Publication details

Clustering and declustering things : The meaning of collective and singulative morphology in Ukrainian

Authors

WĄGIEL Marcin SHLIKHUTKA Natalia

Year of publication 2023
Type Article in Proceedings
Conference Proceedings of Semantics and Linguistic Theory 33
MU Faculty or unit

Faculty of Arts

Citation
Web https://journals.linguisticsociety.org/proceedings/index.php/SALT/article/view/33.010
Doi http://dx.doi.org/10.3765/gw2h2150
Keywords collectives; singulatives; clusters; part-whole structures; mereotopology; Ukrainian
Description Many languages have systems of collective and singulative derivational morphology (e.g., de Vries 2021; Dali & Mathieu 2021b). Recent research on Slavic collectives (Grimm & Dočekal 2021; Wągiel 2021a) and singulatives (Kagan & Nurmio to appear; Kagan, Geist & Erschler to appear) shows the significance of these data for the study of linguistic mechanisms of individuation. In this paper, we contribute by investigating the semantics of two derivational morphemes in Ukrainian: the collective suffix -j- and the singulative suffix -yn-, and the interaction between the two in secondary singulatives, e.g., pero ‘a feather’ -> pirja ‘clustered feathers’ -> pirjina ‘a (small) feather’, and secondary collectives, e.g., popil ‘ash’ -> popelyna ‘a speck of ash’ ? popelynnja ‘clustered specks of ash’. Building on the theory of Grimm (2012), we propose a mereotopological account that explains the Ukrainian data in terms of the ontological distinction between integrated objects and clusters: -j- turns properties of integrated objects into properties of clusters, whereas -yn- takes properties of clusters and yields properties of integrated objects.
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