On the distinction between amounts and degrees

Abstract

This paper investigates copular constructions such as Five dogs is too many pets and Ten kilos of broccoli is too much food, in which a property is seemingly ascribed to an amount or quantity. We argue that the subject noun phrases in such examples do in fact denote amounts—construed as the entity correlates of quantized properties—and that amount predication is a form of predication in its own right. We further demonstrate, on the basis of a range of distributional and interpretative patterns, that amounts are distinct from degrees; that is, the place of amounts in semantic theory is not in lieu of but rather in addition to degrees.