Suzi Lima has been awarded an NSF Dissertation Grant. It will fund her next two field trips to the Xingu Indigenous Territory (Mato Grosso, Brazil).
Below is a short abstract that summarizes her main proposal:
The Grammar of Counting and Measuring: a view from Tupi languages
This proposal aims to investigate the processes of counting and measuring in two under-studied Tupi languages spoken in Brazil, Yudja (Juruna family) and Kawaiwete (Tupi Guarani family). Three major aspects of the grammar of counting and measuring will be investigated: (i) the semantic and syntactic properties of numeral constructions, and their compatibility with notional count and notional mass nouns; (ii) the semantics of the measure constructions, their interaction with numerals and their syntactic status, and finally (iii) the semantics of nominal quantifiers. Preliminary research shows that Yudja and Kawaiwete are number neutral languages that do not obviously fit into the widely accepted linguistic typologies of the count/mass distinction proposed so far, in particular by Chierchia 1998a and Chierchia 1998b). Therefore, these languages raise new and important theoretical questions in the field of semantics.
Congratulations Suzi!
