Parts of a Whole: Distributivity as a Bridge Between Aspect and Measurement

By Lucas Champollion

This book uses mathematical models of language to explain why there are certain gaps in language: things that we might expect to be able to say but can't. For instance, why can we say I ran for five minutes but not *I ran all the way to the store for five minutes? Why is five pounds of books acceptable, but *five pounds of book not acceptable? What prevents us from saying *sixty degrees of water to express the temperature of the water in a swimming pool when sixty inches of water can express its depth? And why can we not say *all the ants in my kitchen are numerous? The constraints on these constructions involve concepts that are generally studied separately: aspect, plural and mass reference, measurement, and distributivity. In this book, Lucas Champollion provides a unified perspective on these domains, connects them formally within the framework of algebraic semantics and mereology, and uses this connection to transfer insights across unrelated bodies of literature and formulate a single constraint that explains each of the judgments above.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0198755120
• ISBN13: 9780198755128
• Release Date: May 2017
• Publisher: Oxford University Press (UK)
• Length: 332 Pages
• Weight: 1.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.9" x 5.9" x 9.2"