Language and Information (한국언어정보학회지:언어와정보)
- Volume 12 Issue 1
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- Pages.67-83
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- 2008
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- 1226-7430(pISSN)
Whole as a Semantic Pluralizer
Abstract
The semantics of whole involves distributivity, which may not be accounted for by the distributive operator for plurals or quantifiers. I review the pragmatic approach to whole by Moltmann (2005) and propose that the semantics of whole can be explained by the member specification function, which maps a group to its members. Although NPs with whole are morphologically singular, they become semantically plural with the application of the function. The distributive operator for plurals is introduced on a sentence with whole, which explains the distributivity of whole.
Keywords
- distributivity;
- sum;
- group;
- collection term;
- lattice;
- universal grinding;
- member specification function