Theory
Following the work of logicians like Godehard Link and linguists like Manfred Krifka, we know that the mass/count distinction can be given a precise mathematical definition in terms of notions like cumulativity and quantization. Recently, a new logical framework, called plural logic, has also been used for characterizing the semantics of count nouns and mass nouns.
Read more about this topic: Count Noun
Famous quotes containing the word theory:
“Everything to which we concede existence is a posit from the standpoint of a description of the theory-building process, and simultaneously real from the standpoint of the theory that is being built. Nor let us look down on the standpoint of the theory as make-believe; for we can never do better than occupy the standpoint of some theory or other, the best we can muster at the time.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
“We commonly say that the rich man can speak the truth, can afford honesty, can afford independence of opinion and action;—and that is the theory of nobility. But it is the rich man in a true sense, that is to say, not the man of large income and large expenditure, but solely the man whose outlay is less than his income and is steadily kept so.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Won’t this whole instinct matter bear revision?
Won’t almost any theory bear revision?
To err is human, not to, animal.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)