{"id":18309,"date":"2026-10-19T06:35:47","date_gmt":"2026-10-19T10:35:47","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/whamit.mit.edu\/?p=18309"},"modified":"2026-10-19T13:39:45","modified_gmt":"2026-10-19T17:39:45","slug":"lfrg-seva-masliukov-mit","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/2026\/10\/19\/lfrg-seva-masliukov-mit\/","title":{"rendered":"LF Reading Group - Seva Masliukov (MIT)"},"content":{"rendered":"<div><b data-olk-copy-source=\"MailCompose\">Speaker<\/b>: Seva Masliukov (MIT)<\/div>\n<div><b>Title:<\/b>\u00a0Selective access to atoms and a gap in the theories of the mass\/count contrast<\/div>\n<div><b>Time: <\/b>Wednesday, October 21, 1-2pm\u00a0<\/div>\n<div><b>Location:<\/b>\u00a032-D461<\/div>\n<div><b>\u00a0<\/b><\/div>\n<div><b>Abstract:\u00a0<\/b><\/div>\n<div>Most theories of the mass <i>vs<\/i> count contrast assume some version of a three-way split between count nouns like \u0091apple\u0092, object-level mass nouns like \u0091furniture\u0092 that refer to discrete entities but are number-neutral and not directly \u00abcountable\u00bb, and substance-level mass nouns like \u0091water\u0092 that do not have clear minimal parts in their denotation.<\/div>\n<div>\u00a0<\/div>\n<div>The goal of this talk is to bring attention to another subgroup of nouns that rather stably map to mass crosslinguistically \u0097 granular nouns like \u0091sand\u0092, \u0091salt\u0092, \u0091rice\u0092 <i>etc<\/i>. Ontologically speaking, they clearly have natural atoms in their denotation, which can be \u00abextracted\u00bb both lexically, as in \u0091a grain of sand\u0092, or morphologically, as in <i>tywod<\/i> \u0091sand\u0092 &lt;=&gt; <i>tywod-yn<\/i> \u0091a grain of sand\u0092 (Welsh).\u00a0<\/div>\n<div>\u00a0<\/div>\n<div>I aim to show, mostly building on data from Welsh and Russian, that despite having atomic reference on some level, these nouns severely restrict access to the minimal parts in their denotation. I will further argue that this behavior of granular nouns generally presents a problem for existing accounts of the mass\/count distinction and suggest ingredients for a solution.\u00a0<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Speaker: Seva Masliukov (MIT) Title:\u00a0Selective access to atoms and a gap in the theories of the mass\/count contrast Time: Wednesday, October 21, 1-2pm\u00a0 Location:\u00a032-D461 \u00a0 Abstract:\u00a0 Most theories of the mass vs count contrast assume some version of a three-way split between count nouns like \u0091apple\u0092, object-level mass nouns like \u0091furniture\u0092 that refer to discrete [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":26,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18309","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-announcements"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18309","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/26"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=18309"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18309\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":18347,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18309\/revisions\/18347"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=18309"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=18309"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ling-phil.mit.edu\/whamit\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=18309"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}