- Germany
Tibor Kiss
Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Sprachwissenschaftliches Institut, Faculty Member
The topics of +MASS and +COUNT have been studied for many decades in philosophy (e.g., (Quine, 1960; Pelletier, 1975)), linguistics (e.g., (McCawley, 1975; Allan, 1980; Krifka, 1991)) and psychology (e.g., (Middleton et al., 2004; Barner... more
The topics of +MASS and +COUNT have been
studied for many decades in philosophy
(e.g., (Quine, 1960; Pelletier, 1975)), linguistics
(e.g., (McCawley, 1975; Allan,
1980; Krifka, 1991)) and psychology (e.g.,
(Middleton et al., 2004; Barner et al.,
2009). More recently, interest from within
computational linguistics has studied the
issues involved (e.g., (Pustejovsky, 1991;
Bond, 2005; Schmidtke and Kuperman,
2016)), to name just a few. As is pointed
out in these works, there are many difficult
conceptual issues involved in the study of
this contrast. In this article we study one
of these issues – the “Dual-Life” of being
simultaneously +MASS and +COUNT – by
means of an unusual combination of human
annotation, online lexical resources,
and online corpora.
studied for many decades in philosophy
(e.g., (Quine, 1960; Pelletier, 1975)), linguistics
(e.g., (McCawley, 1975; Allan,
1980; Krifka, 1991)) and psychology (e.g.,
(Middleton et al., 2004; Barner et al.,
2009). More recently, interest from within
computational linguistics has studied the
issues involved (e.g., (Pustejovsky, 1991;
Bond, 2005; Schmidtke and Kuperman,
2016)), to name just a few. As is pointed
out in these works, there are many difficult
conceptual issues involved in the study of
this contrast. In this article we study one
of these issues – the “Dual-Life” of being
simultaneously +MASS and +COUNT – by
means of an unusual combination of human
annotation, online lexical resources,
and online corpora.
Research Interests:
The present paper describes the current release of the Bochum English Countability Lexicon (BECL 2.1), a large empirical database consisting of lemmata from Open ANC (http://www.anc.org) with added senses from WordNet (Fellbaum, 1998).... more
The present paper describes the current release of the Bochum English Countability Lexicon (BECL 2.1), a large empirical database consisting of lemmata from Open ANC (http://www.anc.org) with added senses from WordNet (Fellbaum, 1998). BECL 2.1 contains ≈ 11,800 annotated noun-sense pairs, divided into four major countability classes and 18 fine-grained subclasses. In the current version, BECL also provides information on nouns whose senses occur in more than one class allowing a closer look on polysemy and homonymy with regard to countability. Further included are sets of similar senses using the Leacock and Chodorow (LCH) score for semantic similarity (Leacock & Chodorow, 1998), information on orthographic variation, on the completeness of all WordNet senses in the database and an annotated representation of different types of proper names. The further development of BECL will investigate the different countability classes of proper names and the general relation between semantic similarity and countability as well as recurring syntactic patterns for noun-sense pairs. Our current work on those patterns concerning mass nouns is briefly discussed pointing to further research. The BECL 2.1 database is also publicly available via http://count-and-mass.org.
Research Interests:
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The handbook offers an overview of syntactic theory and analysis, in terms of different theories, different languages, and different methods. The Handbook presents the state of art in syntactic analysis, also dealing with the methodology... more
The handbook offers an overview of syntactic theory and analysis, in terms of different theories, different languages, and different methods. The Handbook presents the state of art in syntactic analysis, also dealing with the methodology employed, and the rules of argumentation required to achieve such analyses for a wide range of phenomena.
The handbook offers an overview of syntactic theory and analysis, in terms of different theories, different languages, and different methods. The Handbook presents the state of art in syntactic analysis, also dealing with the methodology... more
The handbook offers an overview of syntactic theory and analysis, in terms of different theories, different languages, and different methods. The Handbook presents the state of art in syntactic analysis, also dealing with the methodology employed, and the rules of argumentation required to achieve such analyses for a wide range of phenomena.
This article is concerned with theoretical treatments of control, and thus complements article 15, which deals with control as an empirical phenomenon. Very early treatments of control already suggest two different approaches to deal with... more
This article is concerned with theoretical treatments of control, and thus complements article 15, which deals with control as an empirical phenomenon. Very early treatments of control already suggest two different approaches to deal with the phenomenon, either by assuming lexico-semantic generalizations, or by employing formal syntactic operations. More recent theoretical treatments of control can still be classified according to the opposition between lexico-semantic and syntactic treatments, but introduce further distinctions, in particular the distinction between obligatory and non-obligatory control. This paper focuses on the following analyses: Bech (1955/57), Rosenbaum (1970), Manzini (1983), Pollard and Sag (1994), Hornstein (1999), Manzini and Roussou (2000), Polinsky and Potsdam (2002), and Jackend-off and Culicover (2003). In addition to the treatment of controller choice, we will address the syntactic structure of the controlled phrase, the treatment of complement vs. ad...
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Preposition-noun constructions (PNCs) are problematic in that they allow the realization of singular count nouns without an accompanying determiner. While the construction is empirically productive, it defies intuitive judgments. In this... more
Preposition-noun constructions (PNCs) are problematic in that they allow the realization of singular count nouns without an accompanying determiner. While the construction is empirically productive, it defies intuitive judgments. In this paper we describe the extraction of PNCs from large annotated corpora as a preliminary step for identifying their characteristic properties. The extraction of the data relies on automatic annotation steps and a classification of the noun countability.
The handbook offers an overview of syntactic theory and analysis, in terms of different theories, different languages, and different methods. The Handbook presents the state of art in syntactic analysis, also dealing with the methodology... more
The handbook offers an overview of syntactic theory and analysis, in terms of different theories, different languages, and different methods. The Handbook presents the state of art in syntactic analysis, also dealing with the methodology employed, and the rules of argumentation required to achieve such analysesfor a wide range of phenomena.
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ABSTRACT In the first prototype of LILOG, Categorial Unification Grammar was used to model linguistic information, i.e., the grammar and the semantics. After reflecting upon the structure of the theory, we came to the decision that we... more
ABSTRACT In the first prototype of LILOG, Categorial Unification Grammar was used to model linguistic information, i.e., the grammar and the semantics. After reflecting upon the structure of the theory, we came to the decision that we should use Head-driven Phrase Structure Grammar to model the grammar and semantics of LILOG's current development environment (LEU/2). This paper compares the two approaches in several respects: the treatment of subcategorization, the utilization of data structures to gain more lucid representation, the treatment of complements and adjuncts, and the construction of semantic representations.
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The seven chapters in this volume present an overview of second language (L) acquisition research from the perspective of generative linguistics. The goal of the book is to provide L researchers with an up-to-date account of the current... more
The seven chapters in this volume present an overview of second language (L) acquisition research from the perspective of generative linguistics. The goal of the book is to provide L researchers with an up-to-date account of the current knowledge in the study of different ...
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SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES REVISITED Th± s One 3AUX-310-SDEK ... SYNTACTIC STRUCTURES REVISITED CONTEMPORARY LECTURES ON CLASSIC TRANSFORMATIONAL THEORY Howard Lasnik with Marcela Depiante and Arthur Stepanov The MIT Press Cambridge, ...
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In light of the count/mass distinction, plural number has received extensive attention in the literature of linguistics and philosophy, since it is often considered as one distinctive feature that divides count nouns from mass nouns.... more
In light of the count/mass distinction, plural number has received extensive attention in the literature of linguistics and philosophy, since it is often considered as one distinctive feature that divides count nouns from mass nouns. Chierchia (1998) introduces a functional theory by means of which singulars, plurals and mass terms receive an interpretation in the same domain. In an atomic semi-lattice for count or mass nouns, as Link (1983) or accordingly Rothstein (2010) propose, the individuals (or atoms) at the bottom represent singularities while the sets above, generated using supremum (∪) - an operation of sum - represent pluralities. It follows that pluralities presuppose atomicity. In grammar, pluralities are illustrated through the plural morphology and atomicity by the use of the indefinite determiner. These two phenomena have commonly been assumed to be the most notable characteristics of count nouns in the vast literature on the count and mass distinction.