Carmen Dobrovie-Sorin - Böcker

This book investigates the syntax and semantics of proportional most and other majority quantifiers across languages. Carmen Dobrovie-Sorin and Ion Giurgea draw on data from around 40 languages to demonstrate the existence of two distinct semantic types of most: a distributive type, which compares cardinalities of sets of atoms, and a cumulative type, which involves measuring plural and mass entities with respect to a whole. On the syntactic side, the most significant difference is between partitive and non-partitive configurations: certain majority quantifiers are specific to partitive constructions, while others are also allowed in non-partitives. The volume also explores complex expressions of the type the largest part and nominal quantifiers of the type the majority. The authors argue in favour of a quantificational analysis of most, in contrast to many recent studies, but adopt a bipartition-cum-superlative analysis for the largest part. The volume is a large-scale crosslinguistic investigation, offering typological insights as well as case studies from a range of languages, including German, Romanian, Hungarian, Hindi, and Syrian Arabic. The findings have implications for the study of number marking, partitivity, kind reference, (in)definiteness marking, and other crucial issues in linguistic theory.

This book investigates the syntax and semantics of proportional most and other majority quantifiers across languages. Carmen Dobrovie-Sorin and Ion Giurgea draw on data from around 40 languages to demonstrate the existence of two distinct semantic types of most: a distributive type, which compares cardinalities of sets of atoms, and a cumulative type, which involves measuring plural and mass entities with respect to a whole. On the syntactic side, the most significant difference is between partitive and non-partitive configurations: certain majority quantifiers are specific to partitive constructions, while others are also allowed in non-partitives. The volume also explores complex expressions of the type the largest part and nominal quantifiers of the type the majority. The authors argue in favour of a quantificational analysis of most, in contrast to many recent studies, but adopt a bipartition-cum-superlative analysis for the largest part. The volume is a large-scale crosslinguistic investigation, offering typological insights as well as case studies from a range of languages, including German, Romanian, Hungarian, Hindi, and Syrian Arabic. The findings have implications for the study of number marking, partitivity, kind reference, (in)definiteness marking, and other crucial issues in linguistic theory.

No detailed description available for "The Syntax of Romanian".

This volume explores the interpretation of indefinites and the constraints on their distribution by paying particular attention to key issues in the interface between syntax and semantics: the relation between the semantic properties of indefinite determiners and the denotation of indefinite DPs, their scope, and their behaviour in generic and conditional sentences. Examples come from French, other Romance languages and English. Central to the proposed analyses is a distinction between two types of entities, individualized entities and amounts. Weak indefinites are analyzed as existential generalized quantifiers over amounts and strong indefinites as either Skolem terms or generalized quantifiers over individualized entities. The up-to-date review of the literature and the new falsifiable proposals contained in this book will be of particular interest to linguistics students and scholars interested in the cross-linguistic semantics of indefinites.