the fallacy of arbitrariness: “oats” and “wheat”

Wierzbicka, Anna

doi:10.1075/tsl.6.16wie

In:Iconicity in Syntax: Proceedings of a symposium on iconicity in syntax, Stanford, June 24–26, 1983
Edited by John Haiman †
[Typological Studies in Language 6] 1985
► pp. 311–342

Get fulltext from our e-platform

Download Book PDF

“oats” and “wheat”

the fallacy of arbitrariness

Anna Wierzbicka

Published online: 1 January 1985

https://doi.org/10.1075/tsl.6.16wie

Cited by (50)

Cited by 50 other publications

Order by:

Fernández, Mauro & Eeva Sippola

2025. Plural nouns in contact. Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages

Otani, Naoki & Willem B. Hollmann

2025. From within and beyond: a Cognitive Grammar analysis of prepositional complements of prepositions. Cognitive Linguistics 36:3 ► pp. 499 ff.

Ruiz, José Ramón Carriazo

2025. 371Americanismos léxicos en los atlas lingüísticos y etnográficos regionales. In Geografía lingüística y corpus en las lenguas románicas, ► pp. 371 ff.

Arigne, Viviane

2022. La quantification nominale. Corela :HS-37

Batiukova, Olga

2021. Compositional mechanisms and selectional constraints in syntax and word formation. The Linguistic Review 38:2 ► pp. 149 ff.

Gulgowski, Piotr, Joanna Błaszczak & Veranika Puhacheuskaya

2021. The influence of aspect on the countability of Polish deverbal nominalizations: Evidence from an acceptability rating study. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 40:1 ► pp. 1 ff.

Strik Lievers, Francesca, Marianna Bolognesi & Bodo Winter

2021. The linguistic dimensions of concrete and abstract concepts: lexical category, morphological structure, countability, and etymology. Cognitive Linguistics 32:4 ► pp. 641 ff.

Szymańska, Monika

2021. Grammatical metonymy and construal operations. Review of Cognitive Linguistics 19:2 ► pp. 465 ff.

Choi, Sea Hee, Tania Ionin & Yeqiu Zhu

2018. L1 Korean and L1 Mandarin L2 English learners’ acquisition of the count/mass distinction in English. Second Language Research 34:2 ► pp. 147 ff.

García Meseguer, Álvaro

2018. Nombre individuales y colectivos: una propuesta de definición basada en pruebas sintácticas. Revista de Lexicografía 13 ► pp. 17 ff.

Gardelle, Laure

2016. Lexical plurals for aggregates of discrete entities in English. Lingvisticae Investigationes 39:2 ► pp. 355 ff.

Gardelle, Laure

2017. Are superordinates such asfurnitureandbelongingscollective nouns?. Lingvisticae Investigationes 40:2 ► pp. 150 ff.

Gardelle, Laure

2018. Are there any collective nouns among lexical plurals in English?. Canadian Journal of Linguistics/Revue canadienne de linguistique 63:1 ► pp. 25 ff.

Lauwers, Peter & Marie Lammert

2016. Introduction. Lingvisticae Investigationes 39:2 ► pp. 207 ff.

Dimmendaal, Gerrit J.

2014. Chapter 3. Pluractionality and the distribution of number marking across categories. In Number – Constructions and Semantics [Studies in Language Companion Series, 151], ► pp. 57 ff.

Fasciolo, Marco

2014. Massif/comptable : une opposition arbitraire ou motivée ?. Langue française n° 183:3 ► pp. 41 ff.

Kleiber, Georges

2014. Massif/comptable : d'une problématique à l'autre. Langue française n° 183:3 ► pp. 3 ff.

Kleiber, Georges

2015. Lorsque l’opposition massif / comptable rencontre les noms superordonnés. Travaux de linguistique n° 69:2 ► pp. 11 ff.

Kleiber, Georges

2016. Sur l’opposition noms comptables / noms massifs : le cas des noms superordonnés subsumant des noms comptables. Corela :HS-19

Lammert, Marie

2014. Référence collective massive vs référence plurielle indéfinie. Langue française n° 183:3 ► pp. 87 ff.

Lammert, Marie

2016. Lexical plurals through meronymy and hyperonymy. Lingvisticae Investigationes 39:2 ► pp. 335 ff.

Armoskaite, Solveiga

2012. Aspectual effects of a pluractional suffix: Evidence from Lithuanian. In Count and Mass Across Languages, ► pp. 129 ff.

Bale, Alan C. & David Barner

2012. Semantic triggers, linguistic variation and the mass‐count distinction. In Count and Mass Across Languages, ► pp. 238 ff.

Cheng, Lisa Lai‐Shen

2012. Counting and classifiers. In Count and Mass Across Languages, ► pp. 199 ff.

Cowper, Elizabeth & Daniel Currie Hall

2012. Aspects of individuation. In Count and Mass Across Languages, ► pp. 27 ff.

Ghaniabadi, Saeed

2012. Plural marking beyond count nouns. In Count and Mass Across Languages, ► pp. 112 ff.

Ghomeshi, Jila & Diane Massam

2012. The count mass distinction: Issues and perspectives. In Count and Mass Across Languages, ► pp. 1 ff.

Grimm, Scott

2012. Individuation and inverse number marking in Dagaare. In Count and Mass Across Languages, ► pp. 75 ff.

Klein, Natalie M., Greg N. Carlson, Renjie Li, T. Florian Jaeger & Michael K. Tanenhaus

2012. Classifying and massifying incrementally in Chinese language comprehension. In Count and Mass Across Languages, ► pp. 261 ff.

Diane Massam

2012. Count and Mass Across Languages,

Mathieu, Eric

2012. On the mass/count distinction in Ojibwe. In Count and Mass Across Languages, ► pp. 172 ff.

Paul, Ileana

2012. General number and the structure of DP. In Count and Mass Across Languages, ► pp. 99 ff.

Pelletier, Francis Jeffry

2012. Lexical nouns are both +mass and +count, but they are neither +mass nor +count. In Count and Mass Across Languages, ► pp. 9 ff.

Jochen Trommer

2012. The Morphology and Phonology of Exponence,

Wiese, Heike

2012. Collectives in the intersection of mass and count nouns: A cross‐linguistic account. In Count and Mass Across Languages, ► pp. 54 ff.

Wiltschko, Martina

2012. Decomposing the mass/count distinction: Evidence from languages that lack it. In Count and Mass Across Languages, ► pp. 146 ff.

Zhang, Niina Ning

2012. Countability and numeral classifiers in Mandarin Chinese. In Count and Mass Across Languages, ► pp. 220 ff.

Reid, Wallis

2011. The communicative function of English verb number. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory 29:4 ► pp. 1087 ff.

Willim, Ewa

2010. On the form-function dichotomy in linguistic theory. Studia Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis 127:-1 ► pp. 211 ff.

Croft, William & D. Alan Cruse

2004. Cognitive Linguistics,

Moore, Harumi

2004. Semantic/pragmatic equivalence through formal and motivational shift. Australian Review of Applied Linguistics 27:2 ► pp. 32 ff.

Myhill, John

1997. Shouldandought:the rise of individually oriented modality in American English. English Language and Linguistics 1:1 ► pp. 3 ff.

Akiyama, M. Michael & Nancy Williams

1996. Spatial Components in the Use of Count Nouns Among English Speakers and Japanese Speakers of English as a Second Language. Language Learning 46:2 ► pp. 217 ff.

Croft, William

1994. Semantic universals in classifier systems. <i>WORD</i> 45:2 ► pp. 145 ff.

[no author supplied]

2000. References. In Discourse and the Continuity of Reference, ► pp. 324 ff.

[no author supplied]

2012. Oxford Studies in Theoretical Linguistics. In Count and Mass Across Languages, ► pp. 311 ff.

[no author supplied]

2012. The Contributors. In Count and Mass Across Languages, ► pp. x ff.

[no author supplied]

2012. Abbreviations. In Count and Mass Across Languages, ► pp. xv ff.

[no author supplied]

2012. Copyright Page. In Count and Mass Across Languages, ► pp. iv ff.

[no author supplied]

2012. General Preface. In Count and Mass Across Languages, ► pp. ix ff.

This list is based on CrossRef data as of 10 december 2025. Please note that it may not be complete. Sources presented here have been supplied by the respective publishers. Any errors therein should be reported to them.