Speaker: Yasutada Sudo (UCL)
Title: Relative Atomicity
Lecture 1: Absolute Atomicity and distributivity
Lecture 2: Mass-count, distributivity, and classifiers in Relative Atomicity
Times:
Lecture 1: April 16, 2025: 12:30-2pm
Lecture 2: April 17, 2025: 12:30-2pm
Location: 32-D461
Abstract: The standard model-theoretic approach to nominal number assumes that a model comes with an individuated domain of atomic entities and plural entities are constructed out of them as mereological sums (‘Absolute Atomicity’). I argue that Absolute Atomicity requires some unnatural assumptions when sub-atomic quantification is taken into consideration. I advocate an alternative approach, ‘Relative Atomicity’, where atomicity is only introduced in the course of semantic composition.