An Experimental Study on Child Comprehension of Spanish Indefinites and Bare Singulars

Abstract

Since the work of Carlson (1977), it is impossible to treat the bare plural dogs in English as the counterpart of the indefinite singular a dog. Whereas the indefinite singular in object position allows both wideand narrow-scope readings with respect to operators such as negation, bare plurals are always under the scope of negation. As is well known, Spanish has an indefinite singular that is identical in form to the number one (un auto ‘a/one car’). Moreover, in a more restricted but productive set of contexts, many dialects of Spanish allow bare singulars in object position. Much like bare plurals in English, Spanish bare singulars under negation (and other operators) only allow a narrow-scope interpretation, as illustrated in (1a). In (1a) the bare singular is within the scope of negation, and this sentence can only mean that the boy didn’t buy any dogs. The indefinite singular in (1b), on the other hand, has three possible interpretations: the indefinite can have a narrow scope (the boy didn’t buy any dogs), a wide scope (there is a particular dog the boy didn’t buy), or a number reading (the boy didn’t buy one dog, he bought more, two or three). In English, the latter reading is not possible with the indefinite a.