This article examines the distribution and interpretational variability of bare nouns and [classifier+noun] phrases in Cantonese and Mandarin. We argue that bare nouns are never bare in structure and that [classifier+noun] phrases may have more structure than just Classifier Phrase. We show that the lack of articles and number morphology in Cantonese/Mandarin leads to many interesting differences between Chinese-type languages and English-/Italian-type languages.
* This chapter incorporates most of the arguments and conclusions in Cheng and Sybesma 1999. In gathering and sorting out the data, we received help and advice from many people, which we gladly and gratefully acknowledge. In particular we would like to acknowledge the input from the following colleagues: Wu: We thank You Rujie for sharing with us his Wu expertise in general and for providing and discussing the Wenzhou data. Thanks a lot! For Shanghainese we are especially indebted to Hua Dongfan. We also discussed Shanghainese with You Rujie, Eric Zee, Lu Bingfu and Duanmu San. Min: The data were provided (and checked with other informants) by C.-C. Jane Tang. Thanks are also due to Tang Ting-chi. Cantonese: Thomas Lee and Sze-Wing Tang helpfully provided judgments. We would furthermore like to thank the following colleagues for more general comments and discussion:
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