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Abstract
In this paper, I argue against Chierchia’s (1998a, b) Nominal Mapping Parameter (NMP) from Javanese and develop an alternative, purely syntactic account of the effects that the NMP was designed to capture. I first show that Javanese poses an empirical challenge to the NMP because this language does not fit into any one of the three language types that should exhaustively classify all natural languages under Chierchia’s typology. I propose a new parametric syntactic account, whereby languages differ with respect to how high a language allows its bare nominal to grow, drawing on the related ideas independently argued for in recent work as in Grimshaw (1991), Massam (2001), and Guilfoyle and Noonan (1992). I show that this parametric analysis of the height of the nominal functional structure derives a variety of morphosyntactic properties of bare nominals across languages, including those noted by Chierchia, in tandem with the independently motivated language-particular values for Number: {singular, plural} vs. {neutral , plural}. 2. Chierchia’s 1998a, b nominal mapping parameter
Highlights
In this paper, I argue against Chierchia’s (1998a, b) Nominal Mapping Parameter (NMP) from Javanese and develop an alternative, purely syntactic account of the effects that the NMP was designed to capture
The NMP proposed recently by Chierchia (1998a, b) claims that languages differ in whether bare nouns in a language are mapped onto kinds, properties, or both at the syntax-semantics interface
Chierchia (1998a) argues that, as the setting of the NMP suggests, nominals in this type of language shows a mixed set of morphosyntactic properties; bare nominals are possible when they are mass or bare plural but, at the same time, the mass/count distinction and the singular/plural distinction are active
Summary
I argue against Chierchia’s (1998a, b) Nominal Mapping Parameter (NMP) from Javanese and develop an alternative, purely syntactic account of the effects that the NMP was designed to capture. The first type of languages is a [+arg, -pred] language such as Chinese and Japanese where bare nominals are mapped onto kinds , “functions from worlds (or situations) into pluralities, the sum of all instances of the kind” (Chierchia 1998a: 349) Languages of this type allow determinerless, bare arguments because kinds are saturated in the Fregean sense. Chierchia (1998a) argues that, as the setting of the NMP suggests, nominals in this type of language shows a mixed set of morphosyntactic properties; bare nominals are possible when they are mass or bare plural ( kind-denoting/[+arg] as in Chinese and Japanese) but, at the same time, the mass/count distinction and the singular/plural distinction are active ( predicate-denotating/[+pred] as in French and Italian) The third and last type of languages is a [+arg, +pred] language like English and Russian whereby mass and bare plurals are mapped onto kinds but count nouns are mapped onto properties . Chierchia (1998a) argues that, as the setting of the NMP suggests, nominals in this type of language shows a mixed set of morphosyntactic properties; bare nominals are possible when they are mass or bare plural ( kind-denoting/[+arg] as in Chinese and Japanese) but, at the same time, the mass/count distinction and the singular/plural distinction are active ( predicate-denotating/[+pred] as in French and Italian)
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