Measure functions

This chapter explains the linguistic relevance of the difference between extensive measure functions like volume and intensive measure functions like temperature, as illustrated by the pseudopartitives thirty liters of water vs. thirty degrees Celsius of water (Krifka 1998, Schwarzschild 2006). Subsuming these previous accounts, stratified reference correctly predicts the monotonicity constraint: such constructions disallow measure functions that generally return the same value on an entity and on its parts. For example, in order for *thirty degrees Celsius of water to be acceptable, it would have to describe a water entity whose parts are colder than itself; but there are no such entities. Stratified reference relativizes unboundedness to just one dimension or measure function at a time. This makes it possible to account for examples like five feet of snow even though not every part of a five-foot layer of snow is less than five feet high.