Decomposing the Mass/Count Distinction Evidence from languages that lack it Martina Wiltschko UBC (wmartina@interchange.ubc.ca) 1. Introduction In this paper I wish to establish the claims summarized in (1). (1) Goals a. I demonstrate that not all languages classify their nominals into mass and count nouns. b. I argue that the grammaticized mass/count distinction is tied to a functional category which I identify as nominal inner aspect. A grammaticized mass/count distinction arises if nominal inner aspect is associated with the feature [±bounded]. c. I argue that in this domain, languages vary along two dimensions: i) whether or not nominal inner aspect is available; ii) which feature associates with nominal inner aspect I make the case for each of these points as follows. I first establish in section 1 that the mass/count distinction is not universally grammaticized. In particular, I show that neither Blackfoot nor Halkomelem classify their nominals as either mass or count. This does however not mean that speakers of these two languages cannot distinguish between substances and individuals, respectively. Rather, it is the grammar that does not care about this distinction. To capture this source of language variation, I propose that we need to distinguish between ontological properties of nominals (whether they denote substances or individuals) and categorical properties of nominals (whether they are categorized as mass or count nouns). I further argue that the categorical properties of the mass/count distinction may vary. Given the assumption that parametric variation is tied to functional categories (Borer 1983) it follows that the categorical aspect of the mass/count distinction must be linked to a specific functional category. This defines the second goal of this paper addressed in section 2. What is the identity of the functional category responsible for the categorical mass/count distinction. I adopt Rijkhoff’s 1991 proposal according to which the relevant category is the nominal counterpart to Aktionsart, namely Seinsart. In line with recent ideas regarding the proper implementation of inner Aspect (Travis 2005, in prep), I propose that there is a functional category above n but below number which hosts a binary feature [±bounded] responsible for the grammaticized mass/count distinction in languages like English. Finally, in section 3 I address the third goal of this paper, which is to determine the range of variation associated with the mass/count distinction. I argue that there are two dimensions of variation: i) whether or not inner aspect is available; and ii) whether or not [±bounded] is available to substantiate nominal inner Aspect (Asp). While in English it is, in Halkomelem and Blackfoot it is not. I further show that in Blackfoot inner aspect is associated with a different feature that serves to classify nominals, namely [±animate]. This supports the view of language variation argued for in Ritter & Wiltschko (2009) according to which languages can differ in the substantive content that serves to substantiate a given functional category.