Microsoft Word - Loebner Semantics of nominals final.docx

This chapter deals with the semantics of nouns and noun phrases and the complex apparatus of semantic operations that build NPs out of nouns. It will not examine predicative NPs and generic NPs, as both would require extra discussion. Also, the chapter will disregard those aspects of NPs that relate them to their sentential context. These include linking means such as case, scope properties of NPs (see chapter 20) and the role of NPs in the information structure of the sentence. The nominal onion The discussion will be organized by following the functional layers of an NP, a structure that I have dubbed the 'nominal onion' elsewhere (Löbner 2013: 90). The functional structure is not identical with the syntactic structure of the NP, although it is often reflected in it to some degree. Rather, the NP has an internal structure of functional layers that presuppose each other in a certain order from the nucleus to the outside. Nuc The core of the structure is the nucleus, an expression of the lexical category N, or a lexical full NP such as a proper name or a personal pronoun in English. Rel The Relation layer serves the specification of a relation between the noun referent and some correlate, e.g., a possessor. Relation specifications at the nucleus are implemented by possessive affixes, possessor complements and other means. In addition, a language may have possessor specifications on the Definiteness layer (e.g., left possessives in English such as his book, Ed's book). Qual The Quality layer adds restrictive attributes to the nucleus, typically by means of adjectives, relative clauses or adjoined adverbials. Unit The Unit layer serves the formation of countable units or complex sums for reference. Grammatical number, numeral classifiers and measure terms belong to this layer. Qt The Quantity layer specifies the quantity of the referent(s) by using numerals or vague quantity specifications such as much, many, several or a few. Def The Definiteness layer marks the nominal as definite or indefinite. Adnominal demonstratives, articles, (in)definiteness affixes and determiner possessives belong here. Qf The Quantification layer proper applies after determination. It produces a quantifying NP with scope, to interact with a predication in a particular way. The layer employs operators such as every, each, all or both. Plain quantity specification on the layer Qt is not subsumed here. A similar structure for functional NP layers is assumed in Rijkhoff (2002:218-231 For the sake of convenience, I will refer to all layers except Quality as 'determination', as I did in Löbner (2011). Note that the Definiteness layer (with capital D) comprises both definiteness (with lower case d) and indefiniteness. The layers of determination are ordered by relative scope, as will become clear in the discussion to follow. Following Abbott (2010), I refer to the level to which Def applies as 'CNP' ('common noun phrase'); the levels resulting from Def and Qf are referred to as 'NP'. Nominal nuclei are subject to conceptual distinctions in three independent dimensions: relationality, countability and inherent uniqueness. The Nucleus When dealing with lexical meaning, one has to keep in mind that almost all nouns are polysemous, with more than one lexicalized meaning variant (see chapter 15). It is tacitly presupposed in the following that whenever we talk of 'nouns', we actually relate to nouns in a particular lexical meaning variant. In addition, the compositional contribution of the nucleus noun to a complete NP may differ from its lexical meaning, due to meaning shifts coerced by NP internal operations, or later in the sentential or discourse context. We will not treat lexical properties of the nucleus such as gender, noun class or other lexical classifications, as these do not bear on the semantics of the determinational mechanisms to be discussed. Relationality The distinction between relational nouns (daughter) and absolute nouns (girl) is a conceptual distinction. Relational nouns have a referential argument and in addition one or more relational arguments. We will confine the discussion here to nouns with one relational argument. With my daughter, the relational argument is specified as the speaker, while the speaker's daughter is the referential argument. Relational concepts describe their referents in terms of a criterial relationship to a correlate; in addition, the concept may add sortal characteristics to the description of the referent and/or the correlate. The relationships between referent and correlate(s) are manifold, as witnessed by examples such as daughter (kinship), head (body part), boss (social relation), baggage (being carried), birth (event), name (verbal correlate), age (property), etc. The referent of an NP with a relational nucleus can only be determined if the correlate is specified, or retrieved from context, or if the relational concept is shifted to an absolute concept. Explicit specification of the relational argument usually takes the form of a possessive construction, whence we will refer to the correlate as the 'possessor'. Absolute noun concepts describe their potential referents independently of any correlates to be specified. The description may involve implicit correlates, but these are not necessary for fixing the referent. The majority of common nouns are absolute. To see the difference, consider the minimal pair ›daughter‹ (relational) and ›female person‹ (absolute). The two concepts have the same extension; however, a 'female person' is a female person by virtue of properties she has in her own right; a 'daughter' is a daughter only by virtue of standing in a child-relationship to a parent. We will use the descriptive feature [+R] for relational nouns and [-R] for nonrelational nouns. Countability The discussion of the distinction between mass and count nouns, and mass and count NPs, is very complex. For the purpose of this chapter, the following essentials are crucial. The distinction is conceptual. The mass-count distinction, again, applies at the conceptual level: there are mass concepts and count concepts. At the Nuc level, this distinction is a dichotomy, notwithstanding polysemy (e.g., stone has both mass and count senses). At the NP level, nouns of either lexical type may have count as well as mass uses, due to shifts during NP formation. The same ontological entities may be described with mass concepts and with count concepts. For example, the count concept ›hair count ‹ defines its referents as single threads of hair, while the mass concept ›hair mass ‹ refers to the total body of hairs (on the scalp) constituting a physical object with properties like density or a particular haircut. Plural hairs count may refer to the same as hair mass