Bare Plurals in Spanish are Interpreted as Properties

McNally, Louise

doi:10.5565/rev/catjl.107

Cited by 52 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 12 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…) has pointed out to me that a distinction should be made among two different uses of the term 'property'. The first one, which is more in accordance with McNally's (1995) work, is conceived as a function of NPs, when they contribute a specific descriptive content to the semantics of an individual, quite independently of the presence of a definite or an indefinite D. The second one, which is the one being assumed in this paper, takes a property to be the denotation of a bare Noun, because it has no extensional referent, and it only allows quantification of degrees.…”

Section: Lexicalization Of Light Verb Structures and The Semantics Ofmentioning

confidence: 84%

“…From the vast amount of literature on the semantics of nouns, and in particular on the semantics of bare nouns, see Carlson (1977aCarlson ( , 1977bCarlson ( , 1999, Chierchia (1998), Laca (1996), Longobardi (2001), McNally (1995), and Partee (1987). 20.…”

Section: Lexicalization Of Light Verb Structures and The Semantics Ofmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Semantically, it will be shown that the study of lexicalized light verb expressions provides additional arguments to support the hypothesis that object count nouns of VP idioms, under certain syntactic conditions, must be interpreted as property denoting expressions at the syntax-semantics interface (Laca 1996, McNally 1995, Espinal 2001. Thus, I shall put forward the hypothesis that determinerless nouns occurring in object position of analytic verbal expressions do not activate a type-shifting operation from properties to either referential entities or generalized quantifiers over individuals (Carlson 1999, Chierchia 1998, Longobardi 2001, Partee 1987.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Lexicalization of Light Verb Structures and the Semantics of Nouns

Espinal¹

2004

catjl

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In this study I shall focus on two Romance idiomatic patterns and the semantics of nouns. It is shown that idioms, in addition to having distinct basic argument structure representations, are formed in syntax by various instantiations of Merge. It is argued that there is a lexicalization pattern reflecting semantic conflation (Talmy 1985(Talmy , 2000 between cause and degree. This pattern, in syntactic terms, is the output of subsequent Merge operations (Chomsky 1995) between the object noun of a monadic argument structure, an indefinite quantifier and an adjunct phrase. The study of this lexicalization pattern is of interest with regard to the semantics of bare nouns, especially of bare count singular nouns in object position; it is proved that bare nouns are interpreted as properties, and, because of this, they permit quantification over degrees. By contrast, there is a second lexicalization pattern starting from a composite argument structure which licenses an individual or a kind denoting reading for the DP object.

show abstract

Section: Lexicalization Of Light Verb Structures and The Semantics Ofmentioning

confidence: 84%

Section: Lexicalization Of Light Verb Structures and The Semantics Ofmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Lexicalization of Light Verb Structures and the Semantics of Nouns

Espinal¹

2004

catjl

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…de Hoop 1992;McNally 1992McNally , 1995Ladusaw 1994;Van Geenhoven 1995). The proposal that noun phrases in argument positions might denote properties is perhaps surprising at first.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

“…de Hoop 1992;McNally 1992McNally , 1995Ladusaw 1994; * We would like to thank all the contributors for their papers and for their cooperation during the editing process. We are also very grateful to all of our referees, who provided careful and very helpful comments on the papers.…”

mentioning

confidence: 99%

Introduction. The semantics of nominals

Espinal¹,

McNally²

2004

catjl

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

This special volume presents a series of papers which all deal with the semantics of nominal expressions.It has long been clear that the relatively simple picture of the relationship between syntactic category and semantic type on which all noun phrases denote generalized quantifiers, while perhaps feasible to maintain, is an idealization that does little to advance our understanding of the great richness and variety in the semantics of nominals that is attested in the world's languages. In the last thirty years, this picture has grown progressively more complex along at least two dimensions that we would like to emphasize here.Since the early 1980s many researchers have explored the possibility that the nominal expressions found in syntactic argument positions do not all belong to the same semantic type (see Partee 1987 for a comprehensive discussion). Kamp (1984) and Heim (1982) provided strong evidence that many noun phrases lack quantificational force and thus should be given a non-quantificational analysis. Partee and Rooth (1983) argued that NPs should be able to type shift between entity and quantifier-type denotations. Pustejovsky (1995) proposed expanding the inventory of type-shifting functions to cover certain cases in which NPs are acceptable in argument positions where a type clash would be expected. Romero's contribution to this volume can be considered as belonging to this general line: she argues that both the NP complements to concealed question verbs such as know and the subjects of specificational copular sentences, contrary to what it might appear superficially, denote propositions (modeled as sets of worlds). Still another line of research on the semantic type of NPs has centered around modeling noun phrases semantically as choice functions (Reinhart 1997, Kratzer 1998.In the early 1990s, some researchers began to pursue the idea that nominals in non-predicative positions might denote properties, as opposed to quantifiers or entities (see e.g. de Hoop 1992;McNally 1992McNally , 1995Ladusaw 1994; * We would like to thank all the contributors for their papers and for their cooperation during the editing process. We are also very grateful to all of our referees, who provided careful and very helpful comments on the papers. Finally, thanks to Tom Rozario for his help with the preparation of the manuscripts.

show abstract

Indefiniteness and Specificity

Leonetti

2012

The Handbook of Hispanic Linguistics

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Bare Plurals in Spanish are Interpreted as Properties

Cited by 52 publications

References 12 publications

Lexicalization of Light Verb Structures and the Semantics of Nouns

Lexicalization of Light Verb Structures and the Semantics of Nouns

Introduction. The semantics of nominals

Indefiniteness and Specificity

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About