Zero, Null Individuals, and Nominal Semantics in Cantonese

Marcin Morzycki, Hary Chow
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引用次数: 1

Abstract

It has been convincingly argued that English zero provides evidence for introducing null individuals into the ontology of natural language (Bylinina & Nouwen 2018). We examine ‘zero’ in Cantonese, where it provides evidence that such null individuals are a matter of crosslinguistic variation. Cantonese zero has a more restricted distribution. It occurs widely in a number of contexts, but it is systematically ruled out with ordinary classifiers. These facts, coupled with assumptions about the nature of measurement and nominal semantics, demonstrate despite its extensive use in the language, zero is impossible in precisely the uses that require null individuals. Cantonese seems to be telling us that such null individuals are simply absent from its ontology, implying an interesting difference in natural language metaphysics between the languages—and perhaps a different perspective on what theoretical shape crosslinguistic variation can take.
广东话中的零、零个体与名词性语义
有令人信服的观点认为,英语零为将零个体引入自然语言本体提供了证据(Bylinina & Nouwen 2018)。我们研究了广东话中的“零”,它提供了证据,证明这种零个体是跨语言变异的问题。广东零的分布更为有限。它广泛出现在许多上下文中,但它被普通分类器系统地排除。这些事实,再加上对度量性质和名义语义的假设,表明尽管0在语言中广泛使用,但在需要null个体的用法中,0是不可能的。广东话似乎在告诉我们,这样的零个体根本不存在于它的本体论中,这意味着两种语言在自然语言形而上学上存在有趣的差异——也许在跨语言变异的理论形态上存在不同的观点。
本文章由计算机程序翻译,如有差异,请以英文原文为准。
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