Parts and Wholes in Semantics

Moltmann provides a unified account of a broad range of English and cross linguistic data involving expressions of the notions of "part" and "whole". She presents a new theory of part structures in which the notion of an integrated whole plays a fundamental role, and in which the part structure of an entity may vary across different situations, perspectives, and dimensions.

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This book develops a unified account of expressions involving the notions of "part" and "whole " in which principles of the individuation of part structures play a central role. Moltmann presents a range of new empirical generalizations with data from English and a variety of other languages involving plurals, mass nouns, adnominal and adverbial modifiers such as as a whole, together, and alone, nominal and adverbial quantifiers ranging over parts, and expressions of completion such as completely and partly. She develops a new theory of part structures which differs from traditional mereological theories in that the notion of an integrated whole plays a central role and in that the part structure of an entity is allowed to vary across different situations, perspectives, and dimensions.