A syntactically-driven approach to indefiniteness, specificity and anti-specificity in Romance

Abstract

In this paper we present an original approach to analyze the compositionality of indefinite expressions in Romance by investigating the relevance of their syntactic distribution in relation to their meaning. This approach has the advantage of allowing us to explore the question of how syntactic structure can determine the meaning of different forms of indefiniteness. To that end, we postulate a common derivation for bare plurals, bare mass and de phrases, whereby an abstract operator de is adjoined to definite determiners and shifts entities into property-type expressions. Quantificational specificity is proposed to be derived from a syntactic structure in which weak quantifiers select for indefinite de-phrases, no matter whether de is overt at Spell-Out or not; these quantifiers turn properties into generalized quantifiers. The anti-specificity meaning of some indefinites is derived by adjoining in the syntactic structure an abstract operator alg that encodes the speaker’s epistemic state of ignorance to a quantifier encoded for specificity, and it turns a generalized quantifier into a modified generalized quantifier. The paper also brings some general predictions on how indefiniteness is expressed in Romance, as it provides extensive support from five Romance languages: Brazilian Portuguese, Catalan, French, Italian and Spanish.

The Status ofDein Romance Indefinites, Partitives and Pseudopartitives*

“…Notice that these structures reflect the similarity that Jackendoff (1977) and Selkirk (1977) observed between simple quantifier expressions (e.g., many flowers, much bread ) and NPs headed semi‐lexical nouns (e.g., a bunch of flowers, a piece of bread ). In our analysis (see also Espinal & Cyrino forthcoming) both weak quantifiers (Milsark 1974) and measure nouns select for de‐ phrases in Romance. These structures allow both the quantity and the container readings.…”

“…In order to account for these data, we propose that, syntactically, de is neither a partitive preposition, nor an article. However, we postulate that de keeps an article flavor by being the overt Spell‐Out of an abstract operator adjoined to D. Our hypothesis is that de is the overt expression of an abstract operator de that is responsible for cancelling definiteness in Romance (see also Espinal & Cyrino forthcoming). In other words, on the basis of the systematic variation in the expression of indefiniteness we saw above (i.e., the absence or presence of a marker de before a definite article, a plural count noun or a mass noun), we propose (25):…”

“…What is different is the status assigned to de in the literature: de has been considered an article in (1) or a preposition/functional element (3)–(9). In this paper, (i) we argue that de is not an article nor a preposition encoding partitivity in (1), but the overt realization of an abstract operator de responsible for indefiniteness (see also Cardinaletti & Giusti 2016, 2018; Espinal & Cyrino forthcoming); (ii) we also argue that this hypothesis should be extended to bare indefinites in (2), to Chierchia’s bare partitives in (5), and to pseudopartitives in (7), (8b) and (9b). Additionally, (iii) we support the hypothesis that de is not a partitive preposition in full (canonical) partitives (3), (4), and in (specific) bare partitives, as exemplified in (6), (8a) and (9a) —in these sentences de is the overt realization of a bi‐relational partitive relator head (den Dikken 2006; Zamparelli 1998, 2008) that takes a quantifier phrase in the specifier position and a definite (or specific) DP in complement position, thus projecting a relator phrase that behaves like a generalized quantifier.…”

“…The specifier is a QP that denotes a proper subset of the set denoted by the definite plural DP, and it may either denote quantificational specificity (e.g., S ciertos hombres ), non‐specificity (e.g., S varios hombres ) or anti‐specificity (e.g., S algunos hombres ) (Espinal & Cyrino forthcoming). In standard partitives, the complement is a definite DP that denotes a group individual (e.g., S uno de los dos planetas ) or the maximal set of all the pluralities conceived in association with a definite plural (e.g., BP dois dos representates sociais ); the complement can also be a mass noun (e.g., I molto del vino ) or a count noun that has cumulative reference similar to a mass noun (e.g., I la maggior parte del paese ).…”

Indefinite readings of referential null subjects and null objects in Spanish

“…Contrary to what has been claimed in the literature, there are some referential NSs that can receive indefinite readings in Spanish. The crucial condition is provided by the antecedent, which must be a bare plural, which is by default indefinite and non-specific (Espinal 2010;Laca 2013;Leonetti 2011). The datum in (8) has not received much attention before, as far as I know (see Campos 1986: 357-358 for intuitions; and Laca 2013 for more data).…”