K významu substantiv s převahou plurálových tvarů

• Authors: Vít Michalec , Vojtěch Veselý

Title variants

EN

On the meaning of nouns with predominantly plural morphology

• Languages of publication: CS

Abstracts

EN

The paper shows that a predominance of plural forms of a noun over its singular forms often indicates a semantic distinction between them. We argue that, in the case of nouns whose plural forms express collective meaning and nouns whose plural forms tend to be interpreted as mass names, this semantic distinction is of a grammatico-lexical nature. Plural forms expressing collective meaning may be semantically specified with a phrase containing a categorial noun (jedny cigarety = jedna krabička cigaret ‘one pack of cigarettes’). Due to their semantic relationship to plural forms with a non-collective meaning, the opposition between singular and plural morphology is not fully neutralized (as in the case of pluralia tantum), but only partially so. The close relationship between plural forms inclined toward a mass interpretation (maliny ‘raspberries’; piliny ‘sawdust’) and proper mass nouns is proven by the fact that they are combined with the same type of quantifiers and measure phrases. The paper also shows how the semantics of nouns with predominantly plural morphology is reflected in the Academic Dictionary of Contemporary Czech (Akademický slovník současné češtiny or ASSČ) which is currently being compiled.

Keywords

CS

nepočitatelné substantivum; plurálový tvar substantiva; kolektivní význam; kvantifikátor; měrová fráze

EN

mass noun; plural form of a noun; collective meaning; quantifier; measure phrase

Discipline

• PHILOLOGY_&_LINGUISTICS: PHILOLOGY & LINGUISTICS

• Publisher: Institute of the Czech Language, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Slovo a slovesnost: časopis pro otázky teorie a kultury jazyka (Slovo a slovesnost: A journal for the theory of language and language cultivation)
• Year: 2016
• Volume: 77
• Issue: 3
• Pages: 163-184
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Vít Michalec

• Slovo a slovesnost, redakce, Ústav pro jazyk český AV ČR, v.v.i., Letenská 4, 118 51 Praha 1, Czech Republic

author

Vojtěch Veselý

• Slovo a slovesnost, redakce, Ústav pro jazyk český AV ČR, v.v.i., Letenská 4, 118 51 Praha 1, Czech Republic