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Nguni bare or augmentless ([−A]) nominals are licit only as strict negative dependents and wh-words. They may not appear in a preverbal subject position unless local to a negation-licensed [−A] complementizer of a subjunctive clause (Pietraszko 2021). This pattern motivates an analysis in terms of negative concord and a labeling theory approach to the Extended Projection Principle (EPP) (Chomsky 2013): [−A] nouns have uninterpretable negation features that thwart agreement and labeling in [XP, YP] configurations (see also Bošković 2019 , 2020 on uninterpretable features and labeling problems) unless valued by interpretable negation in a syntactic Agree relation (Zeijlstra 2008 , Haegeman and Lohndal 2010 , Penka 2011). A cluster of further distributional restrictions on [−A] nominals are predictable from an independently motivated Nguni clausal topography of focus (Carstens and Mletshe 2016), eliminating any role for abstract Case in explaining the facts, contra Halpert 2015 and Pietraszko 2021. The analysis is inspired by and extends to parallel restrictions in Romance languages previously attributed to the Empty Category Principle and the EPP (Contreras 1986 , Longobardi 1994 , Déprez 2000 , Landau 2007). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The starting point of the present article is the usage of mass nouns with indefinite articles, known from modern Bavarian and neighbouring dialects. Our analysis is dedicated to the use of the indefinite article varying with bare nouns in a historical perspective, based on a cookbook handwritten in 1556 in the East Swabian variety of Augsburg, containing about 900 instances of mass nouns with and without articles. Like in modern Bavarian, the readings OBJECT and QUALITY can be distinguished. A comparison with the de-nominals in Old Spanish recipes shows that the indefinite articles appear in equivalent positions with mass nouns mostly denoting non-specific regular objects as instantiations of the kind. The discussion of quantifiers and measuring expressions shows a special syntactic and semantic behaviour of ain wenig 'a little'. The final discussion leads to the assumption that the indefinite article does not formally express a partitive relation, but, at most, produces partitive effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The usage of the Basque definite and indefinite articles differs significantly from their Romance counterparts. While the definite article is used as a default article for NPs without another determiner, the exact function of the indefinite article in this system has remained somewhat unclear, although specificity has been brought up as a factor. A comparison with Eastern Armenian, which has a threefold definiteness/specificity distinction, in three parallel texts shows that the use of the indefinite article in Basque follows two different systems in different varieties: in the West it is based on discourse prominence and in the East on individuation.

Addressing non-quantifiable nouns is an indispensable step to figure out numeral classifiers and (bare) nouns in Mandarin Chinese. Recognizing the dearth of studies on Mandarin non-quantifiable nouns, we initiate the work by discussing their denominations and definitions from a syntactic-semantic perspective. Subsequently, offering a huge and systematic set of linguistic examples, we conduct a comprehensive analysis of six typical types of non-quantifiable nouns: proper nouns, relative existence-denoting nouns, counting/measuring-denoting nouns, common nouns with uniqueness, nouns with morphemes in special relation, and idiomatic nouns. Based on the above analysis, we propose three fundamental semantic features of being a non-quantifiable noun, i.e. uniqueness, relativity, and counting/measuring-denoting feature, among which, the last two features can be attributed to the first one, that is, uniqueness. Furthermore, we divide uniqueness into absolute one and relative one based on whether the referents of non-quantifiable nouns are independent of contexts, and into external one and internal one based on where these referents are quantified. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Linguistic theories in general, and psychomechanics in particular, with its essentially binary model, struggle to account for bare nouns within the larger system of the articles. Though the term ‘zero article’ is commonly found in the literature, there is hardly a consensus over its meaning. When dealing with French, where bare nouns remain marginal, one observes a fault line between one theoretical posture meaning to integrate it within the system of the article and another rejecting its existence altogether. In English, where bare nouns are much more frequent, the theory struggles with a multiplicity of different uses which are difficult to bring together under a single phenomenon. However, close inspection of the occurrences in the corpus makes it possible to suggest, in keeping with psychomechanics, a model where there is a coexistence of an absence of any determiner on the one hand and, on the other, a zero article which may be shown to signify a genuine operation of determination, defined as a transition of the noun from tongue to discourse resulting in its ability to refer.

Jenks (2018) argues that Mandarin bare NPs cannot be classified as definites simpliciter. Adopting the distinction between weak- and strong-article definites in Schwarz 2009 , he proposes that Mandarin makes a lexical distinction between the two types of definites: bare nouns are weak definites, demonstratives are strong definites. He further proposes that their distribution is regulated by a principle called Index!. In this article, we first point out some problems with the empirical generalizations presented in Jenks's description of Mandarin and then sketch an alternative approach to the distinction between Mandarin demonstratives and bare nouns. We end with some comments about the kind of further empirical work that needs to be done before definitive claims can be made about the competition between demonstratives and other types of definites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Two theories of implicit domain restriction have gained considerable prominence over the last two decades. According to von Fintel (Restrictions on quantifier domaines, Ph.D. thesis, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 1994), quantifiers come with covert restrictors and, as a result of this, induce domain restriction; according to Stanley [in Gerhard and Peter (eds) Logical form and language, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2002; Stanley and Szabó (Mind Lang 15(2–3):2192–2161, 2000)], by contrast, nouns, as opposed to quantifiers, come with covert restrictors. In this article, I do three things. First, I assess the arguments that have been given for and against these two accounts and show that none of them is conclusive. Second, I advance a novel empirical argument based on the observed pragmatic behaviour of bare nouns, an argument that falsifies Stanley's theory while providing clear evidence in support of von Fintel's (1994). Finally, I discuss the relevance of the bare noun data in the context of another important debate—namely, whether domain restriction is a local mechanism only, or whether it can also be achieved by global means. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In languages that have a definite article but no indefinite article, the definite article typically maps to definites, and the bare noun maps to indefinites. We investigate this mapping in Malagasy, which imposes an additional restriction: bare nouns cannot be subjects. We ask whether the subject can be interpreted as indefinite, given the obligatory nature of the article. We also look at DPs in other positions (direct object, clefted subjects) to determine whether the mapping between form and meaning is one-to-one. To answer these questions, we administered an on-line questionnaire that presented participants with the choice of the article or the bare noun in the different positions (subject, object, cleft) in contexts that favoured an indefinite/novel interpretation. As predicted, the article was obligatory in subject position, but disfavoured in the object and cleft position. These results confirm current descriptions in the literature. We compare these results with a similar case of definite article in indefinite nominals found in Italian and propose that the article does not carry definiteness features (at least in these cases) but overtly marks (abstract) Case assignment on subjects, while it can remain silent on objects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Some Romance languages, like Spanish, encode narrow scope indefinite objects without any over determiner (Bare Nouns; como pan ‘I eat bread’), while others, like French, require the insertion of an overt prenominal marker, labeled Partitive Article (PA; je mange du pain ‘I eat bread’). This asymmetry has been related to overt number marking on the noun (Delfitto & Schroter, Stark 2016 a.o.), leading to the hypothesis that number morphs on N license indefinite arguments and that PAs appear in those languages in which they are absent. Languages as Italian, in which narrow scope indefinites can be introduced both by BNs and PAs, challenge this hypothesis. By enlarging the view to Northern Italian Dialects, we update the correlation with number marking (the relevant factor being the absence of number morphs on masculine Ns) and show that Italian-like languages are not problematic, once we develop an analysis of the alternation between PAs and BNs in these languages in terms of two kinds of indefinites, differentiated by the presence/absence (PAs/BNs) of a feature (tentatively identified as a Choice function, Reinhart 1997).

This paper demonstrates that bare nouns in Shan (Tai-Kadai) can express both unique and anaphoric definiteness, a distinction first noted by Schwarz (2009). This pattern of data as well as similar patterns found in Serbian and Kannada motivate adding a category to the typology of definiteness marking described by Jenks (2018) to include languages that allow bare nouns to express anaphoric definiteness. An extended type-shifting analysis offers an account of the availability of bare noun anaphora, as well as the other bare noun interpretations, such as the indefinite, generic, and kind interpretations. Variation in the use of bare nouns versus more marked anaphoric expressions is tied to pragmatic factors such as what anaphoric definite expressions are available in the language, contrast, information structure, and potential ambiguity of nominal expressions. This account proposes that a constrained semantic account of the interpretations of nominal expressions combined with a pragmatic account of their use can model much of the cross-linguistic data on definiteness.

In languages that have a definite article but no indefinite article, the definite article typically maps to definites, and the bare noun maps to indefinites. We investigate this mapping in Malagasy, which imposes an additional restriction: bare nouns cannot be subjects. We ask whether the subject can be interpreted as indefinite, given the obligatory nature of the article. We also look at DPs in other positions (direct object, clefted subjects) to determine whether the mapping between form and meaning is one-to-one. To answer these questions, we administered an on-line questionnaire that presented participants with the choice of the article or the bare noun in the different positions (subject, object, cleft) in contexts that favoured an indefinite/novel interpretation. As predicted, the article was obligatory in subject position, but disfavoured in the object and cleft position. These results confirm current descriptions in the literature. We compare these results with a similar case of definite article in indefinite nominals found in Italian and propose that the article does not carry definiteness features (at least in these cases) but overtly marks (abstract) Case assignment on subjects, while it can remain silent on objects.

While major restructurings and simplifications have been reported for gender systems of other Germanic languages in multiethnolectal speech, this article demonstrates that the three-way gender distinction of German is relatively stable among young speakers from an immigrant background. We investigate gender in a German multiethnolect based on a corpus of approximately 17 hours of spontaneous speech produced by 28 young speakers in Stuttgart (mainly from Turkish and Balkan background). German is not their second language, but (one of) their first language(s), which they have fully acquired from childhood. We show that the gender system does not show signs of reduction in the direction of a two-gender system, nor of wholesale loss. We also argue that the position of gender in the grammar is weakened by independent innovations, such as the frequent use of bare nouns in grammatical contexts where German requires a determiner. Another phenomenon that weakens the position of gender is the simplification of adjective-noun agreement and the emergence of a generalized gender-neutral suffix for prenominal adjectives (that is, schwa). The disappearance of gender and case marking in the adjective means that the grammatical category of gender is lost in Adj + N phrases (without a determiner). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Verba: Anuario Galego de Filoloxia is the property of Universidad de Santiago de Compostela, Servicio de Publicaciones and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

The goals of this paper are to describe the grammatical properties of nouns and number in Dâw (Naduhup family, Northwestern Amazonia, Brazil) using Lima & Rothstein's questionnaire (this volume) on mass versus count nouns and to contribute to the typological and semantic literature on nouns and number. Our results show that Dâw is a bare argument language, with no plural on nouns or numeral classifiers, in which all nouns can be counted directly without the need of a measure or container phrase. A difference between notionally count and mass nouns can be found only when different sets of quantifiers are combined with mass and count nouns and in comparatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study is an attempt at a comprehensive presentation of various functions in the reference system of Mandarin Chinese. The study demonstrates that the reference system of Mandarin consists of a finite number of functions, some of which have not been identified as such, namely: absence of instructions to identify the referent, marked by bare nouns (sometimes analyzed as 'indetermined'); presentation of an entity as not requiring identification (sometimes wrongly analyzed as 'indefinite'); co-reference with the last coded participant in the event or a participant in the speech situation (not identified as such in the literature so far); obviative reference with respect to the last coded participant in the event (not identified as such in the previous literature); a referent that is located within the space and time of the environment of speech; and a referent within the domain of speech. The importance of this study lies in demonstrating that the analysis of forms and functions in a given language, as opposed to checking if and how categories observed in other languages are coded, allows for the discovery of categories that are encoded in the grammatical system and whose existence explains the forms of utterances in the language. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to shed light on article omission in Moroccan Flavored Dutch (MFD), a language variety in which Moroccan linguistic material (mainly Berber and Arabic) is combined with Dutch. It is well-known that MFD speakers are often inclined to omit articles in nominal phrases, and by doing so expressions contain so-called bare nouns (nominals without articles, i.e. definite or indefinite articles). This raises the question what triggers article omission in MFD. This study focuses on Dutch expressions that are embedded in MFD discourse and provides an innovative explanation for bare noun constructions. In particular, we argue that article omission in MFD is the result of an interplay between identity marking (article omission indexes the belonging to an ethnic subgroup in contrast to outsiders) and information structure. We show that there is a correlation between the syntactic position of a constituent and the type of article (i.e. definite or indefinite) that is omitted. The direct object position yields an indefinite, discourse-new interpretation of the bare nominal phrase. Since the neutral surface order of a Dutch main clause is subject-initial, the direct object position is canonically a focus position that is associated with new information. Therefore, the information structure of Dutch clauses seems to be a trigger for article omission. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we argue that a set of unexpected contrasts in the interpretation of clitic-left-dislocated indefinites in Greek and Italian derive from structural variation in the nominal syntax of the two languages. Greek resists nonreferential indefinites in clitic left-dislocation, resorting to the topicalization of an often bare noun for nonreferential topics. By contrast, clitic left-dislocation is employed in Italian for topics regardless of their definite/indefinite interpretation. We argue that this contrast is directly linked to the wide availability of bare nouns in Greek, which stems from a structural difference in the nominal syntax of the two languages. In particular, we hypothesize that Greek nominal arguments lack a D layer. Rather, they are Number Phrases. We situate this analysis in the context of Chierchia's (1998) typology of nominals. We argue that, on a par with Italian nouns, Greek nouns are [−arg, +pred]. However, they do not employ a syntactic head (D) for type-shifting to e. Rather, they resort to covert type-shifting, a hypothesis that is necessary to account for the distribution and interpretations of bare nouns in Greek, vis-à-vis other [−arg, +pred] languages like Italian and French. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In addition to plurality, creole plural morphemes impart an additional meaning of definiteness or specificity to the nominal expressions they mark. As of yet, there is no precise characterization either empirical or theoretical of the semantic/pragmatic dimensions they convey. Furthermore, the question of whether this added meaning is largely fixed across distinct creoles and plural morphemes, or subject to variations has never been examined. With the goal of bringing new insights intothese questions, this paper reports the results of a comparativestudy of the properties of two creole plural morphemes in two distinct French-lexifier creoles, Haitian Creole (HC) and Mauritian Creole (MC). Besides relying on native speaker intuitions, a detailed comparative qualitative and quantitative study of the uses of these plural morphemes was conducted in a textual corpus in two adaptations of the story of the Little Prince by Antoine De St Exupery, in Haitian Creole and in Mauritian Creole respectively. The results of this comparative investigation clearly demonstrate that the use of plural morphemes in the two creoles, though similarin a number of respects, also differ quite systematically. We observe that the distinctions noted closely mirror the uses of the singular definite marker 'la' bv' also argued to subtly diverge in these two creoles (Wespel 2008, Déprez 2016, in preparation). The paper analyzes this mirroring effect as a consequence of the positions that the plural morphemes come to occupy in the nominal structure and of the way the structure building operations are constrained in the different creoles. Concretely it is argued that the plural morphemes come to derivationally occupy the position of definite articles in each of the languages, and that this derivational process is obligatory in Haitian Creole due to the pronominal nature of its plural morpheme, but remains optional in Mauritian. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

[Display omitted] • 4 speeded continuation tasks investigated agreement attraction in Romanian. • Bare nouns cannot typically be preverbal subjects in Romanian. • Bare noun intervenors cause less attraction than modified DP intervenors. • Cue-based retrieval is sensitive to the overtness of the determiner. This paper investigates whether agreement attraction is modulated by distributional properties determining subject-likelihood by examining the degree to which bare nouns and full determiner phrases (DPs) cause agreement attraction effects in Romanian. Romanian represents an ideal testing ground for this, given two distributional constraints making bare nouns less subject-like: Locative Determiner Omission , preventing locative prepositions from taking nouns with definite articles (unless modified by adjectives), and the Naked Noun Constraint , disallowing bare nouns as preverbal subjects. We predicted that bare nouns should be less likely to trigger agreement attraction than overt DPs. We conducted four speeded forced-choice sentence continuation tasks on Romanian native speakers to test this prediction. We observe that overt DPs cause significantly more attraction than bare nouns. We suggest that the results are consistent with a cue-based retrieval mechanism for forming agreement dependencies, where cues that determine subjecthood are used to reactivate elements in working memory upon processing a verb. These cues can be language specific, and in Romanian, this means that agreement attraction is sensitive to the morphophonological overtness of the determiner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blackfoot (Algonquian: Alberta) permits both morphologically transitive and intransitive verbs to take objects, but with different syntactic properties. This paper develops an analysis of the objects of morphologically intransitive verbs as pseudo-incorporated, in the sense introduced by Diane Massam. Diagnostic tests for the syntax and semantics of pseudo-incorporation are applied to objects of morphologically intransitive verbs. Regarding their external syntax, it is shown that pseudo-incorporated objects must be immediately post-verbal and form a VP constituent with the verb. As for their semantic properties, they are shown to be narrow-scoping, non-specific, indefinite, and cumulative in reference. With respect to their internal syntax, it is demonstrated that they can be modified by attributive adjectives and/or inflectional plural marking, but crucially they cannot host demonstrative determiners. By documenting pseudo-incorporated objects in Blackfoot, this paper contributes to the cross-linguistic evidence that incorporation can target phrasal constituents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Blackfoot (Algonquian: Alberta) permits both morphologically transitive and intransitive verbs to take objects, but with different syntactic properties. This paper develops an analysis of the objects of morphologically intransitive verbs as pseudo-incorporated, in the sense introduced by Diane Massam. Diagnostic tests for the syntax and semantics of pseudo-incorporation are applied to objects of morphologically intransitive verbs. Regarding their external syntax, it is shown that pseudo-incorporated objects must be immediately post-verbal and form a VP constituent with the verb. As for their semantic properties, they are shown to be narrow-scoping, non-specific, indefinite, and cumulative in reference. With respect to their internal syntax, it is demonstrated that they can be modified by attributive adjectives and/or inflectional plural marking, but crucially they cannot host demonstrative determiners. By documenting pseudo-incorporated objects in Blackfoot, this paper contributes to the cross-linguistic evidence that incorporation can target phrasal constituents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we offer some preliminary remarks on the syntax-semantics of the nominal system in Cape Verdean (CV) in comparison to English, with the aim of having a better understanding of Number Neutral Languages (Chierchia 2010; 2015). In CV, there are no bare plurals; the plural morpheme is attached to the definite or indefinite articles, which are not obligatory, and are ungrammatical with quantifiers. Thus, CV is not a Number Marking Language. However, it is not a Bare Language, since it distinguishes between mass nouns and count nouns, and numbers combine directly with count nouns. We argue that CV is number neutral. We claim that Baptista & Guéron’s (2007) proposal of a null determiner cannot fully explain the data presented in this paper. We advance the hypothesis that Number Neutral Languages do not select for predicates or kinds, but they are rule-governed by grammar. In argument position, bare nouns denote the kind directly, as in Mandarin, and in the scope of a determiner, they denote the predicate. The only covert operator is the iota. We propose that CV noun phrase has no number projection. The determiner selects for singular or plural, which is then a presupposition of the determiner. This approach predicts that occurrences of bare plural phrases in CV are very restricted. We aim to provide a better understanding of the nominal system in CV, a language under-represented in the literature, as a way to contribute to analyses of nominal grammars cross-linguistically.

This article presents a novel set of observations concerning partitive constructions that indicate that bare nouns in Japanese can be marked with the singular/plural distinction, despite the absence of its overt morphological reflection. The new data set challenges the currently dominant view that bare nouns are number-neutral in classifier languages. A way of accommodating the phenomenon with the syntactically represented singular/plural distinction is provided. Implications for noun classification are also discussed. It is then concluded that it is a mistake to regard Japanese nouns with count semantics as furniture-type nouns and that we need to recognize the familiar mass/count distinction in the language.

The argument DP hypothesis, adopted by many syntactic analyses, claims that nominal arguments are introduced by a determiner (D), which may be covert or overt. While overt D is obligatory in Modern French (consistent with the argument DP hypothesis), it was not obligatory in earlier stages of French. We explore the factors that contributed to this change – including semantic class, syntactic function, number, and definiteness – focusing on a shift that occurred in the D-paradigm in two Anglo-Norman texts of the 12th century. Quantitative analysis (Goldvarb) yields two major findings. First, the effect of syntactic function remains constant: subject position favours overt D, but object position inhibits it. Second, there is a change in the effect of semantic class: count nouns increasingly favour overt D, but non-count (mass and abstract) nouns increasingly inhibit it. More generally, the gradual disappearance of bare Ns in French reflects the emergence of paradigmatically conditioned D. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Mersin University Journal of Linguistics & Literature / Mersin Üniversitesi Dil ve Edebiyat Dergisi is the property of Mersin University and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This paper explores the acquisition of distributivity in Yudja (Tupi, Brazil) based on a study with children and adults. In this paper, we explore experimentally the hypothesis discussed in previous work (LIMA, 2008) that verbal reduplication is a pluractional marker (LASERSOHN, 2005) that also conveys distributivity. Two preference tasks were performed with 11 adults and 17 children. Adults' results show that the interpretation of ambiguous sentences is affected by the form of the noun phrase (conjoined nouns, pluralized nouns or bare nouns). Children's results suggest that they have an overall preference for a distributive interpretation of sentences regardless of the verb form and the NP type. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses four properties of Spanish aspectual se constructions. 1. The telicity inducing effects of se; 2. The ungrammaticality of bare noun direct objects; 3. Leísta Spanish Person Case Constraint (PCC) repairs; and 4. A central/terminal coincidence relation between the direct object and the subject. I show that aspectual se does not induce telicity with stative VPs. The ungrammaticality of bare noun direct objects results from the direct object functioning as an 'inner subject' of a complex predicate formed by the verb and a null preposition, the complement of which is a pro coreferential with the external argument. The semantics of the null P plus verb give rise to a central/terminal coincidence relation between the direct object and the complement of P. Moreover, I argue that the null pro moves to Spec, Appl and functions as an indirect object. In this respect, aspectual se is an indirect object reflexive. The resulting structure, moreover, is fundamentally a double object construction, a construction in which PCC effects are known to hold. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Based on a discussion of correlations between syntactic position, prosodic cues, aspect and generic vs. non-generic interpretations, this paper substantiates that Danish Bare Plural count nouns (BPs) have a wider distribution than Bare Singular count nouns (BSs). BPs, unlike BSs, can occur in subject position, function as both generic and existential arguments, and appear with all aspectual verb classes. However, BPs and BSs expressing a non-generic, modificational meaning concur in object position of activity verbs and stative verbs with a possession relation implicature. These V+BP and V+BS structures, it is suggested, form a progressive continuum of three different subtypes of pseudo-incorporation (PI), namely (i) PI of BPs (low integration as in spise æbler ‘eat apples’), (ii) PI of type 1 BSs (medium integration as in male hus ‘paint house’), and (iii) PI of type 2 BSs (maximum integration as in spille violin ‘play violin’). [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Certain numeral classifier languages allow for the combination of a classifier and a noun to represent a definite individual/entity when no numeral accompanies the classifier (Vietnamese, Bangla, Oriya, Hmong, varieties of Chinese). In many instances, such a patterning alternates with the use of a bare noun to reference definite individuals/entities, but there has been little systematic study of such alternations, and whether the "bare classifier" and "bare noun" patterns are in free variation or encode different aspects of definite reference. The current paper argues for the latter conclusion with a detailed study of the Jinyun variety of Chinese, showing that bare classifier and bare noun patterns are used to highlight different aspects of "definiteness." The bare classifier pattern dominates cases of anaphoric definite reference, bridging cross-reference, reference to salient visible entities and non-speaker kin terms and personal relations, while bare nouns are used predominantly for individuals and entities perceived to be specifically unique or directly connected to the speaker. This distribution interestingly shows strong parallels to the way that languages with more than one definite article use such elements for definite reference. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Much literature has explored the interpretation of the bare singular (BS) in Brazilian Portuguese. Pires de Oliveira and Rothstein (2011) claim that BS nouns are mass because they denote kinds and argue that this explains why only the BS in Brazilian Portuguese can have a non-cardinal interpretation. In this paper, based on an experimental task with Brazilian Portuguese adult speakers, we explore one of their predictions, namely that the ‘volume interpretation’ of the BS cannot be explained as a case of Grinding. Our results show that Grinding and Volume readings of a BS noun are not equivalent (in favor of their hypothesis). We also show that a volume interpretation of a noun is never preferred when a cardinal interpretation is available, but that this can be explained by other lexical and pragmatic factors. We conclude by suggesting that Rothstein’s (in press) distinction between counting and measuring accounts for the fact that non-cardinal readings are not grinding.

In this paper it is argued that unspecified objects in sentences such as Maria leyo anoche (= Maria read (something) last night) should be represented as null incorporated nouns in l-syntax (Hale & Keyser 1993, 2002). Specifically, the material understood as 'something' is a null bare N that incorporates into the verb 'read,' forming an endocentric compound meaning 'THING-read.' While the general idea underlying such a hypothesis is not new (Mateu 2012; Marti 2011; Zubizarreta & Oh 2007), the analysis outlined here provides the first explicit formalization of it in such a way that can account for a wide range of properties (some not yet described in the literature) that are intimately related to what can be broadly defined as 'noun incorporation constructions' cross-linguistically. Like certain types of noun incorporation constructions in other languages, unspecified object constructions have the following properties: (i) they are restricted lexically (in this case to 'activity'/'manner' verbs), (ii) the verb+unspecified object may have a conventionalized interpretation, (iii) unspecified objects are indefinite and take obligatory narrow scope with respect to all other operators, (iv) unspecified objects may be modified 'externally' by a limited set of adjectives (v) the verb+unspecified object gives rise to an atelic reading. All of these properties are shown to derive from the fact that unspecified objects are null incorporated nouns. This is desirable since the same set of properties are shared by different types of noun incorporation constructions in languages outside Romance and, to a large extent, by bare noun constructions in Spanish and other Romance languages (Espinal & McNally 2011). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Data from a wide range of languages appear to show that bare nouns take obligatory narrow scope. Research on bare nouns has therefore closely tied certain interpretative effects (low scope, number neutrality) to the special overt morphosyntax of bareness (Carlson , inter alia). Thus there appears to be a tight connection between the syntax and the semantics of noun phrases. In this context, the goal of this article is two-fold. The first goal is to present data from Official Malagasy that call into question this correlation: bare nouns in the language can take variable scope. Thus the overt form of a nominal is not a reliable signal of its interpretation. Second, it is argued that bare nouns in Official Malagasy are in fact headed by a null determiner. Supporting data come from a related dialect, Antakarana, where bare nouns take obligatory narrow scope and there is no evidence for a null determiner. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study is concerned with the acquisition of bare nouns by children acquiring Yoruba as their first language. The Minimalist Programme serves as the framework for our syntactic analysis of development of bare nouns by the Yoruba child. The database consists of longitudinal studies of a Yoruba child, Damilare, between the ages of fifteen (15) and thirty six (36) months. He was audio recorded daily by his mother within the period. Some of the data were also written directly. The results show that from a very early stage, the Yoruba child begins to acquire bare nouns as compared to other types of nouns and these nouns occur in different positions. It can be concluded that they use bare nouns where other types of nouns should be used but, with time, other nominal expressions are developed and are used appropriately. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper provides evidence from Hocąk (Siouan) that Baker's (2014) analysis cannot account for all cases of pseudo noun incorporation (PNI). Baker (2014) argues that PNI is best analyzed as complex predicate formation derived via head movement of the object NP's head noun into the verb. Baker contends that the resulting structure cannot be linearized at PF if any material intervenes between the two copies of the noun, and thus that this movement must be string-vacuous. Here, I present data from Hocąk PNI that are problematic for Baker's theory. First, I show that internal arguments that are not base-generated in a position linearly adjacent to the verb can nonetheless be incorporated. Second, NP-internal modifiers can surface between the incorporated noun and the verb, which is also not compatible with Baker's theory. Instead, this paper demonstrates that Massam's (2001) analysis of PNI in Niuean (Oceanic) is able to account for the Hocąk data. Massam proposes that PNIed objects are NPs that are base-generated in object position. Thus, while Baker's head movement theory may be the right analysis for PNI in other languages, I argue that the data from Hocąk demonstrate that it cannot be the only possible mechanism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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 noneventive and, therefore, do not impose a specific homogeneity reading on the bare noun in object position. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Old Scandinavian (represented here by the Scanic dialect of Old Danish) allowed zero arguments (null-arguments) in any nominal (argument) position, that is: for NPs as subjects, objects and in PPs. In generative grammar, zero arguments are held to be variants of pronouns, but in this article, I shall claim that zero arguments in Scanic are semantically different from pronouns, and therefore pronouns and zero arguments are not variants. At one level, zero arguments and pronouns are similar with respect to function, namely to supply means for establishing co-reference in text; however, they are not semantically equivalent. By reducing these two categories to one single underlying category, such as pro, one would miss this point. On the contrary, zero arguments are arguably full-bodied signs with their own content, thus corresponding to Melčuk's Zero Sign Introduction Principle (2006). My analysis is intended as an example of the way Danish Functional Grammar unites a functional approach with important insights from European structuralism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nature of preverbal nominals and their relation to the verb have been the focus of much debate in languages with a productive complex predication process. For Persian, certain analyses have argued that the bare nominals in complex predicate constructions are distinct from bare objects, while others have treated the two types of bare nominals uniformly. This paper argues that the two categories of preverbal nouns cannot receive the same analysis since they display distinct syntactic and semantic behavior: the preverbal nominals, unlike the bare object nouns, cannot be questioned, are modified differently, have different interpretations, give rise to distinct case-assignment contexts, and can co-occur with a non-specific object. The distinct properties of the two nominal categories are captured by positing distinct structural positions for these nouns. Non-specific bare nouns are internal arguments of the thematic verb, while the nominal element of the complex predicate construction is part of the verbal domain with which it combines through a process of conflation, as defined in Hale and Keyser (), to form a single predicate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper argues that bare singular noun phrases in Brazilian Portuguese are mass nouns denoting kinds. We show that the prima facie arguments against treating bare singulars as mass nouns do not hold water, since they contrast atomic bare singulars with substance mass nouns such as ouro ‘gold’, rather than with atomic mass nouns such as mobília ‘furniture’. We show that in fact bare singulars and atomic mass nouns show the same properties with respect to distributive predicates and reciprocals. We then show that in distribution and interpretation, bare singulars behave like mass nouns and not like bare plurals. We give an analysis of the semantics of bare singulars/mass nouns in the framework of , treating them as kind denoting terms, while proposing that bare plurals are generated as plural predicates NPs, as proposed by , and show how this explains the differences in distribution and interpretation. We conclude that bare singulars can be the complements of mass quantifiers such as muito ‘much’ and quanto ‘how much’, in which case these behave semantically exactly like mass nouns: quanto livro with the bare singular asks about the overall measurements of a quantity of books in terms of volume or weight and is thus an expression of measure, while quantos livros with the plural count noun asks only for the cardinality of the set of books under discussion and thus is a question about counting. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

In some (numeral) classifier languages, a classifier may occur “bare” (i.e. with a noun but without a numeral) and the nominal expression receives a definite interpretation. On the basis of evidence from Cantonese and Mandarin Chinese, Cheng and Sybesma (1999) hypothesize that classifier languages exhibit either the bare classifier or the bare noun pattern for definite reference, but not both. To evaluate this hypothesis against more typologically diverse languages, a parallel elicitation study of three non-Sinitic languages was conducted — Vietnamese, Hmong and Bangla — as well as two geographical varieties of Cantonese, focusing on the definite interpretation of bare classifier and bare noun patterns. The results show that although the use of bare classifier patterns for definite reference is a cross-linguistically connected phenomenon, there is more variation than previously described in the alternation between definite bare classifier and bare noun patterns, and that the preference for one pattern over another may receive functional/ pragmatic explanations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a specific example of how syntax and semantics in language can be studied computationally using mathematical techniques. The study describes a method for predicting where bare noun phrases are permitted in Peninsular Spanish. The C4.5 decision tree algorithm was used to classify 48,554 noun phrases from the AnCora-ES corpus of Spanish news articles based on several syntactic, semantic and lexical properties of each noun phrase, including grammatical function, theta role, number, gender, if the noun is modified, position relative to the head verb, and if certain special-case verbs and nouns appeared in the sentence. On 3,852 noun phrases in the evaluation data set, the system achieved 81% precision, 77% recall, an F-measure of 79% and 81% accuracy. Gender was found to have significant importance in the classification, as did the prepositions de, a, entre, sin and con. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]