Partitives, multipliers and subatomic quantification

Abstract

In standard lattice-theoretic approaches to natural language (e.g., Link, 1983, Landman, 2000, Champollion, 2017) singularities and pluralities are presumed to involve two distinct mereological structures and it is commonly supposed that quantificational expressions do not access subatomic part-whole relations. In this paper, I argue that i) certain quantificational expressions are sensitive to subatomic part-whole structures, ii) quantification over parts is subject to identical restrictions as quantification over wholes and iii) counting presupposes certain topological relations. I present new evidence in favor of a mereotopological approach to natural language (cf. Grimm, 2012) as well as novel data concerning the interaction between quantification and subatomic part-whole relations.