Number and Individuation : Nominal Semantics in Dagaare
Number and Individuation : Nominal Semantics in Dagaare
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数字和个性化:达加雷的名义语义
DOI：
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发表时间：
2010
期刊：
影响因子：
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通讯作者：
P. Muto
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
S. Falivene;F. Giugliano;A. Grimaldi;R. Di Franco;D. Toledo;M. Muto;F. Cammarota;V. Borzillo;P. Ascierto;P. Muto
语言处理各种手段来分类和计数世界上存在的不同类型的对象。一个例子是讨论得很多的质量计数的区别。在英语中，可数名词（dog，chair）允许复数标记，并被基数量词（two）和暗示复数的限定词（several）修饰;质量词（water，sand）不允许复数标记，也不允许可数名词的量词或限定词，但可以允许修饰much或a lot of。关于这种区分的基本问题仍然存在很大的争议和未回答的问题：所指对象的哪些属性与一种语言中名词的不同语法实现有关，例如允许复数化，以及名词性所指对象的属性和语法表达之间的关系如何在不同语言中变化？对于许多类型的实体，语言在很大程度上同意哪些类型的实体是可数的，哪些是不可数的-例如，名词指液体跨语言不允许典型的复数标记或复数解释，而名词指人类。在规范可数和规范不可数两个极端之间，不同语言之间存在着丰富的差异，比如某一类实体可以使用什么样的数字标记，以及语法数字是如何实现的，例如，具有集体指代的名词（树叶、头发）和指代上位类别的名词（家具、银器）。系统地了解不同本体类型的对象，其伴随的属性和跨语言的语言表示的不同方式的关系是一个肥沃的研究领域，并且与对事件的可比研究相比，在很大程度上未被探索。指导该项目的中心假设是，数的形态实现对名词所传达的意义敏感。特别是，数字的实现对概念和感知因素敏感，属于个性化的覆盖术语，它表征了实体作为个体单位出现的倾向。在哲学、语言学和心理语言学的文献中，人们从不同的角度探讨了个性化的概念（Quine 1960; Mufwene 1980; Bloom 1994; Middleton等人2004等）;在这些帐户的基础上，个性化在这里被提议以标量方式操作，在将术语分类为质量或计数以及另外分类为集合时，影响跨词典的语法数字的实现，这在跨语言上对于昆虫和蔬菜/谷物/水果是常见的，以及影响分别以复数或单数出现的偏好，例如“肋”和“鼻”。这一假设与语法数理论研究的两个中心主题有关：（i）相对于计数项的质量表征;（ii）相对于单数的复数意义（和语义表征）。Dagaare（南古尔语;刚果）的语法数字系统，其形态似乎对不同程度的个性化敏感，为增加对这些问题的理解提供了理想的资源。Dagaare的名词系统的基本范式是一种罕见的数字标记类型，称为“反向”或“极性”数字标记（Baerman 2007），如（1）所示。单词“child”和“seed”形成了一个几乎最小的对，其中两个名词共享同一个词干，但语素-ri标记了“child”的复数解释和“seed”的单数解释。Grimm（2009 a）表明，这种模式受个性化的支配，与支持数字系统跨语言实现的微妙但普遍的语义原则有关。
Languages dispose of a variety of means for classifying and counting different types of objects present in the world. An instance is the much discussed mass-count distinction. In English, count nouns (dog, chair) allow plural marking and modification by cardinal quantifiers (two) and by determiners implicating plurality (several); mass terms (water, sand) do not permit plural marking, nor the quantifiers or determiners of count nouns, but may allow modification by much or a lot of. Fundamental questions about this distinction are still largely controversial and unanswered: which properties of a referent are related to different grammatical realizations of nominals within a language, e.g. permitting pluralization, and how does the relation between properties of the nominal referents and grammatical expression vary across languages? For many types of entities, languages largely agree on what types of entities are countable and those which are not—for instance, nouns referring to liquids cross-linguistically do not permit typical plural marking or plural interpretations while nouns referring to humans do. Between the two poles of canonically countable and canonically uncountable entities, there is rich variation across languages as to what number marking is available for a certain class of entities and how grammatical number is realized, for instance, nouns with collective reference (foliage, hair) and nouns referring to superordinate categories (furniture, silverware). A systematic understanding of different ontological types of objects, their attendant properties and the relation to different manners of linguistic representation across languages is a fertile area for research, and largely under-explored in comparison to comparable research on events. The central hypothesis guiding the project is that the morphological realization of number is sensitive to the meaning conveyed by the noun. In particular, the realization of number is sensitive to conceptual and perceptual factors, falling under the cover term individuation, which characterizes the propensity for an entity to appear as an individual unit. The notion of individuation has been explored from a variety of perspectives in the philosophical, linguistic and psycholinguistic literatures (Quine 1960; Mufwene 1980; Bloom 1994; Middleton et al. 2004 inter alia); building on these accounts, individuation is here proposed to operate in a scalar fashion, influencing the realization of grammatical number across the lexicon in the categorization of terms as mass or count, and additionally as collectives, which is common cross-linguistically for insects and vegetables/grains/fruits, as well as influencing the preference for occurring in the plural or singular, for instance, “ribs” and “nose”, respectively. This hypothesis connects to two broad themes at the center of theoretical research on grammatical number: (i) the characterization of mass as opposed to count terms and (ii) the meaning (and semantic representation) of the plural as opposed to the singular. The grammatical number system of Dagaare (Southern Gur; Niger-Congo), whose morphology appears sensitive to different degrees of individuation, provides an ideal resource for increasing understanding of these issues. The basic paradigm of Dagaare’s nominal system is a rare type of number marking known as “inverse” or “polarity” number marking (Baerman 2007), shown in (1). The words ‘child’ and ‘seed’ form a near minimal pair where both nouns share the same stem, yet the morpheme -ri marks the plural interpretation for ‘child’ and the singular interpretation for ‘seed’. Grimm (2009a) showed this pattern is governed by individuation, connecting to subtle but pervasive semantic principles underpinning the crosslinguistic realization of number systems.
影响因子：
1.1
作者：
BAERMAN M
通讯作者：
BAERMAN M