eight beers on tap''), evaluating 
(''too much car for the average driver'')?

– What is the relationship between mass/count as applied to ''concrete nouns'' vs. ''abstract nouns''?

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Abstracts and Submission 

We invite abstracts with maximal five pages (plus up to a page of references) 
describing original work in the area of
the count/mass distinction in PDF, 
no particular style sheet is required for
the submissions. 

The deadline for the abstracts will be 04.10.2017, 23:59 GMT+1. 

Abstracts should be emailed to: tibor at linguistics.rub.de 
The notification of acceptance will be issued on 15.11.2017. 

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The conference will take place from 07.05.2018 until 09.05.2018 at the Veranstaltungszentrum of
Ruhr-Universitaet Bochum. 

Organizing Committee: 
Tibor Kiss, Halima Husic, Francis Jeffry Pelletier, Johanna Marie Poppek