Determiners and Weakly Discretised Domains

Abstract

1. The issue There is a link between the structure of the domain of a noun and the types of determiners it can combine with. Chierchia (1998) classifies determiners into four classes on this basis, i.e. countable only determiners —number sensitive and hence subdivided into singular determiners, e.g. each and every, and plural ones, e.g. several—mass only determiners, e.g. much, plural count and mass determiners, e.g. most, and unrestricted ones, e.g. the and no. According to his analysis, a singular countable noun is associated with a set of atoms, and the set-forming operator PL is used to enable us to talk about sets of them. Conversely, the lexical entry of a mass does not single out the set of atoms, but a sublattice, so that the difference between singular and plural is neutralised, for the noun applies equally to atoms and sets thereof. Hence, plural count nouns and mass are essentially the same, and it is claimed that no language has determiners for the mass and singular count combination. See also Doetjes (2001) for a similar claim. In Tovena (2001, 2002), however, I have shown that this claim is not correct. There exist singular determiners applying also to mass nouns, e.g. the Italian determiner nessuno “no/not any” combines with count singular (1a) and mass (1b) but not with plural (1c) nouns.

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