Events and Plurality: The Jerusalem Lectures (Studies in Linguistics and Philosophy)

The main claim of this book is that the very same distinction between semantic singularity and plurality that is fundamental to the semantics of nouns in the nominal domain is operative and fundamental in the verbal domain as well, applying to verbs and verbal arguments roles. It is argued that collective interpretations of verbal arguments involve semantically singular argument roles, and that a large variety of other interpretations discussed in the literature - most importantly distributive and cumulative interpretations - can be reduced to semantic plurality