Linguistic Individuals by Almerindo E Ojeda

Linguistic Individuals by Almerindo E Ojeda

The goal of semantics is the insightful identification of the set of meanings that human language can express - the construction of what has been called the metaphysics of natural language. A formal attempt to construct such a metaphysics has generally involved identifying a set of individuals referred to as the universe of discourse. Until recently, however, semanticists have had little to say about the structure of this set. Ojeda argues that the structure of the set of linguistic individuals is a mereology, that is, the domain of discourse is made up of kinds and the instantiations of kinds. His argument forms the four main sections of this work. The first examines the semantics of countability (countable stems, number inflection, adjectives of measure, and determiners); the second explores the semantics of uncountability (the individuation of reference, the reversibility of countability, cumulative and distributive reference, and non-Boolean mass predicates); the third takes up the semantics of nominality (the mereological homogeneity of nouns and the constraints on nouns in classifier languages); and the last investigates the semantics of the conceptional neuter, a pronominal category discussed by Otto Jesperson. Ojeda's investigations contribute to the characterization of linguistic individuals and provide for a new basis for the semantics of individuation.

Ojeda, Almerindo E.: - Almerindo Ojeda is professor of Linguistics at the University of California, Davis, director of the Center for the Study of Human Rights in the Americas, and director of the Project for the Engraved Sources of Spanish Colonial Art.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9780937073841
ISBN 10	0937073849
Title	Linguistic Individuals
Author	Almerindo E Ojeda
Series	Center For The Study Of Language And Information Publication Lecture Notes
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	CSLI
Year published	1992-10-01
Number of pages	224
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.