Metaphorical measure expressions

Sutton, Peter R.; Filip, Hana; Snider, Todd; Windhearn, Mia

Metaphorical measure expressions

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Citation

Sutton P, Filip H, Snider T, Windhearn M. Metaphorical measure expressions. In: Gutzmann D, Repp S (eds). Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung 26; 2021 Sep 8-10; University of Cologne (Online); 2022. p. 824–44.

Abstract

We present an analysis of measure phrases such as heap/ounce of information in which the measure expression receives a non-literal, metaphorical interpretation. We present evidence that these metaphorical measure expressions, as we call them, exhibit a puzzling incomplete countability pattern insofar as their grammatical reflexes fall between count and mass nouns. We show that nouns/NPs with such an incomplete countability pattern are predicted by, and are easily captured within, the theory of the count/mass distinction presented in Sutton and Filip (2019b, 2020).