Publication details

A mereotopological account of Ukrainian singulatives

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Authors

WĄGIEL Marcin SHLIKHUTKA Natalia

Year of publication 2022
Type Appeared in Conference without Proceedings
MU Faculty or unit

Faculty of Arts

Citation
Description Singulatives are derived unit nouns, i.e., expressions designating a singular object individuated from a plurality perceived as a homogeneous collection of entities. Singulative morphology is attested cross-linguistically, e.g., in Brittonic Celtic, Semitic, Cushitic, Nilo-Saharan as well as East Slavic (Wierzbicka 1988, Corbett 2000, Dimmendaal 2000, Acquaviva 2015). Recent research on the structural and semantic properties of the suffix -in- in Russian reveal the theoretical relevance of Slavic data (Kagan & Nurmio forthcoming, Kagan et al. forthcoming). Inspired by that work, in this paper we will examine Ukrainian word formations such as pisok `sand' -> pišč-yna `a grain of sand' and propose a meretopological analysis on which the singulative morpheme -yna is an atomizer of sorts (Scontras 2014). Specifically, it selects for an aggregate predicate, i.e., a property of entities prototypically conceptualized as clusters, and turns it into a predicate of discrete singular integrated wholes.
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