[lingtalks] FW: Roger Schwarzschild Colloquium: March 2, 2009

[Karma Dolma]

The Department of Linguistics at USC proudly presents:

Stubbornly distributive predicates, multi-participant nouns and the
mass/count distinction

Roger Schwarzschild
Rutgers University

Monday, March 2, 2009 3:00 pm - 4:30 pm
Grace Ford Salvatori 118

Following the talk, dinner will be served in the Linguistics Conference Room

Abstract:
 
There are predicates that I call "stubbornly distributive" based on what
happens when they are combined with plural count noun phrases.  I will use
these stubbornly distributive predicates to identify and analyze
"multi-participant nouns".  Multi-participant nouns form a subset of mass
nouns.  Traffic and rubble are multi-participant nouns but furniture and
luggage turn out not to be.  Importantly, 'typical' mass nouns like water
pattern as multi-participant nouns.  Their analysis in this context will be
an occasion to take a fresh look at the semantics of the count/mass
distinction.

The proposed analysis will rely on the hypothesis that nouns, like verbs and
adjectives, are event predicates.  Boy is true of an event whose sole
participant is a boy. In this framework, the meaning of a noun determines
which events are in its extension.  Whether or not a given event is in its
extension can depend on: (a) the nature of the participants in the event,
(b) the number of participants and (c) relations among participants.   By
allowing (a) to be just one component in the meaning of a noun, it becomes
easier to outline a semantic basis for the mass/count distinction with the
following character.  On the one hand, facts about the referents of a noun
phrase influence the categorization of the head nouns:  properties of water
and of dogs, surely are relevant to the status of the nouns water and dog.
On the other hand, properties of referents shouldn't determine the status of
the head, for as has often been observed, co-referential noun phrases can
differ in the mass/count status of their head nouns. 




Email inquiries to: lingtalk at college.usc.edu 
http://www.usc.edu/schools/college/ling/newsevents/colloquia.shtml 
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://pidgin.ucsd.edu/pipermail/lingtalks/attachments/20090225/bfdb757e/attachment.htm>
-------------- next part --------------
A non-text attachment was scrubbed...
Name: Schwarzschild colloq March 2.pdf
Type: application/octet-stream
Size: 9132 bytes
Desc: not available
URL: <http://pidgin.ucsd.edu/pipermail/lingtalks/attachments/20090225/bfdb757e/attachment.obj>