Artifacts: Reference, Countability, and Categorization

93 Pages·2016·0.36 MB·English

Artifacts: Reference, Countability, and
Categorization
Scott Grimm and Beth Levin
UniversityofRochesterandStanfordUniversity
June 6, 2016
1/93
The Puzzle of Furniture-Nouns
Nouns like furniture might be considered mis(cid:12)ts at best, and
spoilsports at worst!
▶ furniture, jewelry, luggage, mail, ammunition
They cast doubt on the generalization that there is a mapping
from countable nouns to individuals (e.g. dog, book) and from
non-countable nouns to substances (e.g. water, mud).
Why? They show a surprising combination of properties, which
straddles mass and count.
2/93
The Puzzle of Furniture-Nouns
▶ Grammatically non-countable: A property shared with core
mass nouns | liquids and substances (e.g. water, butter,
sand, sugar):
▶ furniture/*furnitures, mail/*mails
▶ *two furnitures, *three mails
▶ water/*waters, gravel/*gravels
▶ *two waters, *three gravels
3/93
The Puzzle of Furniture-Nouns
▶ Individuals in their denotation: A property not shared by
core mass nouns
▶ These individual entities are in principle countable
▶ Ed listed the furniture in the dining room.
▶ They are modi(cid:12)able (Schwarzschild 2006)
▶ big furniture distributes over the individual pieces
▶ They provide for a dimension of comparison (Barner &
Snedeker 2005)
▶ If Ed has more pieces of furniture than Eva,
then he may be considered to have more furniture.
▶ Hence, Barner & Snedeker’s (2005) label \object-mass"
nouns, contrasting with the core or \substance-mass" nouns
(See Deal 2016 for the many names given to furniture-nouns)
4/93
The Puzzle of Furniture-Nouns
▶ Individual constituents are often heterogeneous: A
property not shared by core mass nouns, which are said to be
homogeneous (in the non-technical sense)
▶ e.g. furniture may be comprised of a variety of types, each
with their own names:
chairs, tables, beds, sofas (cf. sand/grain of sand)
▶ Hence, nouns denoting the constituent entities may be used in
their place
{
the furniture:
John arranged
the sofa, coffee table, chairs:
▶ This observation has not played a prominent role in past
analyses
5/93
The Puzzle of Furniture-Nouns
Key questions facing any account:
▶ What is in the meaning of furniture-nouns that allows them to
have this puzzling conjunction of properties?
▶ Non-countable syntax
▶ Individual entities in their denotation
▶ Heterogeneity of these individuals
6/93
Previous Approaches
The visibility of the constituent entities has prompted analyses in
which the denotation of a furniture-noun is simply composed of
these entities (e.g. Chierchia 1998, Bale & Barner 2009)
▶ It denotes a collection of individuals
▶ It is synonymous and co-extensive with its component parts
\What else can the denotation of furniture be, if not all the pieces
of furniture (down to the single ones)?" (Chierchia 1998: 68)
7/93
Previous Approaches
Concomitantly, most formal treatments of the countability behavior
of furniture-nouns are typically built on algebraic properties that
make reference to the atoms in the denotations of nouns.
▶ Cumulativity, divisivity, homogeneity
Among others: Bale & Barner 2009, Chierchia 1998, 2010,
Rothstein 2010, Deal 2016
8/93
Our Proposal
However, furniture-nouns are more than collections of entities:
they have another important meaning component.
Key to the analysis: furniture-nouns denote artifacts.
▶ Artifacts have a function and thus participate in some way in
an associated event, e.g. furnishing for furniture
The special properties of furniture-nouns follow from the type of
associated event at issue:
▶ The associated event canonically involves the participation of
multiple, and often diverse, entities
Thus, furniture-nouns are artifactual aggregates (cf. granular
aggregates such as sand, gravel, sugar)
9/93
Artifacts and Their Associated Events
The artifact/natural kind distinction is an essential conceptual
distinction among entities, as discussed by philosophers and
cognitive and developmental psychologists.
Among others: Aristotle, Wiggins 2001, Keil 1993, Wierzbicka
1985
10/93