The Semantics of Concrete Mass Terms

Common nouns, in most natural languages, are divided into two categories: Count nouns and mass/noncount nouns. There are both syntactical and semantical distinctions between mass terms and count terms. However, among these distinctions, a syntactical distinction is the most obvious. Mass nouns are modified by numerals. For example, in English, we can talk about “two dolphins” or “three trees.” but we can not speak about “bronze” and “water” in this way. On the semantic side, according to objectual interpretation, an individual object—a dolphin— can satisfy “x is a dolphin.” But an individual object can not satisfy “x is water.” At least in most times, a collection of particles, drops, molecules —and so on—can satisfy that sentence. A central question here is that what is the nature of this “collection”? Is this collection an abstract set or a concrete mereological fusion? Accordingly, there are two approaches based on set theory and mereology. First, in this paper, I considered challenges faced by these two approaches, then I showed that the mereological-based approach with some modifications would overcome these challenges.