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Cumulativity (linguistics)
In linguistic semantics, an expression X is said to have cumulative reference if and only if the following holds: If X is true of both of ''a'' and ''b'', then it is also true of the combination of ''a'' and ''b''. Example: If two separate entities can be said to be "water", then combining them into one entity will yield more "water". If two separate entities can be said to be "a house", their combination cannot be said to be "a house". Hence, "water" has cumulative reference, while the expression "a house" does not. The plural form "houses", however, ''does'' have cumulative reference. If two (groups of) entities are both "houses", then their combination will still be "houses". Cumulativity has proven relevant to the linguistic treatment of the mass/count distinction and for the characterization of grammatical telicity. Formally, a cumulative predicate ''CUM'' can be defined as follows, where capital ''X'' is a variable over sets, ''U'' is the universe of discourse, ''p'' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Semantics
Semantics is the study of linguistic Meaning (philosophy), meaning. It examines what meaning is, how words get their meaning, and how the meaning of a complex expression depends on its parts. Part of this process involves the distinction between sense and reference. Sense is given by the ideas and concepts associated with an expression while reference is the object to which an expression points. Semantics contrasts with syntax, which studies the rules that dictate how to create grammatically correct sentences, and pragmatics, which investigates how people use language in communication. Lexical semantics is the branch of semantics that studies word meaning. It examines whether words have one or several meanings and in what lexical relations they stand to one another. Phrasal semantics studies the meaning of sentences by exploring the phenomenon of compositionality or how new meanings can be created by arranging words. Formal semantics (natural language), Formal semantics relies o ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
English Plural
English plurals include the plural forms of English nouns and English determiners. This article discusses the variety of ways in which English plurals are formed from the corresponding singular forms, as well as various issues concerning the usage of singulars and plurals in English. For plurals of pronouns, see English personal pronouns. Phonological transcriptions provided in this article are for Received Pronunciation and General American. For more information, see English phonology. Meaning Although the everyday meaning of ''plural'' is "more than one", the grammatical term has a slightly different technical meaning. In the English system of grammatical number, singular means "one (or minus one)", and plural means "not singular". In other words, plural means not just "more than one" but also "less than one (except minus one)". This less-than aspect can be seen in cases like ''the temperature is zero degrees'' (not *''zero degree'') and ''0.5 children per woman'' (not *' ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mass Noun
In linguistics, a mass noun, uncountable noun, non-count noun, uncount noun, or just uncountable, is a noun with the syntactic property that any quantity of it is treated as an undifferentiated unit, rather than as something with discrete elements. Uncountable nouns are distinguished from count nouns. Given that different languages have different grammatical features, the actual test for which nouns are mass nouns may vary between languages. In English, mass nouns are characterized by the impossibility of being directly modified by a numeral without specifying a unit of measurement and by the impossibility of being combined with an indefinite article (''a'' or ''an''). Thus, the mass noun "water" is quantified as "20 litres of water" while the count noun "chair" is quantified as "20 chairs". However, both mass and count nouns can be quantified in relative terms without unit specification (e.g., "so much water", "so many chairs", though note the different quantifiers "much" a ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Telicity
In linguistics, telicity (; from Greek τέλος "end, goal") is the property of a verb or verb phrase that presents an action or event as having a specific endpoint. A verb or verb phrase with this property is said to be ''telic''; if the situation it describes is ''not'' heading for any particular endpoint, it is said to be ''atelic''. Testing for telicity in English One common way to gauge whether an English language, English verb phrase is telic is to see whether such a phrase as ''in an hour'', in the sense of "within an hour", (known as a ''time-frame adverbial'') can be applied to it. Conversely, a common way to gauge whether the phrase is atelic is to see whether such a phrase as ''for an hour'' (a ''time-span adverbial'') can be applied to it. Defining the relevant notion of "completeness" Having endpoints One often encounters the notion that telic verbs and verb phrases ''refer'' to events that ''have endpoints'', and that atelic ones ''refer'' to events or stat ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Variable (mathematics)
In mathematics, a variable (from Latin language, Latin ) is a Mathematical symbol, symbol, typically a letter, that refers to an unspecified mathematical object. One says colloquially that the variable ''represents'' or ''denotes'' the object, and that any valid candidate for the object is the value (mathematics), value of the variable. The values a variable can take are usually of the same kind, often numbers. More specifically, the values involved may form a Set (mathematics), set, such as the set of real numbers. The object may not always exist, or it might be uncertain whether any valid candidate exists or not. For example, one could represent two integers by the variables and and require that the value of the square of is twice the square of , which in algebraic notation can be written . A definitive proof that this relationship is impossible to satisfy when and are restricted to integer numbers isn't obvious, but it has been known since ancient times and has had a big ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Set (mathematics)
In mathematics, a set is a collection of different things; the things are '' elements'' or ''members'' of the set and are typically mathematical objects: numbers, symbols, points in space, lines, other geometric shapes, variables, or other sets. A set may be finite or infinite. There is a unique set with no elements, called the empty set; a set with a single element is a singleton. Sets are ubiquitous in modern mathematics. Indeed, set theory, more specifically Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory, has been the standard way to provide rigorous foundations for all branches of mathematics since the first half of the 20th century. Context Before the end of the 19th century, sets were not studied specifically, and were not clearly distinguished from sequences. Most mathematicians considered infinity as potentialmeaning that it is the result of an endless processand were reluctant to consider infinite sets, that is sets whose number of members is not a natural number. Specific ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Universe Of Discourse
In the formal sciences, the domain of discourse or universe of discourse (borrowing from the mathematical concept of ''universe'') is the set of entities over which certain variables of interest in some formal treatment may range. It is also defined as the collection of objects being discussed in a specific discourse. In model-theoretical semantics, a universe of discourse is the set of entities that a model is based on. The domain of discourse is usually identified in the preliminaries, so that there is no need in the further treatment to specify each time the range of the relevant variables. Many logicians distinguish, sometimes only tacitly, between the ''domain of a science'' and the ''universe of discourse of a formalization of the science''. Etymology The concept ''universe of discourse'' was used for the first time by George Boole (1854) on page 42 of his '' Laws of Thought'': The concept, probably discovered independently by Boole in 1847, played a crucial role i ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mereology
Mereology (; from Greek μέρος 'part' (root: μερε-, ''mere-'') and the suffix ''-logy'', 'study, discussion, science') is the philosophical study of part-whole relationships, also called ''parthood relationships''. As a branch of metaphysics, mereology examines the connections between parts and their wholes, exploring how components interact within a system. This theory has roots in ancient philosophy, with significant contributions from Plato, Aristotle, and later, medieval and Renaissance thinkers like Thomas Aquinas and John Duns Scotus. Mereology was formally axiomatized in the 20th century by Polish logician Stanisław Leśniewski, who introduced it as part of a comprehensive framework for logic and mathematics, and coined the word "mereology". Mereological ideas were influential in early , and formal mereology has continued to be used by a minority in works on the . Different axiomatizations of mereology have been applied in , used in to analyze "mass terms", use ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mathematical Structure
In mathematics, a structure on a set (or on some sets) refers to providing or endowing it (or them) with certain additional features (e.g. an operation, relation, metric, or topology). Τhe additional features are attached or related to the set (or to the sets), so as to provide it (or them) with some additional meaning or significance. A partial list of possible structures are measures, algebraic structures ( groups, fields, etc.), topologies, metric structures ( geometries), orders, graphs, events, equivalence relations, differential structures, and categories. Sometimes, a set is endowed with more than one feature simultaneously, which allows mathematicians to study the interaction between the different structures more richly. For example, an ordering imposes a rigid form, shape, or topology on the set, and if a set has both a topology feature and a group feature, such that these two features are related in a certain way, then the structure becomes a topological ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Manfred Krifka
Manfred Krifka (born 26 April 1956 in Dachau) is a German linguist. He was the director of the Leibniz Centre for General Linguistics (Leibniz-Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft, ZAS) in Berlin, and professor of general linguistics at the Humboldt University of Berlin. He was editor of the academic journal ''Linguistics and Philosophy'' from 1999 to 2023 and is editor of ''Theoretical Linguistics'' since 2001. See staff bio and journal web pages in External links below. Career and education Krifka graduated from the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich in 1986 in Theoretical Linguistics, Philosophy and Theory of Science, and Psycholinguistics. He consequently held positions at the University of Tübingen 1986 - 1989, at the University of Texas at Austin 1990-2000, and at Humboldt University of Berlin 2000 - 2022. Starting in 2001 until November 2022, he has been the director of the Zentrum Allgemeine Sprachwissenschaft (Centre for General Linguistics), since 2017 Leibniz- ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Renate Bartsch
Renate Irmtraut Bartsch (born 12 December 1939) is a German philosopher of language. She was a professor at the University of Amsterdam from 1974 to 2004. Career Bartsch was born on 12 December 1939 in Königsberg. She earned her doctorate at Heidelberg University in 1967 with a thesis titled: "Grundzüge einer empiristischen Bedeutungstheorie". Bartsch worked as a professor of philosophy of language at the University of Amsterdam from 1974 until her retirement in 2004. Bartsch became a member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences The Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences (, KNAW) is an organization dedicated to the advancement of science and literature in the Netherlands. The academy is housed in the Trippenhuis in Amsterdam. In addition to various advisory a ... in 2000. References 1939 births Living people Heidelberg University alumni Members of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences Writers from Königsberg German philosop ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
