Partitives and duratives

Abstract

Champollion detects similarities in the interpretation of three seemingly unrelated forms: partitives, measure adverbials and distributivity operators. Stratified reference is a high level description of the unique meaning component that lies at the core of these similarities. It was helpful for me to think of ‘stratified reference’ as having the same type of status as ‘maximality’ which is implicated in the interpretation of definite descriptions, degree constructions, interrogatives and elsewhere. Converging on a single statement with which to describe the meanings of diverse forms enables us, as Champollion puts it, to link problems. Mereological parts make up the domains of quantification for stratified reference statements. I inquire here about the nature of the quantification: what kind of quantificational force do we want?, how might the parthood relation be restricted? and are there constraints on the size of the domain of quantification? I’ve come to appreciate Champollion’s mechanism by taking it apart and trying to put it back together with a few pieces missing. I hope the reader is able to learn something from this exercise. My comments are exclusively directed toward Section 2 Aspect and Section 3 Measurement (sometimes referred to below with the symbols ‘C.§2’, ‘C.§3’ respectively).