Lexical Plurals: A Morphosemantic Approach (Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics)

Description
This book explores the wide variety of cases in which the plural of nouns is lexical. When a plural is lexicalized it becomes part of what it is to know a certain word: pence, for example, is lexical because it means a plurality of a certain kind - a multiple value, not a set of physical objects like pennies - and knowing this reading is knowing the word. Languages exhibit countless examples of similar word-dependent irregularities in the form and meaning of plural, but these have never been analyzed in depth from a unified perspective. Dr. Acquaviva aims to do just that, using analytic tools from formal semantics and theoretical morphology to shed light on the relation between grammar and the lexicon. After an introduction setting out his approach he divides the book into two parts.

The first gives a structured description of the ways plurality can be lexicalized with an emphasis on description and categorization. The second analyzes in depth different types of lexical plurals in Italian, Irish, Arabic and Breton. A final chapter spells out the theoretical consequences for the analysis of the lexicon. The book is unusual in combining a broad typological classification with a unified morphological and semantic analysis based on a formal framework.

About the Author

Paolo Acquaviva is Senior Lecturer in Italian at University College, Dublin. His University of Pisa PhD dissertation, The Logical Form of Negation, was published by Garland in 1997. His published work also includes articles in Studia Linguistica, Linguistic Analysis, Linguistics, and Folia Linguistica.

Plurals and Events (Current Studies in Linguistics)

Description
How do we make sense of sentences with plural noun phrases in them? In Plurals and Events, Barry Schein proposes combining a second-order treatment of plurals with Donald Davidson's suggestion that there are positions for reference to events in ordinary predicates in order to account for several of the more puzzling features of plurals without invoking "plural objects," with its attendant metaphysics, and also provide an absolute truth-theoretic characterization of the semantics of sentences with plurals in them. Schein's highly original argument should have significant impact on how natural-language semantics is done, with repercussions for philosophy and logic.

The book opens with foundational arguments that the logical language should have four major features: reduction to singular predication via a Davidsonian logical form, amereology of events, a logical syntax that allows the constituents of a Davidsonian analysis to be predicated of distinct events and separated from one another by other logical elements, and descriptive anaphors that cross-refer to the events described by antecedent clauses. A semantics for plurality and quantification is developed in the remaining chapters, which address some of the empirical and formal questions raised by the variety of interpretations in which plurals and quantifiers participate.

About the Author
Barry Schein is Assistant Professor of Linguistics at the University of Southern California.

English Plural Morpheme

In English, to form the plural noun from the singular one is by adding the plural marker to the noun. The common plural marker or the plural morpheme is the suffix –s, although in reality this morpheme can be realized by the phonetic representations [s], [z], or [iz]. These phonetic representations or allomorphs are conditioned by the phones of the base to which the plural morpheme is added.

Some countable nouns are not added with the suffix –s to make them plural but the number of these types are not as many as those added with the suffix –s. Therefore, this plural morpheme is usually called the morpheme –s because this suffix frequently occurs in the plural noun formation. The following are the examples of the words containing the plural morpheme or the morpheme {-s} which is pronounced /s/, /z/, or /iz/

Singular {-s} Plural Phobetic
Representation

baby -s babies [beibiz]
bag -s bags [bægz]
book -s books [buks]
box -s boxes [boksiz]
cat -s cats [kæts]
dog -s dogs [dogz]

As mentioned above, the plural morpheme or the morpheme {-s} is not always realized by the suffix –s. The following are the examples:

Singular {-s} Plural

man -s men
woman -s women
child -s children
ox -s oxen
tooth -s teeth
foot -s feet
sheep -s sheep
deer -s deer

These morphological forms will determine the arrangement of syntactic structure. In sentence level, the subject must agree with the verb. Look at the examples below:

(1) The book is on the table.
(2) The books are on the table.

(3) The student is in the class.
(4) The students are in the class.

(5) The man is in my room.
(6) The men are in my room.

(7) The student walks to school.
(8) The students walk to school.

(9) The woman goes to the market.
(10) The women go to the market.

The examples above show that in present tense, to be which is suitable with the plural morphemes added to the noun is are like in sentence (2), (4), and (6). In sentence (8) and (10), the plural morpheme {-s} need the verb form without inflectional morpheme. Inflectional morpheme {-s} to show present tense is needed in the sentence whose subject is singular or uncountable noun.
In Phrase level some determiners must agree with the plural morpheme. Look at the following examples.

(11) this student
that student
a student

(12) these students
those students
several students
many students
a lot of students
a few students

(13) *this students
*that students
*these student
*those student

In example (11) the determiners this and that need singular noun. The morpheme {-s} is needed in the noun if it comes after the determiners these, those, several, many, a lot of, ad a few like in example (12). The phrases in (13) are not grammatically correct.