Aspectuality and countability: a cross-categorial analogy

Abstract

This paper expands the analogy between events and count nouns, and between states/activities and mass nouns in English to include other situation types, including iteratives, habits, and multiple situations. It explores the evidence used to make such analogies, namely, the quantificational features of deverbal nouns, as each of the deverbalizing devices in English has its own aspectual qualities. It shows further that a number of parallels can be drawn between different types of bounding and debounding in the nominal and verbal domains. Finally, the paper presents a schema of the cross-categorial analogies relating to inherent meaning (mass/count features in nouns, situation types in verbs) and the semantic operations of (de)bounding and (de)collectivizing (quantificational and aspectual modification).