This paper documents the number-related properties of Dëne Sųłiné (Athapaskan). Dëne Sųłiné has neither number inflection nor numeral classifiers. Nouns are bare, occur as such in argument positions, and combine directly with numerals. With these traits, Dëne Sųłiné represents a type of language that is little considered in formal typologies of number and countability. The paper critiques one influential proposal, that of Chierchia (in: Rothstein (ed.) Events and grammar, 1998a; Natural Language Semantics 6: 339–405, 1998b), and presents an alternative (...) number typology, which introduces variation in the semantics of numerals. It will be shown that bare nouns in Dëne Sųłiné can be mass or count. Hence, the difference between count and mass cannot be expressed in terms of number, as in Chierchia. Instead, I express it in terms of atomicity. Mass nouns have nonatomic denotations, bare count nouns have atomic denotations that comprise singularities and pluralities. I also propose that numerals contain a function that accesses the singularities in a noun’s denotation. Hence they are compatible with bare count nouns, but not with mass nouns. In classifier languages, numerals denote a cardinality only; singularity-accessing functions are expressed in separate elements: the classifiers. Thus, languages like Chinese require classifiers because the numerals are semantically deficient, and not, as is assumed by Chierchia and others, the bare nouns. (shrink)

This paper addresses the scope behavior of bare nouns (BNs) in Kaingang (Jê, Brazil) and its relevance to the study of semantic variation. I show that Kaingang BNs exhibit variable scope in relation to other clause-mate operators, such as negation, intensional verbs, _if_-clauses, universal quantifiers, and frequency adverbials. Adopting a type-shifting framework (Chierchia in Topics in the syntax and semantics of infinitives and gerunds. PhD diss., University of Massachusetts, 1984 ; Events and grammar, pp. 53–103, 1998a ; Natural Language (...) Semantics 6: 339–405, 1998b ; Partee in Studies in discourse representation theory and the theory of generalized quantifiers, pp. 115–144, 1986 ; Krifka in Proceedings of SALT 13, pp. 180–203, 2003 ; Dayal in Linguistics and Philosophy, 27: 393–450, 2004, among others), I analyze Kaingang indefinite BNs as predicate NPs mapped into arguments via a choice function (CF) that gets existentially closed at any level in the clause, _à la_ English indefinites under Reinhart’s (Linguistics and Philosophy, 20(4): 335–397, 1997 ; Interface strategies: Optimal and costly computations, 2006 ) analysis. I also argue that the difference in scope properties across languages between variable-scope and narrowest-scope BNs is linked to the quantized/cumulative opposition of the predicates they express: the former are quantized predicates, while the latter are cumulative. I then claim that variable-scope and narrowest-scope BNs are created by two distinct type-shifters: the former by CF and the later by Krifka’s ∃ operator (Krifka in Proceedings of SALT 13, pp. 180–203, 2003 ). In this way, I propose that both operators are sensitive to the quantized/cumulative opposition and model this as conditioned by a binary semantic feature, namely [± quantizedness], which checks the (non-)quantized properties of the predicates that undergo type-shifting. The CF type-shifter is [+ quant], and thus defined only for quantized predicates, while Krifka’s ∃ type-shifter is [− quant], selecting only non-quantized ones. This analysis is shown to correctly predict the variation in scope properties of BNs across languages. (shrink)

One of the two central suggestions put forth in Longobardi (1991, 1994) was that Romance/English differences in the syntax of proper names were parametrically connected to supposed differences in the semantics of bare (plural and mass) common nouns (BNs). The present article will pursue this line of investigation, trying to make precise such meaning differences and to understand the reason for their apparently surprising parametric association with the syntax of proper names.It will be shown that in most Romance varieties (...) BNs, unlike their English counterparts, distribute their existential and generic readings across all different contexts exactly like (Romance and English) overt indefinites. All the differences will be unified under the proposal that Romance BNs are nothing but a type of indefinites (variables, existentially or generically bound) in Kamp-Heim’s DRT sense, while English BNs are rather systematically ambiguous between this quantificational interpretation and a referential (i.e. directly kind-denoting, much in the spirit of Carlson 1977a, b) one, providing for another type of generic reading.The analysis will therefore crucially exploit and empirically support Gerstner and Krifka’s (1987) distinction between referential and quantificational genericity. On such grounds we will finally gain a conceptual understanding of the typological implication originally established in Longobardi (1991, 1994), thus confirming that the strategies of interpretation of nominals, whether proper or common nouns, are basically one and the same, though differently parametrized in different languages. This result, in turn, will shed some light on the question whether comparative semantics is possible and whether it can be singled out as a legitimate independent component of parametric theories of grammatical variation. (shrink)

Bare plurals (dogs) behave in ways that quantified plurals (some dogs) do not. For instance, while the sentence John owns dogs implies that John owns more than one dog, its negation John does not own dogs does not mean “John does not own more than one dog”, but rather “John does not own a dog”. A second puzzling behavior is known as the dependent plural reading; when in the scope of another plural, the ‘more than one’ meaning of the (...) plural is not distributed over, but the existential force of the plural is. For example, My friends attend good schools requires that each of my friends attend one good school, not more, while at the same time being inappropriate if all my friends attend the same school. This paper shows that both these phenomena, and others, arise from the same cause. Namely, the plural noun itself does not assert ‘more than one’, but rather the plural denotes a predicate that is number neutral (unspecified for cardinality). The ‘more than one’ meaning arises as an scalar implicature, relying on the scalar relationship between the bare plural and its singular alternative, and calculated in a sub-sentential domain; namely, before existential closure of the event variable. Finally, implications of this analysis will be discussed for the analysis of the quantified noun phrases that interact with bare plurals, such as indefinite numeral DPs (three boys), and singular universals (every boy). (shrink)

I argue that common nouns should be analyzed as variables, rather than as predicates which take variables as arguments. This necessitates several unusual features to the analysis, such as allowing variables to be modally non-rigid, and assigning their values compositionally. However, treating common nouns as variables offers a variety of theoretical and empirical advantages over a more traditional analysis: It predicts the conservativity of nominal quantification, simplifies the analysis of articleless languages, derives the weak reading of sentences with donkey anaphora, (...) solves the proportion problem presented by quantifiers like ‘most’, improves the analysis of the temperature paradox, allows a more unified analysis of bare plurals, and regularizes the correspondence between syntactic categories and semantic types. (shrink)

Words are rarely produced in isolation. Yet, our understanding of multi-word production, and especially its time course, is still rather poor. In this research, we use event-related potentials to examine the production of multi-word noun phrases in the context of overt picture naming. We track the processing costs associated with the production of these noun phrases as compared with the production of bare nouns, from picture onset to articulation. Behavioral results revealed longer naming latencies for French (...) class='Hi'>noun phrases with determiners and pre-nominal adjectives (D-A-N, the big cat ) than for noun phrases with a determiner (D-N, the cat ), or bare nouns (N, cat ). The spatio-temporal analysis of the ERPs revealed differences in the duration of stable global electrophysiological patterns as a function of utterance format in two time windows, from ~190 to 300 ms after picture onset, and from ~530 ms after picture onset to 100 ms before articulation. These findings can be accommodated in the following model. During grammatical encoding (here from ~190 to 300 ms), the noun and adjective lemmas are accessed in parallel, followed by the selection of the gender-agreeing determiner. Phonological encoding (after ~530 ms) operates sequentially. As a consequence, the phonological encoding process is longer for longer utterances. In addition, when determiners are repeated across trials, their phonological encoding can be anticipated or primed, resulting in a shortened encoding process. (shrink)

Generically interpreted bare plural noun phrases license donkey anaphora. This fact has unexpected consequences both for the analysis of generics and for the analysis of donkey anaphors. Specifically, if we assume a kindsbased analysis of bare plurals as in Carlson (1980), we will be forced to give up the idea that donkey anaphors are variables – presumably in favor of an E-type analysis. Conversely, if we assume that donkey anaphors are variables, we will be forced to give (...) up Carlson’s treatment of generically interpreted bare plurals as denoting kinds – presumably in favor of an analysis employing a generic operator like that of Wilkinson (1991), which quantifies over objects directly, without the mediation of kinds. The two issues are thus dependent on one another, and cannot be decided independently. This paper will not attempt to choose between an E-type and a variable-based analysis of donkey anaphors, or between a kinds-based and a kinds-free analysis of generic bare plurals, but only to point out that the choice one makes with regard to either one of these issues appears to force a particular choice with respect to the other issue. (shrink)

Copredication is the phenomenon whereby two or more predicates seem to require that their argument denotes different things. The denotation of words that copredicate has been broadly discussed. In this paper, I investigate the metaphysics behind this question. Thus, mereological theories of dot objects claim that these nouns denote complex entities; Asher (Lexical meaning in context, Cambridge University Press, 2011, https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511793936) thinks that they denote bare particulars; and the Activation Package Theory contends that they stand for multiple denotations. According (...) to the Activation Package Theory, copredicative nouns stand for complex knowledge structures that offer a range of multiple potential denotations. In this paper, I claim that the Activation Package Theory contributes to solve some of the metaphysical questions that arise from copredication. (shrink)

This paper explores the semantics of bare singulars in Turkish, which are unmarked for number in form, as in English, but can behave like both singular and plural terms, unlike in English. While they behave like singular terms as case-marked arguments, they are interpreted number neutrally in non-case-marked argument positions, the existential copular construction, and the predicate position. Previous accounts 20:1–15, 2010; Görgülü, in: Semantics of nouns and the specification of number in Turkish, Ph.d. thesis, Simon Fraser University, 2012) (...) propose that Turkish bare singulars denote number neutral sets and that morphologically plural marked nouns denote sets of pluralities only. This approach leads to a symmetric correlation of morphological and semantic markedness. However, in this paper, I defend a strict singular view for bare singulars and show that Turkish actually patterns with English where this correlation is exhibited asymmetrically. I claim that bare singulars in Turkish denote atomic properties and that bare plurals have a number neutral semantics as standardly assumed for English. I argue that the apparent number neutrality of bare singulars in the three cases arises via singular kind reference, which I show to extend to the phenomenon called pseudo-incorporation and a construction that I call kind specification. I argue that pseudo-incorporation occurs in non-case-marked argument positions following Öztürk and the existential copular construction, whereas kind specification is realized in the predicate position. The different behaviors of bare singulars in Turkish and English stem from the fact that singular kind reference is used more extensively in Turkish than in English. Furthermore, while there are well-known asymmetries between singular and plural kind reference cross-linguistically, Turkish manifests a more restricted distribution for bare plurals than English in the positions where pseudo-incorporation and kind specification are in evidence. I explain this as a blocking effect, specific to Turkish, by singular kind terms on plural kind terms. (shrink)

In this paper I provide novel arguments for the predicative approach to proper names, which claims that argument proper names are definite descriptions containing a naming predicate . I first argue that modified proper names, such as the incomparable Maria Callas or the other Francis Bacon cannot be handled on the hypothesis that argument proper names have no internal structure and uniformly denote entities. I then discuss cases like every Adolf, which would normally be interpreted as every individual named Adolf (...) and show that the predicative approach to proper names can straightforwardly account for the distribution of a detectable naming component in proper names. Finally, I address the issue of proper names used as common nouns and plural proper names and demonstrate that they do not form a homogenous group yet can be clearly distinguished on both syntactic and semantic grounds from proper names involving a detectable naming component. (shrink)

In this paper I provide a decompositional analysis of three kinds of plural indefinites in two related languages, European Spanish and Brazilian Portuguese. The three indefinites studied are bare plurals, the unos (Spanish)/uns (Portuguese) type, and the algunos (Spanish)/alguns (Portuguese) type. The paper concentrates on four properties: semantic plurality, positive polarity, partitivity, and event distribution. The logic underlying the analysis is that of compositionality, applied at the subword level: as items become bigger in form (with the addition of morphemes), (...) they also acquire more semantic properties. The paper proposes the “indefinite hierarchy", which establishes a set of components for languages to build their indefinites with, in a particular order. (shrink)

Grammatical gender processing during language production has classically been studied using the so-called picture-word interference (PWI) task. In this procedure, participants are presented with pictures they must name using target nouns while ignoring superimposed written distractor nouns. Variations in response times are expected depending on the congruency between the gender values of targets and distractors. However, there have been disparate results in terms of the mandatory character of an agreement context to observe competitive gender effects and the interpretation of the (...) direction of these effects in Romance languages, this probably due to uncontrolled variables such as animacy. In the present study, we conducted two PWI experiments with European Portuguese speakers who were asked to produce bare nouns. The percentage of animate targets within the list was manipulated: 0, 25, 50, and 100%. A gender congruency effect was found restricted to the 0% list (all targets were inanimate). Results support the selection of gender in transparent languages in the absence of an agreement context, as predicted by the Gender Acquisition and Processing (GAP) hypothesis (Sá-Leite et al.,2019), and are interpreted through the attentional mechanisms involved in the PWI paradigm, in which the processing of animate targets would be favored to the detriment of distractors due to biological relevance and semantic prioritization. (shrink)

Les théories linguistiques en général, et plus particulièrement la psychomécanique du langage, dont le modèle est essentiellement binaire, peinent à faire une place à l’absence de déterminant sémiologiquement marqué. Quoique le terme « article zéro » soit communément usité, il n’y a guère de consensus sur le sens à lui donner. Pour le français, où son emploi reste marginal, on observe une fracture entre une posture théorique consistant à l’intégrer au système de l’article et une autre revenant à en nier (...) l’existence. Pour l’anglais, où il est beaucoup plus fréquent, la théorie se heurte à une multiplicité d’emplois difficiles à rassembler sous un même phénomène. Or un examen attentif des occurrences du corpus permet de proposer, dans la continuité de la théorie psychomécanique, un modèle où coexistent d’une part l’absence de tout déterminant et, d’autre part, un article zéro dont on peut montrer qu’il recouvre une véritable opération de détermination définie comme une transition du nom de la langue au discours débouchant sur son aptitude à référer. (shrink)

Machery et al. presented data suggesting the existence of cross-cultural variation in judgments about the reference of proper names. In this paper, we examine a previously overlooked confound in the subsequent studies that attempt to replicate the results of Machery et al. using East Asian languages. Machery et al. and Sytsma et al. claim that they have successfully replicated the original finding with probes written in Chinese and Japanese, respectively. These studies, however, crucially rely on uses of articleless, ‘bare (...) noun phrases’ in Chinese and Japanese, which according to the linguistic literature are known to be multiply ambiguous. We argue that it becomes questionable whether the extant studies using East Asian languages revealed genuine cross-cultural variation when the probes are reevaluated based on a proper linguistic understanding of Chinese and Japanese bare noun phrases and English definite descriptions. We also present two experiments on native Japanese speakers that controlled the use of ambiguous bare noun phrases, the results of which suggest that the judgments of Japanese speakers concerning the reference of proper names may not diverge from those of English speakers. (shrink)

Noun phrases with overt determiners, such as <i>some apples</i> or <i>a quantity of milk</i>, differ from bare noun phrases like <i>apples</i> or <i>milk</i> in their contribution to aspectual composition. While this has been attributed to syntactic or algebraic properties of these noun phrases, such accounts have explanatory shortcomings. We suggest instead that the relevant property that distinguishes between the two classes of noun phrases derives from two modes of existential quantification, one of which holds the (...) values of a variable fixed throughout a quantificational context while the other allows them to vary. Inspired by Dynamic Plural Logic and Dependence Logic, we propose Plural Predicate Logic as an extension of Predicate Logic to formalize this difference. We suggest that temporal <i>for</i>-adverbials are sensitive to aspect because of the way they manipulate quantificational contexts, and that analogous manipulations occur with spatial <i>for</i>-adverbials, habituals, and the quantifier <i>all</i>. (shrink)

Two theories of implicit domain restriction have gained considerable prominence over the last two decades. According to von Fintel (Restrictions on quantifier domaines, Ph.D. thesis, University of Massachusetts at Amherst, 1994), quantifiers come with covert restrictors and, as a result of this, induce domain restriction; according to Stanley [in Gerhard and Peter (eds) Logical form and language, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2002; Stanley and Szabó (Mind Lang 15(2–3):2192–2161, 2000)], by contrast, nouns, as opposed to quantifiers, come with covert restrictors. In this (...) article, I do three things. First, I assess the arguments that have been given for and against these two accounts and show that none of them is conclusive. Second, I advance a novel empirical argument based on the observed pragmatic behaviour of bare nouns, an argument that falsifies Stanley’s theory while providing clear evidence in support of von Fintel’s (1994). Finally, I discuss the relevance of the bare noun data in the context of another important debate—namely, whether domain restriction is a local mechanism only, or whether it can also be achieved by global means. (shrink)

One of the ways in which a poet may show his quality is by discrimination and originality in his choice of adjectives. Poetry likes to adorn the bare noun; a noun such as ‘the sky’ calls out for an attribute. But in practice the poet has to take care to avoid the cliche. He can seldom write ‘the blue sky’; even ‘the azure sky’ has become trite. He has to search for the epithet which will be both (...) apt and original. (shrink)

Yang (2004) observes that in Mandarin, an initial possessor phrase (PossessorP) may be followed by a bare noun as in (1), or by a possessee phrase that can be headed by a numeral and classifier, [Numeral + CL + N], as in (2) or by a demonstrative, [Dem + (Numeral) + CL + N] as in (3). (In all the examples in this section, we begin with Yang’s own initial glosses and translations3. The interpretation of the examples will (...) be probed after they have been presented.). (shrink)

Estonian doesn't have a definite article. Instead, bare singular noun phrases can unambiguously bear either a definite interpretation or an indefinite interpretation. This paper argues that the pragmatic principles governing the felicitous use of three English articles ("a", "the" and "another"), described by A Grønn and KJ Sæbø (2012, 'A, the, another: A game of same and different' Journal of Logic, Language and Information 21, 75-95) can also account for the conditions under which a bare singular (...) class='Hi'>noun phrase in Estonian bears a definite or instead an indefinite interpretation. The two languages use the same pragmatic principles to determine the definiteness interpretation of a noun phrase. The difference is just that in English (where definiteness meanings have been lexicalized) these pragmatic principles govern the felicity of article use, whereas in Estonian they govern the interpretation of a bare singular noun phrase. (shrink)

Cette étude contrastive français-allemand porte sur les structures constituées d’un groupe nominal – parfois seulement d’un lexème nominal – et d’un nom anthroponyme, comme Le capitaine Haddock / Kapitän Haddock ; l’oncle Charles /Onkel Karl ; Le poète Gottfried Benn /der Dichter Gottfried Benn. L’usage de l’article n’étant pas identique en français et en allemand, la comparaison de ces constructions donne des indications sur le fonctionnement différent de certains noms, notamment de fonction / statut / métier. L’étude ne porte donc (...) pas uniquement sur les GN sans déterminant, mais plutôt sur la présence ou l’absence du déterminant défini dans les constructions N1N2. Ces structures, traditionnellement appelées « appositions liées », sont comparées à des appositions et constructions détachées recourant aux mêmes classes sémantiques de noms, où le GN employant un nom commun peut être dépourvu de déterminant, et pour lesquelles l’emploi d’une virgule dépend de conditions co- et contextuelles qui seront mises en lumière. La comparaison des différents types d’apposition laisse apparaître la ténuité de leurs frontières et permet d’observer, entre autres, la différence entre emploi désignatif et emploi dénominatif de N1. (shrink)

The notion of existence is a very puzzling one philosophically. Often philosophers have appealed to linguistic properties of sentences stating existence. However, the appeal to linguistic intuitions has generally not been systematic and without serious regard of relevant issues in linguistic semantics. This paper has two aims. On the one hand, it will look at statements of existence from a systematic linguistic point of view, in order to try to clarify what the actual semantics of such statements in fact is. (...) On the other hand, it will explore what sort of ontology such statements reflect. The first aim is one of linguistic semantics; the second aim is one of descriptive metaphysics. Philosophically, existence statements appear to reflect the distinction between endurance and perdurance as well as particular notions of abstract states and of kinds. Linguistically, statements of existence involve a particular way of drawing the distinction between eventive and stative verbs and between individual-level and stage-level predicates as well as a particular approach to the semantics of bare plurals and mass nouns. (shrink)

One reason to think that names have a predicate-type semantic value is that they naturally occur in count-noun positions: ‘The Michaels in my building both lost their keys’; ‘I know one incredibly sharp Cecil and one that's incredibly dull’. Predicativism is the view that names uniformly occur as predicates. Predicativism flies in the face of the widely accepted view that names in argument position are referential, whether that be Millian Referentialism, direct-reference theories, or even Fregean Descriptivism. But names are (...) predicates in all of their occurrences; they are predicates that are true of their bearers. When a name appears as a bare singular in argument position, it really occupies the predicate position of what in this essay is called a denuded definite description: a definite description with an unpronounced definite article. Sloat provided good evidence for this. The definite article is sometimes pronounced with names in the singular: ‘The Ivan we all love doesn't feel well’. Sloat proposed a disjunctive generalization of when the definite article must be pronounced with a singular name. This essay shows that by slightly revising Sloat's generalization, we arrive at a simple, nondisjunctive, syntactic rule that governs the overt appearance of the definite article with singular names. But Ivan does not necessarily bear the name ‘Ivan’, so one might worry that the sentence “Ivan might not have had ‘Ivan’ as a name” would incorrectly be predicted false. This essay shows that Predicativism does not have this consequence by showing that incomplete definite descriptions in general and incomplete denuded descriptions, such as ‘Øthe Ivan’, in particular are rigid designators. (shrink)

The orthodox view of proper names, Millianism, provides a very simple and elegant explanation of the semantic contribution of referential uses of names–names that occur as bare singulars and as the argument of a predicate. However, one problem for Millianism is that it cannot explain the semantic contribution of predicative uses of names. In recent years, an alternative view, so-called the-predicativism, has become increasingly popular. According to the-predicativists, names are uniformly count nouns. This straightforwardly explains why names can be (...) used predicatively, but is prima facie less congenial to an analysis of referential uses. To address this issue, the-predicativists argue that referential names are in fact complex determiner phrases consisting of a covert definite determiner and a count noun—and so, a referential name is a definite description. In this paper, I will argue that despite the appearance of increased theoretical complexity, the view that names are ambiguous between predicative and referential types is in fact superior to the unitary the-predicativist view. However, I will also argue that to see why this ambiguity view is better, we need to give up the standard Millian analysis. Consequently, I will first propose an alternative analysis of referential names that retains the virtues of Millianism, but provides an important explanatory connection to the predicative uses. Once this analysis of names is adopted, the explanation for why names are systematically ambiguous between referential and predicative types is both simple and elegant. Second, I will argue that the-predicativism has the appearance of being simpler than an ambiguity view, but is in fact unable to account for certain key properties of referential names without making ad hoc stipulations. (shrink)

On the very first page of Spinoza's Ethics we find the perplexing definition of ‘attribute’: ‘By an attribute I mean what the understanding perceives in regard to a substance as constituting its essence’. Each attribute of a substance by itself thus constitutes the essence of a substance; if there are many attributes of the same substance, it does not take all of them together to constitute its essence. Spinoza, as we all know, in fact held that there is only one (...) substance, God, but there are infinitely many attributes, of which only two, Thought and Extension, are accessible to the human mind. Each attribute, we further learn, has to be conceived on its own account ; being conceived on its own account is, however, a distinguishing mark of the one substance, so how is it that the many attributes, which Spinoza says are really distinct, are not so many distinct substances, so many gods? That is the ontological side of the puzzle. Now for the logical or grammatical side — about which writers on Spinoza have, I think, said a great deal less, though it has been much discussed as regards less deviant theology than Spinoza's. Each attribute is clearly meant to be a concrete, active, individual entity; yet the attributes are designated by abstract nouns — ‘Thought’ and ‘Extension’. Now can we make sense of such a sentence as ‘God is Thought’ or ‘God is Extension’, as opposed to ‘God thinks’ or ‘God is extended’? What does it mean to predicate an abstract noun of a concrete individual? And if this ‘is’ here is not a bare copula of predication but an identity sign, then how can we avoid passing from ‘God is Thought’ and ‘God is Extension’ to ‘Thought is Extension’? Spinoza would deny the conclusion, and it is quite essential to his system to do so. For if Thought just is Extension, identically so, then any mode of the attribute Thought is a mode of the attribute Extension and vice versa. But for Spinoza, the last is diametrically opposite to the truth: no mode is a mode of more than one attribute, and indeed no causal relations link modes of different attributes — a causal linkage is always confined to one attribute. (shrink)

A more specific meaning of may be derived from the noun which in the modern Greek dialect of Epirus indicates some type of disease that leaves the scalp at least partially bare of its hair. It is often used with words such as psoriasis, or meaning, possibly, a disease caused by a type of ringworm which destroys the hair of the scalp. At present it is still used in mostly derogatory expressions, or in curses, such as: ‘Psoriasis and (...) ringworm have eaten him up’ or, ‘May psoriasis and ringworm eat you up!’In the Odyssey, where the word occurs, Odysseus, disguised by Athena as a wretched old beggar, is also deprived of his hair. This may perhaps have caused the inference to the ringworm disease and / or baldness in both passages where the epithet appears in Homer. (shrink)

We examine the distribution and interpretation of post-copular noun phrases in French when they appear with and without an indefinite article (_Marie est (une) physicienne_). We propose that the alternation is due to the fact that the indefinite article marks saturation of an NP-internal argument slot, and show that because of this, post-copular indefinite NPs are usually but not always existentially quantified, while bare NPs are predicative. This theory leads to new perspectives both on cross-linguistic marking of post-copular (...) NPs and on the treatment of the indefinite article. (shrink)

Negative Concord (NC) constructions such as the news anchor didn’t warn nobody about the floods (meaning “the news anchor warned nobody”), in which two syntactic negations contribute a single semantic one, are stigmatized in English, while their Negative Polarity Item (NPI) variants, such as the news anchor didn’t warn anybody about the floods, are prescriptively correct. Because acceptability is often equated with grammaticality, this pattern has led linguists to treat NC as ungrammatical in “Standard” or standardized English (SE). However, it (...) is possible that SE grammars do generate NC sentences, and their low incidence and acceptability is instead due to social factors. To explore this question, and the relationship between NC and NPI constructions, we compared the acceptability of overtly negative noun phrases (e.g., nobody ), NPIs (e.g., anybody), and bare plurals (e.g., people ), in negative contexts and in conditionals. Negative items were followed by a consequence which supported their single negative meaning, while conditional items were followed by a consequence compatible with the NPI and the bare plural but not the negative noun phrase. Acceptability ratings of the critical NC sentences were reliably lower than constructions with NPIs and bare plurals, but the consequences for all three of these sentence types were rated highly. This reflects an asymmetry in participants’ acceptance of NC and their readiness to interpret it in context. A follow-up study with only conditionals revealed that speakers can also find NPIs infelicitous in conditional contexts with consequences that are compatible with a negative interpretation of the NPI, and that negative arguments are felicitous in these same contexts. Taken together, the results support the hypothesis that speakers who do not accept NC have grammars that generate both NC and NPI constructions, and further, that these speakers have two underlying structures for any -NPIs in English. (shrink)

Clarence Sloat, Ora Matushansky, and Delia Graff Fara advocate a Syntactic Rationale on behalf of predicativism, the view that names are predicates in all of their occurrences. Each argues that a set of surprising syntactic data compels us to recognize names as a special variety of count noun. This data set, they say, reveals that names’ interaction with the determiner system differs from that of common count nouns only with respect to the definite article ‘the’. They conclude that this (...) special distribution of names is best explained by the-predicativism, the view that posits the existence of the null-determiner ‘the’ preceding bare singular names. This essay argues that they have incorrectly discerned the syntactic facts: their critical data point concerning the ungrammaticality of sentences like “The Katherine wants coffee” is mistaken. Such sentences’ grammaticality undermines the Syntactic Rationale and presents serious auxiliary problems for predicativism. (shrink)

At some moment in his life, James Joyce stopped writing Ulysses. If there had been at least one more thing he meant to fuss with or to fix, one more thing he meant to do to the book, he never did it. Ulysses was at that moment complete.The book reads to me as if it’s “harking back in a retrospective sort of arrangement” from that very moment, as if Joyce anticipated coming to it all along.1 Because he knew it would (...) be a moment in which the book he was writing would become the book he had written, that moment backed up into the writing itself, it dictated to him that the narrator’s sentences must be in the past tense. For Joyce, each phrase of Ulysses was over and done with as soon as he found that he could let it stand as it was. I think it’s for this reason that his characters’ actions and words are narrated as if they too were in the past. “Stately, plump Buck Mulligan came from the stairhead, bearing a bowl of lather on which a mirror and a razor lay crossed. A yellow dressinggown, ungirdled, was sustained gently behind him by the mild morning air. He held the bowl aloft and intoned …” . The writing which empowers Buck Mulligan to speak and act had at some moment stopped being a present participle for Joyce and begun to be a noun, a piece of writing, that now-realized thing which had been written. It’s therefore in the past tense that the narrative proceeds.Not that along the way there isn’t interior monologue that offers what a given character thinks, each thought sounding very much as if it’s in the present. “Mr Bloom stood far back, his hat in his hand, counting the bared heads. Twelve. I’m thirteen” . The illusion is that right here, right now, autonomously, Bloom is thinking about how many mourners there are at Dignam’s funeral and is trying to establish their number for himself. And yet while the sentence fragments “Twelve” and “I’m thirteen” interrupt the already completed past-tense narrative, the past-tense sentence which introduces the fragments implies an intelligence that has managed to narrate Bloom’s thoughts before Bloom himself has thought them. To narrate that Bloom is “counting the bared heads” in advance of that counting is paradoxically to review what hasn’t yet happened. It implies a knowledge that looks back on each present moment from a point outside of time. And it’s from precisely this point that the narrating intelligence closes off Bloom’s present-tense thoughts with past-tense news: “The coffin dived out of sight, eased down by the men straddled on the gravetrestles” . James McMichael, professor of English at the University of California, Irvine, is completing a manuscript called Reading “Ulysses.” His most recent book of poems is Four Good Things. (shrink)

Some demonstrative expressions, those we might term ‘bare demonstratives’, appear without any appended descriptive content (e.g. occurrences of ‘this’ or ‘that’ simpliciter). However, it seems that the majority of demonstrative occurrences do not follow this model. ‘Complex demonstratives’ is the collective term I shall use for phrases formed by adjoining one or more common nouns to a demonstrative expression (e.g. ‘that cat’, ‘this happy man’) and I will call the combination of predicates immediately concatenated with the demonstrative in such (...) phrases the ‘matrix’ of the expression. The question, then, is how we should construe the logical form of such expressions within a semantic theory for our language; and I wish to suggest that some recent answers to this question are, in fact, mistaken. The structure of the paper is as follows: first, I wish to highlight two (often underlying) assumptions about the nature of noun phrases in general, and suggest that, if they are both adopted, they apparently constrain the possible accounts of the logical form of complex demonstratives to just three options. The second and third parts of the paper will be concerned with expanding these options and arguing that none of them are adequate; thus the major part of the paper is concerned with the negative claim that the most obvious moves to make in this area must actually fail on closer inspection. The fourth and final section will then (very briefly) sketch the positive thesis of the paper: that we can deliver a clear and cohesive account of complex demonstratives, armed simply with elements which we will draw from David Kaplan’s theory of demonstratives, but only at the cost of rejecting (or at least refining) one assumption we recognised initially. (shrink)

In this paper, I develop a novel interval-based approach to some well-known semantic puzzles related to aspect shift, in particular, to the interaction of for-adverbials with accomplishment and achievement verbs that take indefinite, bare plural, and mass noun complements. My approach is based on the insight that implicit frequentative aspect plays a central role in this interaction, a fact that was largely ignored in previous analyses. Specifically, I interpret frequentative aspect as an abstract verb-level pluractional operator that brings (...) about aspect shift and that is responsible for the distribution of subevent times and subevent participants over the event time of an atelic sentence. What Zucchi and White (2001) call "the aspectual effect of frequency adverbs" thus becomes the general rule for all frequentatively understood for-adverbial sentences. Linguistic support for silent verb-level frequentativity in English is drawn from overt frequentative aspect marking in West Greenlandic verbs. (shrink)

This paper analyzes argument formation in Nuosu Yi, a language that is typologically unusual in having classifiers as well as a definite determiner. Also unusual is the fact that demonstratives do not combine directly with nouns in this language but require the mediation of classifiers. Properties such as these are shown to pose a challenge to current accounts of argument formation. The Neocarlsonian approach of Chierchia explains the absence of definite articles in classifier languages as resulting from considerations of economy. (...) If nouns in classifier languages are names of kinds, they can occur directly as arguments of verbs, thereby obviating the need for extra structure to host a determiner. The data from Nuosu Yi alters the empirical generalization and calls for a modification of the explanation. The specific account of Nuosu Yi that is presented bears on current discussions about the nature of argument formation. Must arguments necessarily occur with overt or covert determiners or is it possible for languages to differ in this respect? Must bare nominal arguments necessarily denote kinds or can they denote properties? In this sense, the discovery of a new type of classifier language contributes to a theory of language variation and argument formation in general. (shrink)

I argue that predicativism, the view that proper names are predicates, is a viable theory of the semantics of proper names given a certain hypothesis about the grammar of definiteness. Extant versions of predicativism hold that a singular name in argument position constitutes the predicative component of a covert definite description. I show that these versions cannot accommodate semantic and typological data, specifically: syntactic and semantic disparities between bare and non-bare occurrences of such names in English, the distinctive (...) modal rigidity displayed by names, as opposed to common noun definite descriptions, and cross-linguistic data that feature seemingly distinct determiners for names in argument position. I propose that predicativism needs to embrace a view of definite marking as complex, consisting of a definite article and a bindable, familiarity-tracking constituent, which I call _index_. I show that this view is empirically motivated and typologically attested. The resulting version of predicativism can accommodate elegantly the observed semantic data when coupled with language-specific morpho-phonological generalizations. I finally address criticisms of and alternatives to my version of predicativism. (shrink)

Researchers often assume that possible worlds and times are represented in the syntax of natural languages. However, it has been noted that such a system can overgenerate. This paper proposes a constraint on systems where worlds and times are represented as situation pronouns. The Intersective Predicate Generalization, based on and extending work by R. Musan, states that two items composed via Predicate Modification, such as a noun and an intersective modifier, must be evaluated in the same world and time. (...) To explain this generalization, a rule of Situation Economy is advanced, which holds that structures must have the fewest number of situation pronouns possible. Since strong DPs require a situation pronoun to receive a de re reading, a restriction on the type of strong determiners is proposed, which supersedes Situation Economy in this case. Finally, the paper shows how the Situation Economy approach explains an unrelated phenomenon involving bare plurals and examines the connection between this new rule and the grammar of natural language in general. (shrink)

This paper argues that Hindi incorporation is, in fact, pseudoincorporation, involving noun phrases rather than nouns. Furthermore, it shows that there is no requirement that the incorporated nominal form a morphological or even a syntactic unit with the verb. Such loosely aligned nominals can nevertheless be identified as incorporation on the basis of semantic intuitions having to do with number interpretation, anaphora, and certain properties typically associated with lexical processes. Contrary to standard assumptions, it is argued that the targets (...) of pseduo-incorporation are specified for number. Singular incorporated nominals in Hindi are shown to be semantically singular, with number neutrality arising as a consequence of interaction with aspectual specification. Taking aspectual information into account is also shown to have interesting implications for current approaches to the semantics of incorporation, one in which the incorporated nominal introduces a discourse referent, and one in which it functions as a predicate modifier. A closer look at the effect of aspect on anaphora, for example, does not unequivocally support the predicate modification view of pseudoincorporation. The paper also explores the cross-linguistic applicability of the claims made on the basis of Hindi. Most notably, a distinction between Hungarian verbs with respect to incorporation of bare singulars provides striking confirmation of the claims that number morphology is semantically visible in pseudo-incorporation. It also discusses the restrictions on the productivity of pseudo-incorporation in light of the findings for Hindi and Hungarian. (shrink)

Ontology is the study of what there is, what kinds of things make up reality. Ontology seems to be a very difficult, rather speculative discipline. However, it is trivial to conclude that there are properties, propositions and numbers, starting from only necessarily true or analytic premises. This gives rise to a puzzle about how hard ontological questions are, and relates to a puzzle about how important they are. And it produces the ontologyobjectivity dilemma: either (certain) ontological questions can be trivially (...) answered using only uncontroversial premises, or the uncertainties of ontology are really a threat to the truth of basically everything we say or believe. The main aim of this dissertation is to resolve these puzzles and to shed some light on the discipline of ontology. I defend a view inspired by Carnap’s internal-external distinction about what there is, but one according to which both internal and external questions are fully factual and meaningful. In particular, I argue that the trivial arguments are valid, but they do not answer any ontological questions. Furthermore, I propose an account of the function of our talk about properties, propositions and natural numbers. According to this account our talk about them has no ontological presuppositions for its literal and objective truth. This avoids the ontology-objectivity dilemma, and solves the puzzles about ontology. To do this I look at quantification and noun phrases in general, and at their relation to ontology. I argue that quantifiers are semantically underspecified in a certain respect, and play two different roles in communication. I discuss the relation between syntactic form and information structure, the function of certain non-referential, non-quantificational noun phrases, the uses of bare number determiners, and how arithmetic truths are learned and taught. The more metaphysical issues discussed include: inexpressible properties, logicism about arithmetic, nominalism, Carnap’s view about ontology, the problem of universals, the relationship between ontology and objectivity, different projects within ontology, non-existent.... (shrink)

This paper develops a detailed and unified analysis of semantics of the from-N-to-N construction, based on a small number of ingredients, none of which are specific to this construction itself, but which are idiomatically packaged in this construction. Letting the construction uniformly apply to the product of the two nouns not only captures their strong relation, but it also obviates a role for a ‘reduplicative’ mechanism of some sort in this particular construction.

This article reconsiders Sartre's seminal 1945 talk, “Existentialism is a Humanism,” and the stakes of the humanism debate in France by looking at the immediate political context that has been overlooked in previous discussions of the text. It analyses the political discussion of the term “humanism” during the French national elections of 1945 and the rumbling debate over Sartre's philosophy that culminated in his presentation to the Club Maintenant, just one week after France went to the polls. A consideration of (...) this context helps explain both the rise, and later the decline, of existentialism in France, when, in the changing political climate, humanism lost its centrality, setting the stage for new antihumanist criticisms of Sartre's work. (shrink)

In the middle decades of the twentieth century phenomenology grew from a local philosophy in a few German towns into a movement that spanned Europe. In Converts to the Real, Edward Baring uncovers an unexpected force behind this prodigious growth: Catholicism. Participating in a tightly-knit transnational community, Catholics helped shuttle ideas between national traditions that were otherwise inward-looking and parochial. In the first half of the twentieth century, they wrote many of the first articles and books introducing phenomenological ideas to (...) new contexts. They even organized the rescue of Edmund Husserl's manuscripts out of Nazi Germany in 1938. But the Catholic fascination with phenomenology was intermixed with a profound anxiety. Catholics worried that phenomenological ideas might prove dangerous to the faith, a possibility exemplified by the intellectual trajectory of Martin Heidegger, whose movement away from the Church was facilitated by his reading of Husserl. Converts to the Real uncovers a surprising genealogy for post-war European thought, with important implications for our understanding of the process of secularization and for the set of schools and ideas we now call "continental philosophy."--. (shrink)

In this powerful new study Edward Baring sheds fresh light on Jacques Derrida, one of the most influential yet controversial intellectuals of the twentieth century. Reading Derrida from a historical perspective and drawing on new archival sources, The Young Derrida and French Philosophy shows how Derrida's thought arose in the closely contested space of post-war French intellectual life, developing in response to Sartrian existentialism, religious philosophy and the structuralism that found its base at the École Normale Supe;rieure. In a history (...) of the philosophical movements and academic institutions of post-war France, Baring paints a portrait of a community caught between humanism and anti-humanism, providing a radically new interpretation of the genesis of deconstruction and of one of the most vibrant intellectual moments of modern times. (shrink)

Resumen: Nos proponemos recorrer un delimitado tramo del corpus nietzscheano a fin de poner en diálogo el ideario de El nacimiento de la tragedia con el de Humano demasiado humano. Se trata de ofrecer las líneas de lectura que justifiquen la siguiente interpretación: aun cuando Nietzsche, a fines de los setenta del siglo XIX, desista de la posibilidad de acceder a la realidad en sí desde la inmediatez dionisíaca, mantiene la pretensión de avanzar en un conocimiento profundo de sí mismo (...) y la realidad, que contraste con los errores heredados de épocas metafísicas y artísticas pasadas, y conserva el interés por una modalidad de conocimiento autoexperimental que sirva de procedimiento iniciático para nuevas prácticas filosóficas.: We propose to do a lecture tour of a limited stretch of Nietzsche’s corpus to put into dialogue the ideas of The Birth of Tragedy with those of Human, All Too Human. The work’s aim is to provide the scan lines that justify the following interpretation: Although Nietzsche, in the late seventies of the nineteenth century, abandons the possibility of accessing to reality itself from the Dionysian immediacy, he maintains the aspiration of advancing in a deep knowledge of himself and reality, that contrasts with the inherited errors of artistic and metaphysical times in the past. Additionally, he retains the interest in a form of self-experimental knowledge to serve as an initiation process for new philosophical practices. (shrink)