Bare Singulars Research Articles

Deferred reference, meaning transfer or coercion? Toward a new principle of accounting for systematic uses of proper names

Proper names are typically considered to be devices of individual reference. Since Frege (1882), the debate has mainly concerned the proper semantic characteristics of this individual reference. Burge (J Philos 70:425–439, 1973) challenged this focus by highlighting the predicative uses of proper names and proposed that names are predicates even if they appear as bare singulars in the argument position. In turn, this unificatory account was subjected to criticism by Böer, Jeshion, and others, who provided counterexamples to the predicativist analysis of proper names. In this paper, I want to analyze the nonreferential uses of proper names, which, by being nonreferential, provide a challenge for both predicativism and referentialism about proper names. I critically examine the processes proposed as possible accounts of the problematic examples, i.e. deferred reference, meaning transfer, and coercion, and argue that they do not provide an adequate analysis. I propose an interpretive mechanism that accounts for these problematic uses of proper names, as well as a new principle for classifying the kinds of uses of proper names based on the interpretive mechanisms underlying those uses and which includes all of the kinds of uses discussed in the literature.

Weak definite nominals

AbstractWeak definite nominals are a class of nominals composed of weak definites and bare singulars occurring in the same linguistic environments within and across languages. They display several characteristic properties: restricted distribution, non‐unique reference, sloppy identity in VP‐ellipsis sentences, acceptability in sluicing contexts, narrow‐scope interpretation, lexical constraints, restricted modification, restricted number morphology, meaning enrichment, and discourse referential defectiveness. In this review we explore two main theoretical approaches accounting for the meaning of these expressions, namely, one that treats them as pseudo‐incorporated nominals and another one that attributes to them an abstract object reference. We first discuss the properties of weak definite nominals using Rioplatense Spanish data and then evaluate how both approaches can account for these properties.

Acquisition of kind-reference by Arabic, Chinese, and Turkish L2 learners of English

AbstractThis study examines the acquisition of kind-referring expressions such as The dodo is extinct. The objective is to investigate whether second language (L2) learners’ acquisition of nominal number marking and articles expressing kind-reference in English is affected by their first language (L1), their L2 proficiency in English, or the syntactic position of the kind-referring noun phrase (NP). L2 learners of English with Arabic, Chinese, and Turkish L1 backgrounds and a control group of native English speakers (NSs) participated in the study. The results from a Fill in the Gaps Task (FGT) and an Acceptability Judgment Task (AJT) demonstrated that L2 learners were more successful in their production and acceptability judgments when the expression of kind-reference in the target language was similar to that in their L1. The results also showed non-facilitative L1 transfer in the domain of bare singulars, as well as a positive effect of higher L2 proficiency on kind-referring NPs. Finally, the study revealed a subject/object asymmetry in the acquisition of kind-referring NPs in L2 English.

Semantic Incorporation in English Singular Indefinites

Abstract In this paper, we introduce a class of exceptionally narrow-scoping singular indefinites in English (e.g., “Sam drove a car for several years before switching to a truck”), which pattern more closely with what have been termed “weak definites” in the literature (e.g., Poesio, 1994; Carlson et al., 2006) than with regular indefinites. While the existence of such exceptional “weak” indefinites has been previously anticipated by Klein et al. (2013), the category is difficult to distinguish from simple narrow-scoped singular indefinites in most contexts. Here, we argue that there is one environment where weak singular indefinites can be distinctively identified: namely, when they appear with for-adverbials. We sketch a concrete implementation of a semantic incorporation-based account for such nominals, bringing them analytically in line with incorporation analyses of weak definites, building closely on the ideas in Dayal (2011). We further briefly discuss how the proposed analysis adjudicates between two competing analyses for for-adverbials, one which assumes that for encodes a universal quantifier (e.g., Deo & Piñango, 2011) and another which takes for to be non-quantificational (e.g., Champollion, 2013), in favor of the latter view. We close by considering some remaining issues surrounding semantically incorporated DPs in English: specifically, how weak (in) definites relate to other nominals that receive covarying interpretations across contexts—such as bare plurals on the one hand (which we do not take to be semantically incorporated) and bare singulars on the other.

Brazilian and English bare nouns: Language variation, experiments, and L2s

This paper proposes to connect research areas with the aim of understanding bare nominals across languages. It focuses on Brazilian Portuguese (BrP) and English. The BrP nominal system challenges the parametric models in Chierchia (1998a, 2010), and two proposals have been raised to explain it within Chierchia’s model: the Bare Singular (BS) is a plural count noun (Schmitt and Munn 1999, 2002; Müller 2002) or it is mass (Pires de Oliveira and Rothstein 2011). Experimental research (Bevilaqua 2019) does not support either of these theories because BrP speakers oscillate between mass and count when interpreting the BS. In contrast, BSs are ungrammatical in English and speakers massify them; they are never counted. Motivated by the experimental studies, Pires de Oliveira (2020, 2021, to appear) presents a new approach: although BrP and English are number marking languages (Chierchia 2010, 2015), atomicity, a grammatical operation (Rothstein 2010, 2017), is activated at different points in the derivation. In English, the first nominal layer projects atomicity, while in BrP, the determiner carries this information; thus, plural inflection is optional on the noun. This paper suggests that language processing and second language acquisition are areas of investigation that may provide new evidence for a better understanding of the semantics of noun phrases.

Bare singulars and relative measures in Brazilian Portuguese

Brazilian Portuguese has received much attention in the typology of noun phrases for being a language with a fully-fledged determiner system that also allows generalized bare singular nominals. This paper investigates the use of bare singulars in relative measure constructions, such as um terço de mulher (literally, ‘one third of woman’). We show that Ahn & Sauerland’s (2015, 2017) and Pasternak & Sauerland’s (2020) analysis of relative measure constructions, combined with existing theories of bare singulars, predicts that bare singulars should be attested in relative measure constructions and derives their range of attested interpretations in these constructions. At the same time, we argue that these combined analyses predict that bare singulars should be attested in relative measure constructions in other Romance languages. This prediction is problematic and highlights the need for further research on the interaction of bare singulars and relative measures.

The syntax of generics and the absence of generic articles

Cross-linguistically, no language has a dedicated generic article. To address why this is, I decompose GEN into its quantificational and modal components and locate them inside nominal structure. Adopting an event licensing analysis of pre- and post-verbal bare subjects in Modern Hebrew, I use the restriction of pre-verbal bare subjects to generic interpretations and unacceptability of pre-verbal bare singulars to argue that the quantificational component of GEN is best analyzed as a D-quantifier. Evidence from adnominal conditionals further identifies a modal source for GEN within the nominal, which I suggest is adjectival and derived from a reduced relative clause source. I propose that the formation of generic articles is blocked by the non-local (e.g. non-spanning) relationship between these quantificational and modal components.

Bare Singulars and Pseudo-Incorporation in Western Armenian

This paper is concerned with the way the denotation of the bare singular and the process of Pseudo-Incorporation (PI) interact in Western Armenian (WA). We argue that bare singulars in WA unambiguously denote properties of kinds, thus differing significantly from languages like English and Turkish, where they are ambiguous between object-level and kind-level properties (Dayal 2004, Sağ 2019). Our argument comes from Pseudo-Incorporation. WA allows PI of [Num (CLF) Nsg] elements (covert plurals) which denote object-level properties. At the same time, PI-ed NPs (either bare singulars or covert plurals) accept only kind- level modification. This cannot be accounted by restricting PI to kind-denoting NPs (like in Turkish, Sağ 2019), as object-level properties (i.e. covert plurals) are also PI-ed. We derive the pattern by building an analysis of PI where the bare singular is unambiguously kind-denoting.

From roots to DPs, Brazilian Portuguese and English: a model theoretical approach to language variation

The paper develops Pires de Oliveira’s (2020, in press) model theoretical approach to Brazilian Portuguese (BrP) and English. BrP and English are number marking languages, ie when n is first projected, little-n, [n 0 [X]], where X is a non-categorized root, it is projected as a predicate, <e, t> (Chierchia 2010, 2014, in press). The proposal distinguishes the denotation of n 0 from the denotation of a plurality of atoms. The nominal n 0 denotes a part-whole non-atomic lattice (Rothstein 2010, 2017). In English, atomicity is mandatory immediately after n 0 : n 1 is projected, generating [n 1 [AtP [n 0 [X]]]. This predicts no Bare Singulars in argument position in English, mass interpretation via coercion, and also that nominal root [n 0 [X]] surfaces in English when AtP is not projected, as in compounds. In BrP, [n 0 [X]] surfaces in argument position, because AtP is not mandatory after little-n. This is the bifurcation separating these two types of languages. The absence of grammatical atomicity, leads to under-specification of mass and count. Thus, the Bare Singular is neither mass nor count. Atomicity is induced by the “determiner”, understood in a broad sense: plural inflection, the definite article, some quantifiers. It explores an unitarist approach to the nominal phrase in BrP and proposes a non-canonical derivation. The conclusion explores variation in number marking languages.

Bare singulars and singularity in Turkish

This paper explores the semantics of bare singulars in Turkish, which are unmarked for number in form, as in English, but can behave like both singular and plural terms, unlike in English. While they behave like singular terms as case-marked arguments, they are interpreted number neutrally in non-case-marked argument positions, the existential copular construction, and the predicate position. Previous accounts (Bliss, in Calgary Papers in Linguistics 25:1–65, 2004; Bale et al. in Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) 20:1–15, 2010; Görgülü, in: Semantics of nouns and the specification of number in Turkish, Ph.d. thesis, Simon Fraser University, 2012) propose that Turkish bare singulars denote number neutral sets and that morphologically plural marked nouns denote sets of pluralities only. This approach leads to a symmetric correlation of morphological and semantic (un)markedness. However, in this paper, I defend a strict singular view for bare singulars and show that Turkish actually patterns with English where this correlation is exhibited asymmetrically. I claim that bare singulars in Turkish denote atomic properties and that bare plurals have a number neutral semantics as standardly assumed for English. I argue that the apparent number neutrality of bare singulars in the three cases arises via singular kind reference, which I show to extend to the phenomenon called pseudo-incorporation and a construction that I call kind specification. I argue that pseudo-incorporation occurs in non-case-marked argument positions following Öztürk (Case, referentiality, and phrase structure, Amsterdam, Benjamins, Publishing Company, 2005) and the existential copular construction, whereas kind specification is realized in the predicate position. The different behaviors of bare singulars in Turkish and English stem from the fact that singular kind reference is used more extensively in Turkish than in English. Furthermore, while there are well-known asymmetries between singular and plural kind reference cross-linguistically, Turkish manifests a more restricted distribution for bare plurals than English in the positions where pseudo-incorporation and kind specification are in evidence. I explain this as a blocking effect, specific to Turkish, by singular kind terms on plural kind terms.

DETERMINERS, BARE SINGULARS, PLURALS: A PORTABLE TUTOR FOR SENTENCE GRAMMAR

This paper is based on the assumption that a portable tutor, as a practice-based tool, can offer students ample opportunities to improve their sentence grammar. By focusing on one specific grammar issue at a time, it presents certain sentence patterns that, through repeated practice, can eventually correct that particular grammar issue, in this case, that of determiners, bare singulars, and plurals. Significantly, this study has specific implications for Assumption University students and for Thai students in general, in that it explains why people who grow up speaking a language where nouns do not have determiners will have difficulty when learning a language that has them, for instance English. The paper begins by presenting a classification of determiners followed by a detailed description of one specific type of determiner: the bare singular count noun. The study continues with the proposed research methodology consisting of the Portable Tutor development, and the Experiment’s three main components, pre-testing, “treatment” and post-testing of the participating group of students. The paper concludes with data collection and analysis, and conclusions. 
 
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Regular and compositional aspects of NPN constructions

The article proposes a novel analysis of NPN constructions, exemplified by English expressions likeback to backandyear after year.An NPN is typically composed of two identical bare singular count nouns with a preposition between them. Previous research tends to treat NPNs as highly idiosyncratic. While acknowledging some idiosyncrasies, the present contribution shows that NPNs exhibit a considerable degree of regularity and compositionality. A widespread view that bare singulars normally do not function as arguments is shown to rest on weak foundations. As a consequence, the present approach is able to show that NPNs are, at the core, NPs with PP modifiers. Nominal NPNs have this basic structure, while adverbial NPNs involve an extra layer of semantics and are exocentric constructions. A distinction between nominal types and instances is employed to account for the semantics of bare singulars. NPNs exhibit two kinds of emergent meanings, leading to chain NPNs and twin NPNs. The different semantic structures of these NPN subtypes explain why some NPNs can have nominal in addition to adverbial functions. The data comes mostly from Norwegian. Details differ between languages, but central parts of the analyses can be assumed to hold for other languages as well.

Aspectual information of durativity/punctuality impacts the countability of deverbal nouns in Brazilian Portuguese

This paper explores the countability of deverbal bare singular nouns in Brazilian Portuguese, such as chute ‘kick’ in Maria deu mais chute ‘Maria did more kicking/Maria did more kicks’. More specifically, it investigates whether the aspectual information of a verb impacts the count (cardinal interpretation) or mass (volume/intensity interpretation) interpretation of a bare singular noun. Based on the results of a forced choice task replicating Barner, Wagner, and Snedeker (2008) for English, we show that deverbal bare singulars in Brazilian Portuguese allow count and mass interpretations, depending on the aspectual features of the verbs they are derived from. Punctual events were more likely than durative events to be associated with a cardinal/count response. These results corroborate previous analysis of bare singulars in Brazilian Portuguese, whereby these nouns allow both count and mass interpretations (Pires de Oliveira & Rothstein 2011b).

Licening by Modification: Existential Reading of Bare Plurals in Farsi

Dayal (2004b) predicts a language in which bare plurals have more restricted existential readings than bare singulars, ‘Hindi-in-reverse’, to be impossible. In this paper, I provide novel data, showing that Farsi is, in fact, such a language. Nonetheless, I argue that Dayal’s account can be extended to Farsi. I propose that the unexpected pattern arises due tothe special property of Farsi plural marking as a MAX operator. Existential readings of Farsi bare plurals only become available when they are modified. I follow Dayal’s (1995) proposal, which takes modifiers to introduce a situation variable. I argue that this proposal, together with the assumption that Farsi bare plurals lack a situation variable, similar to Dayal’s suggestion for Italian bare plurals, can explain how the presence of modifiers makes the otherwise unavailable existential reading of Farsi bare plurals available.

O singular nu no inglês e no português brasileiro: abordagens experimentais sobre atomicidade

A partir de uma discussão sobre o papel da atomicidade no domínio da distinção contável-massivo, propomos uma análise para o Singular Nu (SNU) tanto no inglês quanto no português brasileiro (PB). Nosso objetivo é verificar experimentalmente o caráter atômico (ou não) desses sintagmas. Para tanto, analisamos dados de um teste realizado por Scontras, Davidson, Deal e Murray (2017), que mostram que o SNU no inglês enseja principalmente leitura de volume em comparativas. Segundo nossa análise, essa interpretação é explicada como coerção, o que corrobora a denotação do SNU como um predicado atômico nessa língua. Para o caso do SNU no PB, desenvolvemos um teste de julgamento de quantidade, nos moldes de Scontras et al.(2017), para verificar as dimensões usadas na comparação em sentenças com o plural, o nome massivo e o SNU, em oposição a sentenças sem o nome expresso (Quem tem mais?). Os resultados mostram que sentenças com o SNU possuem os mesmos julgamentos de sentenças sem o nome expresso. Argumentamos, então, que o SNU no PB não carrega qualquer traço gramatical de atomicidade, diferentemente do plural e do nome massivo, que carregam traços [+atom] e [-atom] respetivamente.

Lexical semantics in advanced second language French: The acquisition of genericity

The study considered the genericity of count nouns among L1 Arabic adult learners advanced in L2 French. The experimental task was a context-based acceptability judgment test on the interpretation of five nominal forms in NP-level and sentence-level generic contexts: definite, indefinite and bare singulars in addition to definite and bare plurals. The results revealed that the L2 learners did not perform to a nativelike degree. Additionally, their response pattern demonstrated that they did not differentiate between the two types of genericity in French, expressing both by definite singulars and definite plurals as in L1 Arabic. They tended to interpret indefinite singulars in characterizing sentences existentially, due to non-facilitative influence of L1 Arabic. The learners correctly excluded bare singulars and plurals as they are existential in the L1 and ungrammatical in this usage in French. The study concluded that the learners’ knowledge of genericity in L2 French was not monolithic, mixing nativelike and transferred expressions.

The L2 Acquisition of Mass Nouns by Arab Leaners of English

This study explores how Arab L2 learners of English acquire mass nouns. The mass/count distinction is a morphosyntactically encoded grammatical distinction. Arabic and English have different morphosyntactic realisations of mass nouns. English mass nouns take the form of bare singular whereas Arabic mass nouns can take the definite singular form or the indefinite singular, but never the bare singular form. Therefore, the study explores how Arab learners interpret English mass nouns in light of the morphosyntactic differences between the two languages. 45 upper- and lower-intermediate Arab English learners were given a context-based acceptability judgment task on English mass nouns. It was hypothesised that Arabic learners would be influenced by their first language (L1), causing them to over accept definite singulars and under accept bare singulars as grammatical in mass noun contexts. The findings are consistent with what was hypothesised, except that Arab learners were found to interpret bare singulars accurately. It is argued that learners’ performance is affected by not only L1transfer but also UG accessibility where learners can structure away from L1 and more towards L2. Consequently, the findings implicate that L2 teachers should not teach grammatical structures that come for free and instead they should focus on grammatical structures that cause L2 acquisition difficulty.

Sentence-level vs. NP-level Genericity: Are Arabic Learners of English Sensitive to Genericity Type?

The study was conducted to investigate the L2 acquisition of English generics by L1 Arabic speakers. The present study considered the two types of genericity (NP-level vs. sentence-level). Since generics in Arabic are always definite, the study investigated whether L1 Arabic speakers perform similarly in both types. The study recruited 43 participants (36 Saudi-Arabic-speaking participants and seven native English speakers). The Saudi-Arabic-speaking participants were assigned to two proficiency levels (23 elementary and 13 lower intermediate) in accordance with the Oxford Quick Placement Test. An Acceptability Judgement Task was administered to test their use of English generics. Five types of nouns were used (definite singulars and plurals, indefinite singulars and plurals, and bare singulars). The results revealed that: a) statistically, the Arabic speakers were significantly less accurate than the native English speakers; b) the Arabic speakers rated the non-target definite plurals highly in both types of genericity; and c) they rated the target indefinite singulars low with sentence-level genericity. These findings demonstrated that Arabic speakers were sensitive to genericity type, and that their selections cannot be explained solely in terms of their L1.

Reference to kinds in L2 English

This study investigated the acquisition of kind referring noun phrase interpretation in L2 English by learners with Turkish, Arabic and Chinese L1 backgrounds. 37 advanced learners of English with Turkish (10), Arabic (10) and Chinese (10) L1 backgrounds, and 7 native English speakers were recruited. The tasks were a 48-item Fill in the gaps task and a 64-item Acceptability judgment task. The results indicated that: (a) native speakers, and L2 learners mostly produced bare plurals for count nouns and bare singulars for mass nouns for kind reference; (b) L2 learners of English transferred the morphosyntactic manifestation of kind reference from their L1s, substantiating the Full Transfer Full Access Hypothesis (Schwartz & Sprouse, 1996); and (c) the similarity between the participants’ L1s and L2 did not always lead them to produce correct noun forms and articles for kind reference, neither did such a similarity consistently help the learners in their acceptability judgments for kind reference.

Genericity in third language English: Acquisition pattern and transfer in ultimate attainment

This study investigates the acquisition of genericity in advanced third language (L3) English. The learners are first language (L1) Moroccan Arabic–second language (L2) French adults. They completed an acceptability judgment task testing the interpretation of five count nominal types in noun phrase (NP)-level and sentence-level genericity: definite, indefinite and bare singulars, definite and bare plurals. The study defines the generic or non-generic status of every NP form in the learners’ L3 interlanguage. The results show that the L3 learners are target-like on the generic interpretation of bare plurals, although these are strictly existential in their native language and illicit in L2 French. Definite and bare singulars do not pose any difficulty either. In contrast, non-facilitative L1 transfer induces the generic interpretation of definite plurals and restricts indefinite singulars to the existential interpretation. The results show that the L3 learners do not distinguish NP-level from sentence-level genericity, reflecting L1 Arabic grammar where the two merge. They use the same pattern of NP types for the two types. Thus, knowledge of genericity in L3 English is a patchwork of target-like and non-target-like exponents.