Parts of a whole : distributivity as a bridge between aspect and measurement This book uses mathematical models of language to explain why there are certain gaps in language: things that we might expect to be able to say but cant. For instance why can we say I ran for five minutes but not *I ran all the way to the store for five minutes Why is five pounds of books acceptable but *five pounds of book not acceptable What prevents us from saying *sixty degrees of water to express the temperature of the water in a swimming pool when sixty inches of water can express its depth And why can we not say *all the ants in my kitchen are numerous The constraints on these constructions involve concepts that are generally studied separately: aspect plural and mass reference measurement and distributivity. In this book Lucas Champollion provides a unified perspective on these domains connects them formally within the framework of algebraic semantics and mereology and uses this connection to transfer insights across unrelated bodies of literature and formulate a single constraint that explains each of the judgments above