‘More’ among the aspects of the primitive ‘knows that’

Abstract

In the essay an attempt is being made to view expressions denoting quantity, numbers, measures and gradation as inalienably rooted in what the author takes to be the primordial, universal and indefinable phenomenon, as well as concept / expression, whose main English linguistic shape (in its shortest version) is know(s) that. The central item embodying the essence of the quantity aspect of ‘knowledge’ (the latter concept being taken to entail, in accordance with Aristotle’s insight, the basic status of multiplicity, rather than individuality) appears to be the expression more (than). The author examines both this crucial item and a number of related expressions, mainly Polish ones, but also some English, Russian and other ones, in their interaction. He discusses, among other things, the widely debated issues concerning the quantifiers all and some, as well as the relationship between “exact” numerical descriptions of sets, on the one hand, and the ‘at least’ and ‘at most’ numerical statements, on the other hand (here, polemical remarks concerning, inter alios, Levinson’s, Carston’s and Burton-Roberts’ views, are formulated). Much space has been devoted to multifarious approximative expressions. One of the several interesting particularities in the vast realm of quantity expressions that have attracted the author’s attention is the truly idiosyncratic Russian expression in the form of the comparative adjectival prefix po-, cf. podlinnee; the author discusses Boguslavskij, Iomdin’s (2009) analysis of the prefix, while trying to defend the claim of its monosemy and to offer a positive account of its meaning.