Parts and wholes in language. The case of semantic underspecification

The issue of the relations between parts and wholes is perhaps one of the most important theoretical issues of linguistic structuralism, to the point that it can be considered as a defining element of this very paradigm. Its implementation, however, is far from being agreed upon, even more so as it would require an extensive and far-reaching transposition of linguistic phenomena on mereological (or dependential) ground – a transposition that few have consistently attempted beyond programmatic formulations. The notion of “semantic underspecification” showcases this aspect quite well, since it touches on some of the major problems of the framework. Given the momentum this notion has progressively gained in current research, it is worthwhile examining the challenges that it poses to its conceptualisation within the structural paradigm.