Barbara Partee on Facebook yesterday, on the English noun AI [èáj], historically an initialism for the nominal artificial intelligence, but with a lexical life of its own, writing about:
— the new use of AI as a count [C] noun, as in these examples I heard on the NPR program 1A this morning about the use of AI bots in psychotherapy: “Would you use an AI?”, “AIs don’t have hangups, they don’t…” etc. The same conversation had the familiar [mass [M]] noun use as well: “Is there a chance that AI would be better than a trained psychotherapist?”
[Chris Waigl noted that the C usage has been common for a while in some sci-fi subgenres.]
[AZ, off-line:] It’s a C noun, and also, as BP noted, a personification; the C noun AI refers to AI bots, which we’re inclined to think of as human-like in nature.]
— AZ > BP: a M noun (AI) used as a C noun, but there are various mechanisms by which this happens, including a number of conventionalized general metonymies, systematic countifications. But the countification of AI looks very item-specific, and it doesn’t fall under any of the systematic countifications I’ve encountered [see below]. Instead, I see a different mechanism at work here.
[It looks like] what I’ve called beheading, in which from Mod + Head a new word Mod ‘Mod + Head’ is created. Notably from Adj + N, a new N appears with the phonological base of the contributing Adj, the morphosyntactic properties of the contributing N, and the semantics of the Adj + N. So we get a new N attending ‘attending physician’, and it’s a count N because physician is (so: All attendings need to be present for grand rounds today).
Beheading works the same way for N1 + N2 compounds: the new N has the phonological base of N1, the morphosyntactic properties of N2, and the semantics of N1 + N2. So the new N urine ‘urine test’, and (though existing urine is a mass N) it’s a count N, because test is (so: We need to take five more urines to meet our quota). Similarly the new N homework ‘homework assignment / exercise’, which is a count N (All my French homeworks are about food words) even though existing homework is a mass N. And so on.
And the new N AI ‘AI bot’, which is a count N even though existing AI is a mass N [because bot is a count N].
[noun bot: 1 an autonomous program on the internet or another network that can interact with systems or users: you can program your bot to store data in the database of your choice | the company used vast troves of online data to train the bot to talk like a teenager. … ORIGIN 1960s: shortening of robot. (NOAD)]
— BP > AZ: I was wondering if bot was implicit there somehow, but I’m not very fluent wrt bot. So it’s at least indirectly related to how we get Negra Modelo and El Amazonas, I guess?
— AZ > BP: Negra Modelo / Modelo Negro seems to be a straightforward example: the proper name Modelo is Fem gender (and so takes Fem modifiers, including negra ‘dark’) because it’s abbreviated from Modelo cerverza, and cerveza ‘beer’ is Fem (Subtlety here: beheadings are pretty much item-by-item phenomena, but sometimes they seem to have been generalized to regularities like: the names of beer brands are Fem gender, the names of makes of motorcycles are Fem gender, etc.)
El Amazonas referring to the forestland of Amazonia (with Amazonas a FemPl proper name for the Brazilian state) then would then have the MascSg article because it’s abbreviated from El Amazonas bosque ‘Amazon rainforest’, and bosque ‘forest’ is MascSg (I’m none too sure of the usage here, but I think this is at least roughly right. [I am not actually a Spanish speaker, merely an observer of the language.])
Background. First, on M > C conversions, systematic countifications (conventionalized metonymies of various sorts). From my posting on Language Log on 10/27/08 (yes, 15 years ago), “Zero relationships”:
M>C: [element] countification. A M noun that refers to an assemblage or collection of elements has a C use to refer to one of these elements: spam, e-mail, porn, slang, folklore. Often commented on here, most recently here.
C or M>C: situational metonymy. Based on an association between pairs of referents in some specific situation — for example, the association between a customer in a restaurant and the item that customer has ordered. The metonymy can take C to C (Table 4 has two hamburgers and two hotdogs sitting at it) but it can also take M to C (Table 4 has two spaghettis and two lasagnas sitting at it). (I’m paraphrasing examples from Geoff Nunberg’s Ph.D. dissertation.)
M>C: variety individuation. A M noun has a C use to denote varieties or subtypes: There are many lavenders growing in my garden (not ‘many lavender plants’, but ‘many types of lavender’, e.g. Lavandula angustifolia, Lavandula dentata, Lavandula stoechas).
M>C: serving individuation. A M noun denoting something drinkable or edible has a C use to denote a serving of it (I drank three Tsing Taos, We ordered three Veal Orloffs).
(plus six types of systematic massification, that is, C > M conversion)
And then even more basic material (and even older: from 22 years ago, but, I think, still solid), about the nature of C and M. See:
The handout for my Stanford 2001 SemFest talk on “Counting Chad”, on the C/M distinction in English, with special reference to chad, e-mail / email, and ice plant. On the grammatical categories C, M, SG, PL, E, and I.
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