Author Description

Addresses syntactic and semantic issues in the notion of plurality, with special attention to the mechanics of expressing plurality in classifier languages, such as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. Examines response to Chierchia's (1998a, b) arguments on mass, kind, and plurality, following Carlson's (1977) foundational work. Chapters 1 and 2 introduce the concepts of classifiers and plurality on the basis of concrete practical examples, and include arguments for or against prevailing theoretical positions. Chapters 3 through 7 address typical theoretical issues discussing syntactic and semantic aspects of plurality and the classifier constructions. Chapters 8 and 9 introduce observational research results from a few experimental studies. They consider the use of plurality or classifiers in the real world, e.g., two books, one historic and one current, and with students in classes majoring in one of the classifier languages, Korean, Japanese, or Chinese, and in the non-classifier language, English. Special comments by Gennaro Chierchia and C.-T. James Huang precede the Introduction.--From publisher's description.