La majorité des expressions référentielles, dans leur situation d’emploi, permettent l’identification précise d’un référent. D’autres, par exemple les pronoms anaphoriques quand plusieurs antécédents sont envisageables, conduisent à une ambiguïté, c’est-à-dire à des alternatives clairement… read more
Research on generic bare plurals has frequently pointed out that even though they refer to the whole class, in characterizing sentences (e.g. birds fly) they commonly license exceptions (Krifka et al. 1995). While quantification and probability models have failed to account for all uses, the… read more
One area of debate as to the boundaries of the class of “collective nouns” concerns non-count singular nouns such as furniture, which are typically used for several units of different kinds. Arguments for and against inclusion have been put forward, but ultimately, what has been noted is a… read more
This paper studies why, for a plurality of discrete entities, a non-count plural might be preferred over a count noun or a non-count singular. Building partly on Wierzbicka (1985, 1988), it proposes two parameters: semantics, but also morphology. With lexical plurals, the items are construed as… read more
This paper contributes to the study of effective uses of gender-inclusive pronouns in American English, following the proscription of systematic he and, sometimes, of they, with morphologically singular sex-indefinite antecedents. While a number of studies start from the sex-indefinite anaphors in… read more