The Meaning and Use of Zero: An exploration of the semantic interpretation of the number word zero

This study examines the meaning and use of the numeral zero. In the first section the classical neo-Gricean view of number words is discussed, then the type-shifting framework proposed by Geurts (2006) is considered. I then attempt to show that these do not apply to the number zero, and argue that this is because in many cases, ‘zero’ has lost much of its numerical sense, and is instead semantically equivalent to the quantifier ‘not any’ or ‘no’. In the second section, a corpus research is presented. 184 noun phrases with zero are examined and compared to other numerals. The corpus research reveals that the number word zero can quantify mass nouns, which typically cannot be quantified by numerals. It can also take the place of a unit of measurement, and can occur with both singular and plural count nouns. Most of the contexts that zero was found to occur in could be explained by comparing the numeral with ‘not any’ or ‘no’