Bare nominals, bare predicates

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.

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Bare nominals and argument structure in Catalan and Spanish

The Linguistic Review ◽

10.1515/tlir.2011.001 ◽

2011 ◽

Vol 28 (1) ◽

pp. 1-39 ◽

Cited By ~ 8

Author(s):

M. Teresa Espinal ◽

Jaume Mateu

Keyword(s):

Argument Structure ◽

Bare Nominals

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Bare Nominals in Brazilian Portuguese: more on the DP/NP analysis

Natural Language & Linguistic Theory ◽

10.1007/s11049-014-9264-6 ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 33 (2) ◽

pp. 471-521 ◽

Cited By ~ 12

Author(s):

Sonia Cyrino ◽

M. Teresa Espinal

Keyword(s):

Brazilian Portuguese ◽

Bare Nominals

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

Journal of Semantics ◽

10.1093/jos/ffaa002 ◽

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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Bare Nominals in Brazilian Portuguese

10.1075/la.245 ◽

2017 ◽

Author(s):

Albert Wall

Keyword(s):

Brazilian Portuguese ◽

Bare Nominals

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Lexical coding vs. syntactic marking of homogeneity

Studies in Language ◽

10.1075/sl.38.4.12mul ◽

2014 ◽

Vol 38 (4) ◽

pp. 896-955 ◽

Cited By ~ 1

Author(s):

Henrik Høeg Müller

Keyword(s):

Syntactic Structure ◽

Semantic Feature ◽

Object Position ◽

Bare Nominals ◽

Canonical Pattern

The purpose of this article is to substantiate the claim that the semantic feature of homogeneity manifests itself differently in different languages. By contrasting data from Spanish and Danish it is shown that homogeneity is lexically coded in Danish nouns, whereas Spanish nouns are lexically neutral to homogeneity. In Spanish the homogeneity interpretation of nouns is determined when they are inserted into a syntactic structure. The empirical relevance of this assumption is assessed by investigating syntactic and semantic aspects related to the occurrence of bare nominals in object position in the two languages under scrutiny. It is well-known that Spanish as a canonical pattern does not semantically license bare singular nouns with count interpretation (BNs) in object position, viz. #Juan repara coche [Juan repairs car], while in Danish the occurrence of BNs in object position is both possible and normal, viz. Ole maler hus [Ole paints house]. It is argued that this contrast is a predictable consequence of the premise that, in Spanish, transitive activity verbs impose a mass reading on any bare object noun whereas, in Danish, BNs maintain their lexically encoded denotation as inhomogeneous entities. However, contrasting with the leading pattern, the so-called HAVE-verbs (Borthen, 2003) actually license Spanish BNs in object position (cf., e.g., Espinal, 2010; Espinal & Mcnally, 2011), viz. Juan tiene perro [Juan has dog]. It is claimed that the occurrence of BNs in these cases is strongly related to the assumption that HAVE-verbs, contrary to activity verbs, are functionally non-eventive and, therefore, do not impose a specific homogeneity reading on the bare noun in object position.

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