Bare NPs: Kind-referring, Indefinites, Both, or Neither?

Abstract

No abstract.

Bare nominals in Catalan and Spanish. Their structure and meaning

“…If N is a common count noun unmarked for Number, the Determiner combines directly with the Noun to yield a generic interpretation (Krifka, 2004), an atomic kind of type hei. In the case of definite descriptions like la carrera de Medicina 'the degree in medicine' or la gripe porcina 'the swine flu', the definite determiner takes as an input a property of specific kinds of individuals and gives as an output kind-referring expressions.…”

Bare singular noun phrases are mass in Brazilian Portuguese

“…In order to explain this distribution, we advance the hypothesis that the bare mass and the bare singular both denote kinds, derived from a set denoted by an abstract root noun via a lexical operation. Bare plurals denote plural count predicates which, following Krifka (2004) shift either to a kind-denoting expression or to an existential generalized quantifier. We show that the bare mass and the bare singular are identical from a grammatical point of view, and that, as expected on this theory, they behave in the same way in other respects, including selection by mass quantifiers and interpretation in comparatives.…”

Narrow Focus, clefting and predicate inversion

“…45 Hence, they can be subject to IDENT and serve as specificational predicates in the cleft-like construction. In particular, Krifka (2004) suggests that bare singular NPs can introduce new discourse referents under the presupposition that they are unique in the situation talked about. They are thus expected to make excellent foci in clefting construction, in which the focused phrase typical obtains an exhaustive interpretation (cf.…”

“…Heim, 1982). For discussion and details on these issues -which are beyond the scope of this paper -see Krifka (2004).…”

“…These NPs basically have predicate-denoting properties, however, they can be shifted to (e-type) kind-referring expressions or indefinites given the appropriate linguistic context (cf. Partee 1987Partee [2002; Krifka, 2004). 45 Hence, they can be subject to IDENT and serve as specificational predicates in the cleft-like construction.…”