The semantics of number marking: reference to kinds, counting, and optional classifiers

This dissertation examines the semantics of number marking in Turkish and the phenomena revolving around it, primarily in comparison to English. I argue that the Turkish number marking system patterns with the English number marking system, as well as offering novel insights into the variations between the two. Specifically, I claim that morphologically unmarked nouns (Turkish kitap; English book) are semantically marked as singular, whereas morphologically marked plural nouns (Turkish kitap+lar; English book+s) exhibit semantic unmarkedness, having a number neutral denotation (following Krifka 2003, Sauerland et al. 2005, Spector 2007, and Zweig 2009 for English, cf. Bliss 2004, Bale et al. 2010, and Gorgulu 2012 for Turkish). The investigation includes the semantics of kind reference, in the sense of Chierchia (1998) and Dayal (2004), the effects of which are revealed more significantly in Turkish than in English, extending to phenomena that pertain to naming kinds (cf. Carlson 1977 and Krifka et. al 1995). The analysis also expands to the semantics pseudo-incorporation, which I argue involves singular kind reference in Turkish. This account applies to so-called weak definites of English differing minimally from a very similar account of Hindi pseudo-incorporation (Dayal 2011, 2015 and Aguilar-Guevara and Zwarts 2010). This dissertation also addresses what these findings imply with regards to the semantics of counting. Turkish counting expressions differ from English in the form of the nominal complement of numerals (Turkish iki kitap; English two book+s) and having an optionally realized numeral classifier (iki (tane) kitap). I start by showing that these variations do not signal variation in the nominal semantics of the two languages. Then, I examine the optional numeral classifier tane, the analysis of which illuminates the semantics of counting in general. With the aim to bring new insights to this little-understood element of counting expressions, the findings are compared to two more optional classifier languages, Western Armenian and Persian. The exploration of these languages provides striking confirmation of my claims regarding not only the semantics of counting but also the semantics of number marking and kind reference.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical reference