TY - JOUR AU - Grove, Julian PY - 2019/05/11 Y2 - 2024/03/28 TI - Singular count pseudo-partitives JF - Proceedings of Sinn und Bedeutung JA - SuB VL - 19 IS - 0 SE - Articles DO - 10.18148/sub/2015.v19i0.233 UR - https://ojs.ub.uni-konstanz.de/sub/index.php/sub/article/view/233 SP - 268-285 AB - <p>Inversion-constructions, like <em>too tasty of a cake</em> and a <em>disaster of a conference</em>, have generally been treated separately from superficially similar-looking pseudo-partitives, like <em>three gallons of water</em>. I argue for an analysis that unifies the syntax and semantics of the two constructions through a proposal about the head<em> of</em> that appears in both. Both constructions involve the composition of two properties: one is contributed by the head noun; the other is contributed by the modifier, i.e., the measure-phrase in pseudo-partitives and the noun phrase or degree phrase in inversion-constructions. Moreover, while pseudo-partitives involve the composition of two properties of individuals, inversion-constructions involve the composition of two properties of states. A single semantic constraint—non-divisiveness of the property denoted by the modifier—is seen to play a role in both types of constructions, and, in particular, to predict both the monotonicity of modifiers in pseudo-partitives and the gradability of modifiers in inversion-constructions.</p> ER -