Singular Count Nouns Research Articles

On the Use of Articles in English and in Hungarian

On the use of articles in English and in Hungarian The English article system presents many problems for non-native speakers of English, thus to Hungarian learners of English as well, and due to the influence of the mother tongue they commit many errors in using them. While the definite article is the most basic indicator of definiteness, the indefinite article is the most basic indicator of indefiniteness for singular count nouns. However, there is a third type of article, the zero article, which indicates that the noun phrase is used in a generic sense in English whereas in Hungarian the definite article is used here. (e.g., Milk is good for you. Cigarettes are bad for your health. Do you like folk music? vs. A tej jó neked. A cigaretta káros az egészségedre. Szereted a népzenét). Although there are many similarities in the use of articles in English and Hungarian, there are also many crucial differences in this respect between the two languages as illustrated by the examples above. The main aim of this paper is to investigate these similarities and differences by primarily relying on descriptive grammar books commonly used by students during their studies at universities. Special focus will be placed on the use of articles for generalisation (e.g., The bull terrier makes an excellent watchdog./A bull terrier makes an excellent watchdog./Bullterriers make excellent watchdogs. vs. A bullterrier kitűnő házőrző.) and with proper nouns (e.g., Westminster Abbey vs. A Westminster- apátság or Lake Balaton vs. A Balaton, Mont Blanc vs. A Mont Blanc), as these are the most troublesome areas students face when studying the article system of English. I hope to be able to improve students’ understanding of this difficult area and guide them to a more accurate usage of the English article system. Keywords: the definite article, the indefinite article, the zero article, common nouns, proper nouns, countability, generalisation

Monotonicity in a Numeral Classifier language

While many languages require an obligatory plural morpheme to make reference to plural individuals, numeral classifier languages generally do not (Greenberg 1972; Sanches & Slobin 1973; Doetjes 2012: a.o.). This led some researchers to conclude that noun denotations in numeral classifier languages are inherently plural. In this paper, I show that one can find a syntactic environment which requires a plural reading or a mass reading of a noun phrase in a numeral classifier language. The core empirical finding is that the postnominal measurement construction in Japanese (i) does not allow a singular reading, and (ii) sometimes triggers count-to-mass coercion. This suggests that the constraint that measure phrases select a non-quantised denotation (Krifka 1989) is non-trivially satisfied in Japanese even though Japanese is argued to have inherently cumulative common noun denotations. To solve this, I propose two possible analyses. The first option is to assume the stratified measurement reference (Champollion 2017) and the second option is to assume that Japanese distinguishes singular count nouns, plural nouns and mass nouns in its syntax (Watanabe 2006; 2017). I discuss the implications of these options in light of the previous literature and provide further data which may suggest that Japanese makes an atomicity distinction both in its lexicon and its syntax.

Danish bare singular count nouns in subject position

This paper aims at investigating under which conditions Danish Bare Singular Count Nouns (BSCNs) can function as subjects in standard categorical statements, i.e. outside special discourse types such as proverbs, newspaper headlines, titles of paintings, etc. Taking as a point of departure a brief discussion of the distributional differences between, on the one hand, Bare Plural count nouns (BPs) and mass nouns and, on the other, BSCNs, it is shown that, contrary to BP- and mass noun subjects, BSCNs in subject position are non-referential and do not imply existential presupposition. On these grounds, and on the basis of analyses of phenomena such as agreement features, genericity and pseudo-incorporation, it is argued that the BSCN-subjects of categorical statements are objects which, owing to the lack of realisation of nominal functional categories, act as property-denoting modifiers restricting the denotation of a covert predicate. Consequently, it is concluded that BSCNs in subject position do not function as arguments in themselves, but are instead pseudo-incorporated into the covert predicate as modifiers.

Not-negation revisited: variation betweenaandanyin verb complements in contemporary spoken American English

Innot-negated English sentences with indefinite expressions following the verb, there is variation between the indefinite article andanyas determiners of nouns. The standard view is that singular count nouns take the indefinite article and singular non-count and plural nouns takeany.However, it is possible to encounter examples likeit isn'tany threat,there isn'tany lockorI don't haveany problem.The article studies variation between the indefinite article andanyas post-verbal determiners of singular nouns in 21,084not-negated sentences in the spoken component ofThe Corpus of Contemporary American English, COCA SPOK. The indefinite article is dominant with 90 per cent of the tokens. Variation is extremely rare in sentences with copularbeand much more frequent in sentences with existentialbeandhave. Among the reasons for variation between verb types is the use ofdo-support withhave(but not withbe). Expressions such ashave a job/car/homeorthere's not a/anwith uncontractednotmay also prevent the use ofany.Variation occurs mostly with abstract nouns such asproblem,choice,way,place,reason. This finding is surprising as abstract nouns have rarely been discussed in the literature on varying countability of nouns.

Common names and proper nouns: Morphosyntactic evidence of a complete nominal paradigm

The terms "common noun" and "proper name" encode two dichotomies that are often conflated. This paper explores the possibility of the other combinations—"common name" and "proper noun"—and concludes that both exist on the basis of their morphosyntactic behavior. In support of common names, inflectional regularization is determined to result from a "name" layer in the structure, meaning that common nouns that regularize are, in fact, common names (computer mouses, tailor’s gooses). In support of proper nouns, there are bare singular count nouns in English that receive definite interpretations and seem to be licensed as arguments by the same null determiner as proper names (I left town, she works at home). Not only does a four-way distinction between nouns, names, proper nouns, and proper names achieve greater empirical coverage, but it also captures the independent morphosyntactic effects of [PROPER] and [NAME] as features on D and N, respectively.

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.

Determiner omission in German prepositional phrases

In this paper, we present an analysis of so-called determinerless PPs in German, i.e. prepositional phrases that allow singular count nouns to occur without an accompanying determiner, despite other rules in the grammar requiring the presence of the determiner. The analysis is based on annotated corpus data, which are fed into a statistical classifier (applying logistic regression). Superficially, the syntax of bare prepositional phrases is difficult to capture, and intuitions cannot be easily elicited. The analysis is based on data sets for two pairs of German prepositions:mit‘with’ andohne‘without’, andüber‘over, above’ andunter‘under, below’. The results of the classifiers applied to annotated data indicate which syntactic, morphological and semantic features are responsible for determiner omission. We are able to detect common properties of all four prepositions, as well as preposition-specific, and idiosyncratic properties. The apparently unsystematic conditions for determiner omission can be discerned by tracing the interaction of these properties.

Bare nouns in Danish with special reference to the object position

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 inspise æbler‘eat apples’), (ii) PI oftype 1BSs (medium integration as inmale hus‘paint house’), and (iii) PI oftype 2BSs (maximum integration as inspille violin‘play violin’).

Garlic and ginger are not like apples and oranges: Effects of mass/count information on the production of noun phrases in English.

In this study a picture-word interference paradigm was used to investigate how grammatical mass/count information is processed during noun phrase production in English. Theories of lexical processing distinguish between two different types of lexical-syntactic information: variable extrinsic lexical-syntactic features, such as number (singular, plural), and fixed intrinsic lexical-syntactic properties, such as grammatical gender (e.g., masculine, feminine). Previous research using the picture-word interference paradigm has found effects of distractor lexical-syntactic congruency for grammatical gender but no congruency effects for number. We used this phenomenon to investigate whether mass/count information is processed similarly to grammatical gender. In two experiments, participants named pictures of mass or count objects using determiner noun phrases (e.g., Experiment 1 with mass and plural count nouns: "not muchmass ricemass", "not manycount pegscount"; Experiment 2 with mass and singular count nouns: "some ricemass", "a pegcount"), while ignoring distractors that were countability congruent or incongruent nouns. The results revealed a countability congruency effect for mass and plural count nouns in Experiment 1 and for singular count nouns, but not mass nouns in Experiment 2. This is similar to grammatical gender suggesting that countability processing is predominantly driven by a noun's lexical-syntactic information.

Learning English bare singulars: Data in the L2 classroom

Contrasted with the more typical English bare noun forms of mass and proper nouns, bare singular count nouns comprise a problematic set for many descriptive grammars and thus for many second language learners. Although article usage is one of the trickiest areas of English as a Second Language (ESL) to master, bare noun phrases, and bare singulars in particular, are less emphasized in the English language classroom, where much of the focus is placed on learning to produce articles, not learning to exclude them. To investigate L2 sensitivity to bare singular forms, the distribution of bare and articulated NPs in corpus data is contrasted, nouns appearing most often without articles are tracked, and a survey of L2 grammaticality judgments by adult learners is gathered. Lastly, the combined results of the corpus and survey data are integrated into a lesson on the syntax and pragmatics of bare singular count nouns that is designed for the ESL classroom.

The interpretation of Brazilian Portuguese bare singulars in neutral contexts

Abstract The interpretation of Bare Singular count nouns (henceforth BS nouns) has been at the center of much debate in the literature on countability in Brazilian Portuguese. In this paper, we ad- dress the question whether BS nouns may only be interpreted as mass nouns or as names of kinds, or whether they may also be interpreted as object denoting nouns. It is generally agreed that BS nouns can be interpreted as names of kinds. Furthermore, Beviláqua and Pires de Oliveira (2014) show that BS nouns are interpreted as mass nouns in contexts that favor a mass interpretation. However, the preferred interpretation of BS nouns in neutral contexts (i.e. contexts that favor neither a count nor a mass interpretation) has never been investigated experimentally. We present the results of two experiments, which show that speakers tend to interpret BS nouns as count nouns in neutral contexts.

Los nombres escuetos y el artículo ø

Los nombres escuetos y el artículo ø

Bare coordination: the semantic shift

This paper develops an analysis of the syntax-semantics interface of two types of split coordination structures. In the first type, two bare singular count nouns appear as arguments in a coordinated structure, as in bride and groom were happy. We call this the N&N construction. In the second type, the determiner shows agreement with the first conjunct, while the second conjunct is bare, as in the Spanish example el hornero y hornera cobraban en panes (‘thesg.m bakersg.m and bakersg.f werepl paid in bread loaves’). We call this the DN&N construction. Both N&N and DN&N constructions are common in languages that otherwise require an article or determiner on singular count nouns in regular argument position, and give rise to ‘split’ readings that cannot be accounted for by the standard semantics of conjunction in terms of set intersection. Furthermore, they are restricted to instances of ‘natural’ coordination.We formalize the semantics of split conjunction in terms of intersection between sets of matching pairs, which correlates with the lexical semantics and pragmatics of natural coordination. We maintain that an N&N construction gets either a definite or an indefinite interpretation by covert type-shifting, because projection of an article ranging over the coordination as a whole is blocked in languages like English and Spanish. For DN&N structures, we propose a syntactic structure in which D is in construction with the first conjunct. Coordination with a second, bare conjunct requires a covert type-shift that is licensed only under the special matchmaking semantics of conjunction. The analysis addresses a range of issues these coordinate structures raise about syntactic and semantic agreement, in particular with respect to number. Next to English and Spanish we will look into Dutch and French in detail.

„Podolski hat Vertrag bis 2007, egal, ob wir in der Ersten oder Zweiten Liga spielen.“

Abstract In German, singular count nouns usually are accompanied by a determiner (cf. Ich habe ein Auto, ‘I have a car’ vs. *Ich habe Auto, ‘I have car’). In recent years, however, the singular count noun Vertrag (‘contract’) is frequently used without a determiner, as in Er hat Vertrag bis 2013 (‘He has contract until 2013’). Although there is some doubt, intuitively, whether or not this construction is grammatically acceptable to native speakers, it definitely exists in today’s German. In this contribution, we examine the in-between status of the Vertrag+haben-construction in German in more detail. We try to find an answer to the following question: How can we explain that Vertrag haben, on the one hand, is less acceptable than the regular Hunger haben (‘be hungry’ [‘have hunger’]) but, on the other hand, is much more acceptable than *Auto haben (‘have car’)? In a diachronic corpus study on (Er) hat Vertrag, we show, first, that this construction is used in German newspaper texts since 1990 with increasing frequency. Then, in a short survey of the general distribution of determinerless count nouns in German, we show that Vertrag haben does not fall under one of the established classes of determinerless constructions in German. Against this background, we take a contrastive look at Swedish, which allows for a great variety of determinerless constructions (e. g., Han har bil ‘He has car’). More specifically, we discuss morpho-syntactic, semantic and information structural properties of Swedish determinerless constructions. Some of these characteristics turn out to be similar for Vertrag haben. The contrastive view leads us to the more general assumption that Vertrag haben is marked because of lacking morpho-syntactic licensing, in contrast to the relevant Swedish constructions. As an account of the problem of how Vertrag haben could achieve the status of a German construction to begin with, we propose that it is the semantic noun class of Vertrag, which we define as abstract, but countable noun, which contributes to the licensing of the construction.

Izon Influences in Nigerian English Syntax

This study explores Izon influences in Nigerian English syntax, tests their acceptability in terms of appropriateness, grammaticality, intelligibility and widespread usage among educated speakers in the Izon (Nigerian) setting and uses this as a basis to make a distinction between the influences that are permanent and those that are temporary. The study data, collected from 150 Izon-English bilinguals through observation and structured interview, were derived from examination scripts, recorded informal discussions and a 40-item questionnaire, among others. The study reveals that Nigerian English syntax manifests some fascinating Izon influences, especially in terms of the pluralization of non-count nouns, the occurrence of the first person before the third person in a compound subject-NP, the omission of “a”/“an” before singular count nouns and before “little” and “few”, and the co-occurrence of possessive and demonstrative determiners, among several others presented as features 1–7. The study concludes that those influences presented as features 1, 2 and 3 whose average percentage of acceptability is above 50% are, because of their appropriateness, grammaticality, intelligibility and widespread usage among educated speakers in the Nigerian setting, permanent influences since their manifestation is seen even in the English of the most educated Nigerian English speaker in spite of his/her high level of exposure. However, those presented as features 4, 5, 6 and 7 whose average percentage of acceptability is less than 50% are temporary because their manifestation in the English of Nigerians decreases or totally disappears as their level of exposure to good English usage increases.

Where the Mass Counts: Common Cortical Activation for Different Kinds of Nonsingularity

Typically, plural nouns are morphosyntactically marked for the number feature, whereas mass nouns are morphosyntactically singular. However, both plural count nouns and mass nouns can be semantically interpreted as nonsingular. In this study, we investigated the hypothesis that their commonality in semantic interpretation may lead to common cortical activation for these different kinds of nonsingularity. To this end, we examined brain activation patterns related to three types of nouns while participants were listening to a narrative. Processing of plural compared with singular nouns was related to increased activation in the left angular gyrus. Processing of mass nouns compared with singular count nouns was related to increased activity bilaterally in the superior temporal cortex and also in the left angular gyrus. No significant activation was observed in the direct comparison between plural and mass nouns. We conclude that the left angular gyrus, also known to be relevant for numerical cognition, is involved in the semantic interpretation of different kinds of nonsingularity.

Language typology and the acquisition of bare noun/DP contrasts

Language typology and the acquisition of bare noun/DP contrasts Ana T. Pérez-Leroux, Anna Gavarró Algueró, and Thomas Roeper 1. Introduction If compositionality (the assumption that the meaning of an utterance is determined by the meaning of its parts and the way they combine) is an inherent property of the human language, we expect children to attribute meaning to even small differences in sentence form. The input contains minimal contrasts as in (1), whose interpretation may not be easy to disambiguate in a given discourse context. Our goal is examine how children acquire these minimal distinctions. 1. a. Someone is wearing gloves. b. Someone is wearing the gloves. Formally, these cases differ in the presence of a determiner in contrast with a bare form. Referentially, (1a) includes (1b), so for every context where (1b) is true (1a) is also true. The definite DP has a distinct signature in the input, as it is more frequent at second mention of a referent (Sneed 2008). The bare noun is less specified, and thus less falsifiable. We propose to explore the acquisition of nominal mapping in terms of the semantic competition between bare nouns and DPs. We present a comparative study of two languages: Catalan, where these nominal contrasts occur in restricted positions, and English, where the contrast is instantiated in both subject and object position. To this purpose, we replicated in English Gavarró et al.'s (2006) study on the acquisition of bare/DP objects in Catalan. 2. DP/Bare Noun Contrasts The now-familiar typology in Chierchia (1998) states that languages vary according to how nominal categories are mapped into semantic types. In his Nominal Mapping Parameter (NMP), nouns are associated with two independent features that determine their denotation. The feature [+arg(ument)] indicates N is kind-denoting and has a mass syntax; the feature [+pred(icate)] determines that a N is predicate-denoting and has a countable syntax. In Chinese, and other classifier languages, Ns are mapped as [+arg, -pred] and thus can be arguments in their own right. In Romance languages, Ns are mapped as [-arg, +pred] and need a determiner to function as arguments. In Germanic languages, Ns are mapped as [+arg, +pred]: when Ns are [+pred] they [End Page 413] require a D, as in Romance count nouns; when [+arg] they act like mass nouns. In Romanian, Catalan, Spanish and Italian, bare objects appear in the immediate domain of a P or V head. This is productive for mass and plural count nouns, and lexically restricted for bare singular count nouns (Bosque 1996, Dobrovie-Sorin et al. 2006). Chierchia's approach analyzes the bare objects in (2) differently despite their comparable distribution and interpretation. Milk in (2a) is treated as a bare noun, while llet in (2b) is a DP with a null determiner head. 2. a. Children drink milk. b. Catalan: Els nens beuen llet. The-PL children drink milk. 3. Acquisition of Bare/DP Contrasts Research on the acquisition of DPs has identified typological variation in the timing of the acquisition of determiners. Lleó and Demuth (1999) showed that young Spanish children achieved adult levels of article production earlier than German-speaking children and proposed that prosodic differences across languages determine children's rates of determiner insertion. Guasti, Gavarró, de Lange, and Caprin (2008) examined determiner production in Catalan, Italian, and Dutch children under the age of 3, divided in groups according to linguistic development rather than age. While articles or protoarticles emerged at the same age across languages, there was a clear contrast in the overall rates of use and the pace of development, following the predictions of the NMP. At the initial stage, Catalan and Italian children had article omissions in roughly half of the NPs produced, but dropped substantially under 16% by the second stage. In contrast, Dutch children started with higher omission rates (92%) in the first stage and retained substantial omission rates in the later stage (39%). Guasti and colleagues note that Dutch is statistically different from Catalan and Italian, and conclude that differences in acquisition rates for the various language types exist beyond the effect of prosodic factors. Bilingual children learning Germanic and Romance languages exhibit comparable...

Dutch ENIG: from nonveridicality to downward entailment

In combinations with singular count nouns, the Dutch indefinite determiner enig 'some/any' shows a diachronic distributional shift from nonveridical environments in general to a strict subset thereof, namely negative, conditional and interrogative contexts. Similarities with Greek indefinites of the kanenas-series are explored, and an argument is given that at some point enig has split into two uses, one of which is currently on its way out. Nonemphatic, nonreferring enig is disappearing, whereas emphatic enig is stable within a set of environments similar to those of English any or ever.

Semantic incorporation as an account for some bare singular count noun uses in English

This work investigates inter-related syntactic and semantic issues concerning bare singular count nouns (BSCNs) in English. I explore differences in interpretation, distribution, and possible underlying nominal structure to investigate how BSCNs fall out when considered as semantically incorporated nominals. By examining their interaction with discourse anaphora, number neutrality, and modification, I conclude that some uses of English bare singulars show the behavior of full referential DPs, while others are best explained as semantically incorporated nominals fused with a preposition or intransitive verb.

The Dependency Structure of Coordinate Phrases: A Corpus Approach

Hudson (1990) proposes that each conjunct in a coordinate phrase forms dependency relations with heads or dependents outside the coordinate phrase (the "multi-head" view). This proposal is tested through corpus analysis of Wall Street Journal text. For right-branching constituents (such as direct-object NPs), a short-long preference for conjunct ordering is observed; this is predicted by the multi-head view, under the assumption that structures resulting in shorter dependencies are preferred. A short-long preference is also observed for left-branching constituents (such as subject NPs), which is less obviously accommodated by the multi-head view but not incompatible with it. The repetition of determiners was also examined (the dog and cat versus the dog and the cat), and a stronger preference was found for repetition with singular count nouns as opposed to mass or plural nouns; this accords well with the multi-head view, under the reasoning that single-determiner constructions require crossing dependencies with count nouns but not with plural or mass nouns.