Semantic

III
Cross-Categorial Parallelism

By : Julianisda Edelwise Sari

 Introduction

An important insight of semantic theory is that there exist deep parallel- isms
between the interpretations of expressions that belong to different syntactic
categories. This chapter discusses two such cases. The first is the nominal
count/mass distinction and the verbal (aspectual) telic/atelic dis- tinction.. The
second case concerns the observation that certain adverbs in English play a role
similar to that played by determiners; moreover, in many lan- guages this role is
more typically played by adverbs and other noun- phrase-external elements than by
determiners
01 What is
Parallelism ?
Parallelism,also known as parallel structure is when phrases in a
sentence have simillar or the same grammatical structure. In it’s
most basic usage, parallelism provides a phrase with balance and
clarity. Parallelism alo serves to give phrases a pattern and rhytm.
Count/Mass and Telic/Atelic
What is the different between count and mass
nouns ?

Count nouns can be plurarized,they co;occur

with many and are directly modified by
numerals.

Mass nouns do not appear in the plural, they

occur witch much and take numerals only
with the meditation of measure Expressions
 Example
COUNT NOUNS
An apple
Two Apples
Three Apples

MASS NOUNS
Food
Furniture
Air
Advice
Research
Grass
Cumulative and Distributive Reference
 What is cummulative and Distributive Reference ?

The term cumulative reference corresponds to the

fact that one can accumu- late (sum, merge, unite)
things that are labeled as, say, oil and as a result
get something labeled as oil again. Two portions of
oil united in one con- tainer make oil again, and
can be referred to as such. That is, the expres-
sion oil refers cumulatively. On the other hand, the
sum of two things each of which is referred to as
(a) chair is not referred to as (a) chair; it is referred
to as chairs. A chair here and a chair there do not
make another chair
Distributive referenceAnother potentially relevant
property is distributive reference, the mirror image of
cumulative reference. The term refers to the fact that
the label of the whole distributes over the
parts:Distributive reference:An expression E refers
distributively if any part of a thing that is referred to as E
is also referred to as E.
Determines and
adverbs
What Is determines and adverbs3?

Determiners are words placed in front of a noun to make it clear what the noun refers to. Use the pages in this
section to help you use English determiners correctly.

Adverbs3 Moreover, we learnt that there are three main adverbs types: simple, interrogative, and relative

shows that determiners and adverbs can play similar roles. In this section we investigate a set of questions
related to this phenomenon. First, we examine respects in which determiners and adverbs work similarly in
English. Second, we consider some cross-linguistic data pertaining to the division of labor between these two
categories
Determinerd and adverbs in English :
Similarities and differences

example :

• Every king is whimsical :Kings are a subset of

whimsical people

• Few kings are whimsical: the number of whimsical

kings is small OR the number of whimsical kings is
smallcompared with the number of king
Recovering the adverbs
restriction presuppositions

What happens when the sentence has no if-clause? Do these adverbs still relate two sets of cases, and if so,
how are those sets determined? There are various possibilities.
First, consider these examples:
(24) The Fool usually/always/seldom regrets offending Lear.
(25) The Fool usually/always/seldom denies offending Lear.
(24) is naturally interpreted in the following way ((26a, b) are equivalent ways of expressing the same thing, as
we have seen above):
Recovering the Adverbs
restriction : Focus

now consider another way in which the adverb's restriction can be recovered. Our
examples will have a heavy stress on a particular word. (As discussed below in the
chapters on phonology, the stressed syllable of the word on which the primary stress
falls is louder, longer in duration, and often higher in pitch than the same word when
primary stress does not fall on that word.) In the sentences below, the heavy stress is
shown by the word being capitalized.

(27) Oberon usually/always/seldom talks to PUCK about his problems.This sentence

may be paraphrased as follows (again, (28a, b) are just two ways of saying the same
thing):
D-quantification and A-quantification: a
cross-linguisticperspective¹

Significant current empirical research has been focusing on this ques- tion.

04
It turns out that many languages do not have quantificational deter- miners,
but all languages seem to have means like adverbs, adjectives, auxiliaries,
or argument structure adjusters for expressing quantification. In contrast to
the former, D-quantification, this latter group has been termed A-
quantification. Some other languages do have D-quantification, but their
systems of A-quantification are more elaborate than in English. We first
examine Greenlandic Eskimo, which, despite superficial differ- ences, is
quite similar to English in this regard, then turn to Salish andMayali, which
are more different
 Summary
05
this chapter discussed two examples of semantic
parallelism between syn- tactically distinct
domains.First,observed that both the nominal
count/mass distinction and the telic/atelic distinction
between events can be captured by the opposition
between quantized versus cumulative reference. The
two domains also interact in determining the
compositional semantics of VPs.