Whole as a Semantic Pluralizer

  • Published : 2008.06.30

Abstract

The semantics of whole involves distributivity, which may not be accounted for by the distributive operator for plurals or quantifiers. I review the pragmatic approach to whole by Moltmann (2005) and propose that the semantics of whole can be explained by the member specification function, which maps a group to its members. Although NPs with whole are morphologically singular, they become semantically plural with the application of the function. The distributive operator for plurals is introduced on a sentence with whole, which explains the distributivity of whole.

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