Parts and Wholes in Semantics

by Friederike Moltmann

Book Overview

This book develops a unified account of expressions involving the notions of "part" and "whole " in which principles of the individuation of part structures play a central role. Moltmann presents a range of new empirical generalizations with data from English and a variety of other languages involving plurals, mass nouns, adnominal and adverbial modifiers such as as a whole, together, and alone, nominal and adverbial quanitfiers ranging over parts, and expressions of completion such as completely and partly. She develops a new theory of part structures which differs from traditional mereological theories in that the notion of an integrated whole plays a central role and in that the part structure of an entity is allowed to vary across different situations, perspectives, and dimensions.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0195154932
• ISBN13: 9780195154931
• Release Date: January 2003
• Publisher: Oxford University Press
• Length: 272 Pages
• Weight: 0.84 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 6.2" x 9.4"