Laying bare nominal determination

2013 ◽  
pp. 1-34 ◽  
Author(s):  
Albert Wall ◽  
Johannes Kabatek
Keyword(s):  
Bare Nominal

Articulated Definiteness without Articles

2018 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 501-536 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Jenks
Keyword(s):  
Subject Position ◽  
Definite Article ◽  
Bare Nouns ◽  
Bare Nominal ◽  
Type Shifting

While it lacks a definite article, Mandarin makes a principled distinction between unique and anaphoric definites: unique definites are realized with a bare noun, and anaphoric definites are realized with a demonstrative, except in subject position. The following proposals account for these facts: (a) bare nouns achieve definite interpretations via a last-resort type-shifting operator ι, which has a unique definite meaning; (b) demonstratives can occur as anaphoric definites because they have a semantic argument beyond their nominal restriction that can be filled by an index; and (c) bare nominal subjects are topics. A principle called Index! requires that indexical expressions be used whenever possible. Mandarin is contrasted with Cantonese, which, like English, is shown to have access to an ambiguous definite article.

Variation in Classifier Languages

2020 ◽  
pp. 255-305
Author(s):  
Li Julie Jiang
Keyword(s):  
Linguistic Variation ◽  
Classifier Languages ◽  
Bare Nouns ◽  
Bare Nominal ◽  
The One ◽  
Numeral Classifier ◽  
Nominal Arguments

Chapter 5 develops a uniform account of bare nominal arguments (i.e., bare numeral classifier phrases, bare classifier phrases, bare nouns) in classifier languages. It achieves that by extending the scope of discussion to more classifier languages. It starts with three points on which Mandarin and Nuosu Yi differ and which make this comparison interesting from the perspective of building a theory of cross-linguistic variation. Their differences are: (i) whether or not they have the function category D in their grammar, (ii) whether or not they freely allow numeral-less classifier phrases to appear in argument positions, as a result of applying covert argument formation operations unrestrictedly, and (iii) whether or not they allow one-deletion from the [one Cl N] phrase in the PF. Three parameters based on these differences account for the variation.

scholarly journals Of nouns, and kinds, and properties, and why one D is null or not

2015 ◽  
Vol 60 (3) ◽  
pp. 259-288
Author(s):  
Diana Guillemin
Keyword(s):  
Direct Consequence ◽  
Linguistic Variation ◽  
Definite Article ◽  
Bare Nominal ◽  
Null Element ◽  
Definite Articles ◽  
Nominal Arguments

AbstractThis paper assumes that the basic denotation of nouns can be that of kind or property and that the determiner system of a language is a direct consequence of this cross-linguistic variation. An analysis of how definiteness and specificity are marked across three languages with different determiner systems, namely, English, French and Mauritian Creole (MC), provides evidence of the co-relation between noun denotation and determiner system. Languages with kind denoting nouns (English and MC) admit bare nominal arguments, which are barred in French, whose nouns denote properties. However, English and MC differ in that English has an overt definite article, which is a lacking in MC. This null element requires licensing by an overt specificity marker in some syntactic environments. The English and MC definite articles are analyzed as operators that quantify over sets of kind denoting nouns, and they serve a different function from the French definite article, which is specified for number and selects properties.

Bare Nominals

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Bert Le Bruyn ◽  
Henriëtte de Swart ◽  
Joost Zwarts
Keyword(s):  
Definite Article ◽  
Count Nouns ◽  
Narrow Scope ◽  
Bare Plurals ◽  
Nominal Structure ◽  
Bare Nouns ◽  
Bare Nominal ◽  
Bare Nominals ◽  
Made In ◽  
Generic Sentences

Bare nominals (also called “bare nouns”) are nominal structures without an overt article or other determiner. The distinction between a bare noun and a noun that is part of a larger nominal structure must be made in context: Milk is a bare nominal in I bought milk, but not in I bought the milk. Bare nouns have a limited distribution: In subject or object position, English allows bare mass nouns and bare plurals, but not bare singular count nouns (*I bought table). Bare singular count nouns only appear in special configurations, such as coordination (I bought table and chairs for £182). From a semantic perspective, it is noteworthy that bare nouns achieve reference without the support of a determiner. A full noun phrase like the cookies refers to the maximal sum of cookies in the context, because of the definite article the. English bare plurals have two main interpretations: In generic sentences they refer to the kind (Cookies are sweet), in episodic sentences they refer to some exemplars of the kind (Cookies are in the cabinet). Bare nouns typically take narrow scope with respect to other scope-bearing operators like negation. The typology of bare nouns reveals substantial variation, and bare nouns in languages other than English may have different distributions and meanings. But genericity and narrow scope are recurring features in the cross-linguistic study of bare nominals.

Are Constructions Dialect-Proof?

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Debra Ziegeler
Keyword(s):  
Construction Grammar ◽  
Source Language ◽  
Syntactic Form ◽  
Bare Nominal ◽  
Construction Type ◽  
Selection Of

The present chapter outlines the possible problems that may arise from applying a construction grammar approach to the study of international dialects of English. Using Singapore English as a base for comparison, it discusses construction types such as the progressive construction, the ‘false’ transitive construction, and the bare nominal construction (BNC), raising the question whether constructions in contact situations can be seen as constructions of the lexifier source language or the substrate languages which usually provide the syntactic source for the construction type. It also approaches the notion of ‘coercion’ often associated with construction analysis, and proposes that such a notion need not be evoked at all, given the hypothesis of ‘merger’ constructions, which in many cases can justify the selection of an ambiguous syntactic form across dialects by accommodating two (allo-construction) variants of the same construction type.

pro as a Minimal nP: Toward a Unified Approach to Pro-Drop

2019 ◽  
Vol 50 (3) ◽  
pp. 487-526 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pilar P. Barbosa
Keyword(s):  
Basic Mechanism ◽  
Null Subjects ◽  
Unified Approach ◽  
Argument Position ◽  
Null Subject ◽  
Null Arguments ◽  
Existential Closure ◽  
Bare Nominal ◽  
Null Element ◽  
Type Shifting

In this article, I examine the properties of the partial null subject languages (NSLs) when compared with the consistent and the discourse pro-drop languages and argue that the same basic mechanism underlies pro-drop in partial as well as discourse pro-drop: namely, null NP anaphora, as originally proposed in Tomioka 2003 for discourse pro-drop. The two sets of languages show a correlation between the occurrence of null arguments and the availability of a bare nominal in argument position. I suggest that the null element is a default, minimally specified nominal—the same item that arguably appears as a complement of D in pronouns. It is a proform that minimally consists of the categorizing head n, lacking a root, the meaning of which is ‘entity’ (a property that is trivially true of any individual in the domain). nP introduces a variable that may be bound under Existential Closure, yielding the impersonal interpretation; otherwise, its denotation is type-shifted to an individual (ɩ) under the appropriate conditions. The crosslinguistic differences found in the interpretation of the null subject depend on the resources available in particular languages for application of ɩ type-shifting: the (bare NP) languages that lack such resources only have quasi-argumental and impersonal null subjects (semi pro-drop languages). Finally, I show that the idea that pro reduces to [nP e] can also be successfully extended to the consistent NSLs, provided it is assumed that, in this type of NSL, the head bearing agreement morphology bears a D-feature and interpretable ϕ-features.

scholarly journals Bare nominal secondary predicates in Sakha (Yakut)

ALTAI HAKPO ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol null (23) ◽  
pp. 179-189
Author(s):  
Fuyuki EBATA
Keyword(s):  
Bare Nominal ◽  
Secondary Predicates

Different Senses of ‘Referential’

2019 ◽  
pp. 99-116
Author(s):  
Nancy Hedberg ◽  
Jeanette Gundel ◽  
Kaja Borthen
Keyword(s):  
Noun Phrase ◽  
Cognitive Status ◽  
Unique Representation ◽  
Case Marking ◽  
Givenness Hierarchy ◽  
Bare Nominal

There exist a range of different notions of referentiality in the literature. The cognitive status ‘referential’ on the Givenness Hierarchy means that the hearer can assign a unique representation to the speaker’s intended referent by the time the sentence is processed. This is distinct from definite referents, which are expected to be ‘uniquely identifiable’, a status that entails ‘referential’, on the basis of the definite noun phrase alone. In this chapter, it is argued that phrases that are ‘attributive’, as distinct from ‘referential’, in Donnellan’s 1966 sense are ‘referential’ in the Givenness Hierarchy sense, and are marked as such in languages that mark referentiality overtly via determiners or case marking. Furthermore, it is suggested that bare nominal phrases in languages that allow them are unspecified for referentiality, but that an implicature of non-referentiality for a bare nominal may be generated in languages that mark definiteness or referentiality morphologically.

scholarly journals Definiteness, Uniqueness, and Maximality in Languages With and Without Articles

2020 ◽  
Vol 37 (3) ◽  
pp. 311-366
Author(s):  
Radek Šimík ◽  
Christoph Demian
Keyword(s):  
Null Hypothesis ◽  
Definite Descriptions ◽  
Bare Nominal ◽  
Bare Nominals ◽  
Type Shifting

Abstract We present a number of experiments testing influential hypotheses about the meaning of definite descriptions (in languages with articles, represented here by German) and bare nominals (in articleless languages, represented here by Russian). Our results are in line with the commonly entertained hypothesis that definite descriptions convey uniqueness (if singular) or maximality (if plural), but fail to support two hypotheses about bare nominal interpretation, namely that singular bare nominals convey uniqueness ( Dayal 2004) and that topical bare nominals convey uniqueness/maximality ( Geist 2010, among many others). Uniqueness or maximality inferences are expected to arise via covert type-shifting under these approaches. Our results are compatible with what we take to be the null hypothesis, namely that bare nominals in articleless languages are existential and free of presuppositional semantics, even if they correspond—in their use—to definite descriptions ( Heim 2011).

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