Abstract for Gennaro Chierchia's talk

Mass nouns, number marking, and semantic variation
Gennaro Chierchia (Milan - Bicocca)
November 10, 2005 (Thursday)
4:15 PM - ; Room 6417, the CUNY Graduate Center

Mass nouns and number marking have been used in recent debate to probe the extent of semantic variation and to explore the relation between semantic categories and other (extralinguistic) conceptual systems (such as the system of 'objects- vs. 'substances- investigated by developmental psychologists like S. Carey and L. Spelke or primatologists like M. Hauser). In this talk I intend to pursue such line of research further, starting from the following puzzles. First, in number marking languages, like Romance or Germanic the phenomenon of 'fake- mass nouns is widely attested. Fake mass nouns are nouns like 'furniture- that are grammatically mass (e.g. do not combine with numerals *three furnitures) but cognitively count (for experimental evidence that furniture patterns with count nouns when it comes to counting / individuating tasks see, e.g., Barner and Snedeker 2005 Cognition paper). So the first question is: why do fake mass nouns come about in number marking languages?
Second, classifier languages (like Mandarin or Cantonese) appear to have a grammatically encoded distinction between mass and count (see, e.g. Cheng and Sybesma 99). I.e. mass nouns appear to have a different syntax from count nouns, contrary to what it may prima facie appear. However, fake mass nouns do not seem to exist in classifier languages: nouns that are 'cognitively- count pattern systematically with count nouns with respect to the relevant syntactic tests. The question is: why there aren't fake mass nouns in classifier languages?
To put it differently, the phenomenon of fake mass nouns seems to be an artefact of number marking. Understanding why this is so involves modifying current models of the mass/count contrast and of how number marking works. This, in turn, might take us several step further towards understanding the architecture of (Noun Phrase) grammar and its relation to the conceptual/intentional system.