Nouns in Contexts of Evaluation: Polysemy, Countability and Domain Restriction (NiCE)

This project investigates how lexical semantic information (such as individuation criteria encoded by common nouns), compositional semantics (including modification of common nouns with e.g., adjectives), and pragmatics interact. Modifiers affect the interpretations of common noun phrases, and wider contextual factors, such as the Question Under Discussion (QUD, i.e., what interests and questions underly the current dialogue), can also affect their interpretations. However, as this project will investigate, modifiers can also affect the individuation criteria of common nouns in highly context dependent ways. Specifically, the project will examine the complex, interrelated, and as I hypothesize, systematic ways that common nouns, especially polysemous abstract nouns, display sensitivity to context. In particular, focus will be on three types of contextual variation identified in the literature: Nominal domain restriction (e.g., for 'three books', of all the books in the world, what books are being talked about in this situation), variation in counting perspectives (e.g., whether the Lord of the Rings counts as 'one book' or 'three books'), and individuation criteria for polysemous nouns (what sense or combination of senses is relevant for counting and quantificational constructions involving polysemous nouns, e.g., for 'three books' are we counting books-as-informational entities, books-as-physical objects, or both). As this project will explore, these three types of context sensitivity are intertwined, not least since all three display interactions with the Question Under Discussion. Additionally, starkly similar conclusions have been reached, completely independently, within research on countability and on polysemy. Namely, common noun lexical entries must contain information about how entities in their extensions are to be individuated. And yet, although all three phenomena have been well studied independently, no work has yet been done to provide an integrated analysis of all three. Nor has an analysis of individuation criteria for common nouns that can account for both polysemy and countability been given. This complex and, prima facie, vexing topic is the one on which the NiCE project seeks to shed light.

DFG Programme Research Grants

International Connection Spain, Sweden

Cooperation Partners Professor Dr. Robin Cooper; Professorin Dr. Louise McNally