A distinção contável-massivo nas línguas naturais

Abstract

This paper investigates the expression of number and of the
count-mass distinction in natural languages. In particular, it
deals with the behavior of bare singulars in Brazilian
Portuguese. The goal of the paper is to answer to the following
questions: (i) What are possible denotations for common nouns?
(ii) What is the role of classifiers and of number morphology?
(iii) What is it to be mass or count? We claim that denotations
of common nouns aren’t necessarily composed of singular
individuals. We also claim that number-neutral denotations
are not equivalent to mass denotations. Besides that, we show
that number morphology and classifiers are not necessarily
dividing operations on the denotation of mass nouns; nor
creators of plural individuals out of singular ones.