126,468 research outputs found

    Much support and more

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    Abstract. This paper examines the semantics of much when it occurs as a dummy element, in so-called much support (Fred is diligent; in fact he is too much so) and more comparatives (more intelligent, where more = much + -er ). It is shown that far from being anomalies, much support and more comparatives provide a clue to the correct analysis of much more generally: much is essentially contentless, serving only as a carrier of degree morphology. In short, much always acts as much support. These findings provide support for a theory of quantity adjectives (many, few, much and little) as predicates of scalar intervals, with the remainder of the content traditionally ascribed to them contributed instead by null syntactic elements and operations. The vacuous nature of much itself is also argued to account for its infelicity in unmodified form in many contexts (e.g. ??We bought much rice)

    The World's Countability: On the Mastery of Divided Reference and the Controversy over the Count/Mass Distinction in Chinese

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    Academic discussions of the count/mass distinction in Chinese feature three general problems, upon which this essay critically reflects: 1) Most studies focus either on modern or on classical Chinese thus representing parallel discussions that never intersect; 2) studies on count/mass grammar are often detached from reflections on count/mass semantics, which results in serious theoretical and terminological flaws; 3) approaches to Chinese often crucially depend on observations of English grammar and semantics, as, e.g., many/much vs. few/little patterns, the use of plural inflections, etc., which is seldom justified. The article investigates the relevant discourse on the count/mass issue in classical and modern Chinese and concludes with exploring two distinct areas related to countability: the semantics of singular in contexts in which objects are introduced as referential-indefinite and the semantics of number and countability as revealed in diangu

    Introduction

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    The mass-count distinction is a morpho-syntactic distinction among nouns that is generally taken to have semantic content. This content is generally taken to reflect a conceptual, cognitive, or ontological distinction and relates to philosophical and cognitive notions of unity, identity, and counting. The mass-count distinction is certainly one of the most interesting and puzzling topics in syntax and semantics that bears on ontology and cognitive science. This volume aims to contribute to some of the gaps in the research on the topic, in particular the relation between the syntactic mass-count distinction and semantic and cognitive distinctions, diagnostics for mass and count, the distribution and role of numeral classifiers, abstract mass nouns, and object mass nouns (furniture, police force, clothing)

    Three Steps to Heaven: Semantic Publishing in a Real World Workflow

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    Semantic publishing offers the promise of computable papers, enriched visualisation and a realisation of the linked data ideal. In reality, however, the publication process contrives to prevent richer semantics while culminating in a `lumpen' PDF. In this paper, we discuss a web-first approach to publication, and describe a three-tiered approach which integrates with the existing authoring tooling. Critically, although it adds limited semantics, it does provide value to all the participants in the process: the author, the reader and the machine.Comment: Published as part of SePublica 201

    September 1972

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    Dear Brother: A few years ago a British theologian spoke of the contemporary members of the church, and particularly pastors, as the children of the afterglow. To a certain extent that is true. For much of our life and thought, also in the church, the sun has gone down and we live only in the long afterglow of a day of faith. At least so it would seem to us. So much so that we are tempted to substitute the quietism of twilight for the burden of the battle for God in one of the decisive hours of history. It is imperative for us, the living servants of the living acting God and a living acting church, to remember again and again our high dignity and consuming task, particularly in times of controversy over methods and procedures. We are the messengers of His coming. We have been given the strange magnificent power to relate our lives and the lives of others to the Incarnation, Passion and Resurrection, and the Exaltation of the eternal Son of God

    Truth and Meaning

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    Why Philosophers Shouldn’t Do Semantics

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    The linguistic turn provided philosophers with a range of reasons for engaging in careful investigation into the nature and structure of language. However, the linguistic turn is dead. The arguments for it have been abandoned. This raises the question: why should philosophers take an interest in the minutiae of natural language semantics? I’ll argue that there isn’t much of a reason - philosophy of language has lost its way. Then I provide a suggestion for how it can find its way again

    Using Big Words to Explain Little Words

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