Logical Studies

The Semantics of Concrete Mass Terms

Document Type : Research

Author

Mohsen Shabani Samghabadi

Department of philosophy, Tarbiat Modarres University, Tehran, Iran

https://doi.org/10.30465/lsj.2021.36900.1372
Abstract
Common nouns, in most natural languages, are divided into two categories: Count nouns and mass/noncount nouns. There are both syntactical and semantical distinctions between mass terms and count terms. However, among these distinctions, a syntactical distinction is the most obvious. Mass nouns are modified by numerals. For example, in English, we can talk about “two dolphins” or “three trees.” but we can not speak about “bronze” and “water” in this way. On the semantic side, according to objectual interpretation, an individual object—a dolphin— can satisfy “x is a dolphin.” But an individual object can not satisfy “x is water.” At least in most times, a collection of particles, drops, molecules —and so on—can satisfy that sentence. A central question here is that what is the nature of this “collection”? Is this collection an abstract set or a concrete mereological fusion? Accordingly, there are two approaches based on set theory and mereology. First, in this paper, I considered challenges faced by these two approaches, then I showed that the mereological-based approach with some modifications would overcome these challenges.

Keywords

Semantics of natural language
Count nouns
Concrete mass nouns
Mereology
Set theory
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Logical Studies
Volume 12, Issue 2
September 2021
Pages 127-148

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