LgV09 Theories of plurality

Faculty of Arts
Spring 2020
Extent and Intensity
0/2/0. 5 credit(s). Type of Completion: k (colloquium).
Teacher(s)
doc. PhDr. Mojmír Dočekal, Ph.D. (lecturer)
Guaranteed by
doc. PhDr. Mojmír Dočekal, Ph.D.
Department of Linguistics and Baltic Languages – Faculty of Arts
Supplier department: Department of Linguistics and Baltic Languages – Faculty of Arts
Timetable
Thu 14:00–15:40 L21
Prerequisites
Knowledge of formal syntax and semantics, passive knowledge of English.
Course Enrolment Limitations
The course is also offered to the students of the fields other than those the course is directly associated with.
The capacity limit for the course is 20 student(s).
Current registration and enrolment status: enrolled: 0/20, only registered: 0/20, only registered with preference (fields directly associated with the programme): 0/20
fields of study / plans the course is directly associated with
Course objectives
The aim of the course is to teach students how to understand the various types of plurality in natural language, especially in the nominal domain (three students, three groups of students, three kinds of students, ...).
Learning outcomes
At the end of the course students will be able:
- to understand different ways in which natural languages gramaticalize various plural meaning by different ways (derivational morphology, classifiers, ...);
- to understand the relationship between grammatical and semantic number, especially where they don't fit (so called bunch nouns a.o.);
- to formalize different types of constructions connected to plurality phenomena like the distinction between distributive, collective, cumulative readings.
Syllabus
  • form and interpretation of sentences with plurality expressions
  • distributive, collective, cumulative meaning
  • quantifiers, numerals, grammatical number.
Literature
    required literature
  • Landman, Fred. 2000. Events and plurality: The Jerusalem lectures. Dordrecht: Kluwer Academic Publishers.
    recommended literature
  • Winter, Yoad. Flexibility principles in Boolean semantics: The interpretation of coordination, plurality, and scope in natural language. Cambridge, MA: MIT press, 2001.
  • Link, Godehard. 1983. The logical analysis of plurals and mass terms: A lattice-theoretical approach. In Meaning, use and the interpretation of language, ed. Rainer B ̈urle, Christoph Schwarze, & Arnim von a Stechow, 303–323. Berlin: Walter de Gruyter.
  • Champollion, Lucas. Parts of a whole: Distributivity as a bridge between aspect and measurement. Vol. 66. Oxford University Press, 2017.
  • Schwarzschild, Roger. 1996. Pluralities. Springer.
Teaching methods
lectures
Assessment methods
Oral exam.
Language of instruction
Czech
Further Comments
Study Materials
The course is also listed under the following terms Spring 2021, Spring 2022.
  • Enrolment Statistics (Spring 2020, recent)
  • Permalink: https://is.muni.cz/course/phil/spring2020/LgV09