Article published In: A typology of the mass/count distinction in Brazil and its relevance for mass/count theories
Edited by Suzi Oliveira de Lima and Susan Rothstein
[Linguistic Variation 20:2] 2020
► pp. 300–311
Counting and measuring in Mẽbengokre and the count/mass distinction
Published online: 1 October 2020
https://doi.org/10.1075/lv.00022.sal
https://doi.org/10.1075/lv.00022.sal
Abstract
Though there is no formal differentiation between count and mass nouns in Mẽbengokre, a Jê language from central
Brazil, a contrast can be seen in the coercion that numerals and some quantifiers induce in mass nouns. This coercion, that leads
to both a type of and unit of readings, is the only type of discretization of mass concepts that
can be done within a noun phrase in the language, as measure classifiers do not exist, something that we argue for in some
detail.
Article outline
- 1.Introduction
- 2.Descriptive preliminaries
- 2.1Quantifiers
- 2.2Verbal number
- 2.3Numerals
- 3.The count-mass distinction in Mẽbengokre
- 4.Measures, inherent and conventional, but of no other sort
- 5.Conclusions
- Acknowledgements
- Notes
- Abbreviations
References
References (7)
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Salanova, Andrés, and Maria Amélia Reis Silva. 2011. Le Mẽbengokre. In Dictionnaire des langues, ed. E. Bonvini, J. Busuttil, and A. Peyraube. Paris: Presses Universitaires de France.
Salanova, Andrés Pablo. 2011. Relative clauses in Mẽbengokre. In Subordination in South American languages, ed. Pieter Muysken, Rik van Gijn, and Katharina Haude, 45–78. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
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