How many nouns are in that garlic? Philosophy meets computational linguistics
Friday, February 8, 2013 - 15:00
in Psychology & Sociology
Forty years ago, Jeffry Pelletier, now a University of Alberta philosophy and linguistics researcher, challenged a fundamental tenet of English grammar in his doctoral dissertation. In trying to show that natural languages—such as the one you're reading—do not directly reflect reality, Pelletier declared that the difference between mass and count nouns was arbitrary and, as such, not very useful in talking about our world.