Semantics for Counting and Measuring

Susan Rothstein is a Professor in the Department of English Literature and Linguistics at the Faculty of Humanities, Bar-Ilan University, Israel. She has written more than fifty articles and is the author of two previous books, Predicates and their Subjects (2001) and Structuring Events (2004), as well as editor or co-editor of several others.

• List of abbreviations; 1. Introduction; 2. Numericals and how they work; 3. Counting and measuring; 4. The mass count distinction; 5. Object mass nouns, measuring and counting; 6. A crosslinguistic perspective; 7. The universal grinder; 8. Classifiers; 9. Measures; 10. Additive and attributive uses of measures; 11. In conclusion; ENVOI; References.

'At the interface between cognition, language, and ontology, traditional views on mass vs count are seriously challenged by languages such as Hungarian, Brazilian Portuguese and Yudja. Rothstein brilliantly deals with these difficult issues by distinguishing counting and measuring as two types of semantic operation. A work of great breadth that opens new research avenues.' Roberta Pires de Oliveira, National Council for Scientific and Technological Development (CNPq), Brazil and Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina, Brazil