Hostname: page-component-78c5997874-ndw9j Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-19T14:31:03.772Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Bare nominals and incorporating verbs in Spanish and Catalan1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  29 June 2010

M. TERESA ESPINAL  and
LOUISE McNALLY
M. TERESA ESPINAL*
Affiliation:
Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona
LOUISE McNALLY*
Affiliation:
Universitat Pompeu Fabra
*
Authors' addresses: (Espinal) Dept. de Filologia Catalana/Centre de Lingüística Teòrica, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Campus de Bellaterra, 08193Bellaterra, Spain[email protected]
(McNally) Dept. de Traducció i Ciències del Llenguatge, Universitat Pompeu Fabra, carrer de Roc Boronat, 138, 08018Barcelona, Spain[email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of bare nominals unmarked for number (BNs) occurring in object position in Spanish and Catalan, on which the BN is a syntactic complement to the verb, but not a semantic argument. After describing the properties that distinguish BNs from other indefinite expressions (bare plurals, indefinite singulars preceded by un ‘a’, and bare mass terms), we argue that these BNs occur in a monadic syntactic configuration in the sense of Hale & Keyser (1998),that they denote first-order properties, and that they are combined with the verb via a modified version of Dayal's (2003) semantics for pseudo-incorporation. Specifically, the proposal consists of a lexical rule that generates the class of verbs that productively accept BN objects, plus a composition rule that treats the BN as modifier of the verb. We point out the advantages of this analysis over three other well-known semantic analyses for combining verbs with property-type nominals. Finally, we show how the analysis can be naturally extended to existential sentences, which combine with BNs although, prima facie, they do not appear to meet the lexical conditions for doing so.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Linguistics , Volume 47 , Issue 1 , March 2011 , pp. 87 - 128
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2010

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

[1]

We thank Mark Baker, Carmen Dobrovie-Sorin, Brenda Laca, Jaume Mateu, two anonymous JL referees, and the audiences of the III Nereus International Workshop: Definiteness, Specificity and Animacy in Ibero-Romance Languages (Alcalá de Henares, 2006), the Cognitive Science and Language Workshop (Barcelona, 2006), the Workshop on Bare Nouns and Nominalizations (Stuttgart, 2007), the 38th Linguistic Symposium on Romance Languages (Urbana-Champaign, 2008), the IV NEREUS International Workshop on Definiteness and DP structure in Romance Languages (Bellaterra, 2008), the Workshop on Bare Singulars, Argument Structure and Their Interpretation (Bellaterra, 2008), the Workshop on Converging Linguistics and Cognitive Science: Nominal Systems Across Languages (Barcelona, 2009), and the Workshop on Bare Nouns: Syntactic Projections and their Interpretation (Paris, 2009). We also gratefully acknowledge the financial support of the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (grants HUM2006-13295-C02-01FILO, HF2007-0039, HUM2007-60599) and the Generalitat de Catalunya (grants 2009SGR1079, 2009SGR0076e, a Distinció de la Generalitat per a la Promoció de la Recerca Universitària, and two ICREA Acadèmia awards).

References

REFERENCES

Baker, Mark. 1988. Incorporation: A theory of grammatical function changing. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Baron, Irene, Herslund, Michael & Sørensen, Finn. 2001. Dimensions of possession. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Beaver, David & Zeevat, Henk. 2007. Accommodation. In Ramchand, Gillian & Reiss, Charles (eds.), The Oxford handbook of linguistic interfaces, 503–538. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Bleam, Tonia. 2006. The role of semantic type in differential object marking. Belgian Journal of Linguistics 19, 3–27.Google Scholar
Borthen, Kaja. 2003. Norwegian bare singulars. Ph.D. dissertation, Norwegian University of Science and Technology.Google Scholar
Bosque, Ignacio. 1996. El sustantivo sin determinación. La ausencia de determinante en la lengua española. Madrid: Visor.Google Scholar
Bosque, Ignacio. 2001. On the weight of light predicates. In Herschensohn, Julia, Mallén, Enrique & Zagona, Karen (eds.), Features and interfaces in Romance, 23–38. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Brucart, Josep M. 2002. Els determinants. In Solà, Joan, Lloret, M. Rosa, Mascaró, Joan & Pérez Saldanya, Manuel (eds.), Gramàtica del català contemporani, vol. 2: Sintaxi, 1437–1516. Barcelona: Empúries.Google Scholar
Carlson, Gregory. 1977. Reference to kinds in English. Ph.D. dissertation, University of Massachusetts, Amherst.Google Scholar
Chierchia, Gennaro. 1998. Reference to kinds across languages. Natural Language Semantics 6, 339–405.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chung, Sandra & Ladusaw, William A.. 2004. Restriction and saturation. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Coene, Martine & D'hulst, Yves (eds.). 2003. From NP to DP: The expression of possession in noun phrases. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Dayal, Veneeta. 2003. A semantics for pseudo incorporation. Ms., Rutgers University.Google Scholar
Déprez, Viviane. 2005. Morphological number, semantic number and bare nouns. Lingua 115, 857–883.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
den Dikken, Marcel. 1995. Particles: On the syntax of verb particle, triadic, and causative constructions. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
den Dikken, Marcel. 1997. The syntax of possession and the verb ‘have’. Lingua 101, 129–150.Google Scholar
Dobrovie-Sorin, Carmen, Bleam, Tonia & Espinal, M. Teresa. 2006. Bare nouns, number and types of incorporation. In Tasmowski, Liliane & Vogeleer, Svetlana (eds.), Non-definiteness and plurality, 51–79. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.Google Scholar
Downing, Pamela. 1977. On the creation and use of English compound nouns. Language 53.4, 810–842.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Dowty, David. 1979. Word meaning and Montague Grammar. Dordrecht: Reidel.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Espinal, M. Teresa. 2009. Clitic incorporation and abstract semantic objects in idiomatic constructions. Linguistics 47.6, 1221–1271.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Espinal, M. Teresa. 2010. Bare nominals in Catalan and Spanish: Their structure and meaning. Lingua 120, 984–1009.Google Scholar
Espinal, M. Teresa & Mateu, Jaume. 2009. On bare nominals and argument structure. Studies in Linguistics – CISCL Working Papers 3, 131–143.Google Scholar
Espinal, M. Teresa & McNally, Louise. 2009. Characterizing ‘have’ predicates and indefiniteness. In Espinal, M. Teresa, Leonetti, Manuel & McNally, Louise (eds.), 4th Nereus International Workshop Definiteness and DP Structure in Romance Languages (Arbeitspapier 124), 27–43. Konstanz: University of Konstanz Fachbereich Sprachwissenshcaft.Google Scholar
Farkas, Donka & Swart, Henriette de. 2003. The semantics of incorporation: From argument structure to discourse transparency. Stanford, CA: CSLI Publications.Google Scholar
Fernández-Soriano, Olga. 1999. Two types of impersonal sentences in Spanish: Locative and dative subjects. Syntax 2, 101–140.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freeze, Ray. 1992. Existentials and other locatives. Language 68, 553–595.Google Scholar
Guéron, Jacqueline. 1986. Le verbe avoir. Recherches linguistiques de Vincennes 14/15, 155–187.Google Scholar
Guéron, Jacqueline. 1998. Le verbe avoir et la possession. In Guéron, Jacqueline & Zribi-Hertz, Anne (eds.), La grammaire de la possession, 167–174. Nanterre: Publidix.Google Scholar
Hale, Kenneth & Keyser, Samuel J.. 1993. On argument structure and the lexical expression of syntactic relations. In Hale, Kenneth & Keyser, Samuel J. (eds.), The view from Building 20: Essays in linguistics in honour of Sylvain Bromberger, 53–108. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Hale, Kenneth & Keyser, Samuel J.. 1998. The basic elements of argument structure. In Harley, Heidi (ed.), MIT Working Papers in Linguistics 32, 73–118.Google Scholar
Hale, Kenneth & Keyser, Samuel J.. 2002. Prolegomenon to a theory of argument structure. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Hoekstra, Teun. 1994. HAVE as BE plus or minus. In Cinque, Guglielmo, Koster, Jan, Pollock, Jean-Yves, Rizzi, Luigi & Zanuttini, Raffaella (eds.), Paths towards Universal Grammar: Studies in honor of Richard Kayne, 199–215. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.Google Scholar
de Hoop, Helen. 1992. Case configuration and noun phrase interpretation. Ph.D. dissertation, Rijksuniversiteit Groningen.Google Scholar
Hornstein, Norbert, Rosen, Sara & Uriagereka, Juan. 2002. Integrals. In Uriagereka, Juan (ed.), Derivations: Exploring the dynamics of syntax, 179–191. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Jäger, Gerhard. 2001. Topic–comment structure and the contrast between individual and stage level predicates. Journal of Semantics 18, 83–126.Google Scholar
Jasinskaja, Ekaterina. 2008. Modeling discourse relations by topics and implicatures: The elaboration default. Ms., IMS Stuttgart & Universität Heidelberg.Google Scholar
Kamp, Hans. 1984. A theory of truth and interpretation. In Groenendijk, Jeroen, Janssen, Theo & Stokhof, Martin (eds.), Truth, interpretation, and information: The Third Amsterdam Colloquium, 1–42. Dordrecht: Foris.Google Scholar
Kayne, Richard S. 1975. French syntax: The transformational cycle. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Kayne, Richard S. 1993. Toward a modular theory of auxiliary selection. Studia Lingüística 47, 3–31.Google Scholar
Kayne, Richard S. 2006. Expletives, datives, and the tension between morphology and syntax. Ms., CUNY.Google Scholar
Kratzer, Angelika. 1996. Severing the external argument from its verb. In Rooryck, Johan & Zaring, Laurie (eds.), Phrase structure and the lexicon, 109–137. Dordrecht: Kluwer.Google Scholar
Landman, Fred. 2009. Incremental homogeneity in the semantics of aspectual for-phrases. Presented at the Workshop on Bare Nouns: Syntactic Projections and their Interpretation, Paris.Google Scholar
Larson, Richard K. 1998. Events and modification in nominals. Semantics and Linguistic Theory (SALT) VIII, 145–168.Google Scholar
Lewis, David. 1979. Scorekeeping in a language game. Journal of Philosophical Logic 8, 339–359.Google Scholar
Longa, Víctor M., Lorenzo, Guillermo & Rigau, Gemma. 1998. Subject clitics and clitic recycling: Locative sentences in some Iberian Romance Languages. Journal of Linguistics 34, 125–164.Google Scholar
Longobardi, Giuseppe. 1994. Reference and proper names. Linguistic Inquiry 25, 609–666.Google Scholar
Longobardi, Giuseppe. 2001. How comparative is semantics? A unified parametric theory of bare nouns and proper names. Natural Language Semantics 9, 335–369.Google Scholar
Longobardi, Giuseppe. 2005. Toward a unified grammar of reference. Zeitschrift für Sprachwissenschaft 24, 5–44.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Marín, Rafael & McNally, Louise. In press. Inchoativity, change of state, and telicity: Evidence from Spanish reflexive psychological verbs. Natural Language & Linguistic Theory.Google Scholar
Masullo, Pascual. 1993. Two types of quirky subjects: Spanish versus Icelandic. The North East Linguistic Society (NELS) 23, 303–317.Google Scholar
Mateu, Jaume. 2002. Argument structure: Relational construal at the syntax–semantics interface. Ph.D. dissertation, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.Google Scholar
McNally, Louise & Boleda, Gemma. 2004. Relational adjectives as properties of kinds. Empirical Issues in Syntax and Semantics 5, 179–196.Google Scholar
Mittwoch, Anita. 1993. The relationship between schon/already and noch/still: A reply to Löbner. Natural Language Semantics 2, 71–82.Google Scholar
Montague, Richard. 1974. Formal philosophy (edited by Thomason, R. H.). New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Munn, Alan & Schmitt, Cristina. 2005. Number and indefinites. Lingua 115, 821–855.Google Scholar
Parsons, Terence. 1990. Events in the semantics of English. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Potts, Christopher. 2005. The logic of conversational implicature. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Pustejovsky, James. 1995. The generative lexicon. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.Google Scholar
Pylkkänen, Liina. 2002. Introducing arguments. Ph.D. dissertation, MIT.Google Scholar
Rigau, Gemma. 1997. Locative sentences and related constructions in Catalan: ésser/haver alternation. In Mendikoetxea, Amaya & Uribe-Etxebarria, Miriam (eds.), Theoretical issues at the morphology–syntax interface, 395–421. Bilbao: Universidad del País Vasco.Google Scholar
Rigau, Gemma. 2005. Number agreement variation in Catalan dialects. In Cinque, Guglielmo (ed.), Comparative syntax, 775–805. Oxford: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Schmitt, Cristina & Munn, Alan. 1999. Against the Nominal Mapping Parameter: Bare nouns in Brazilian Portuguese. The North East Linguistic Society (NELS) 29, 339–353.Google Scholar
Stvan, Laurel Smith. 2009. Semantic Incorporation as an account for some bare singular count noun uses in English. Lingua 119, 314–333.Google Scholar
Szabolcsi, Anna. 1981. The possessive construction in Hungarian: A configurational category in a non-configurational language. Acta Linguistica Academiae Scientiarum Hungaricae 31, 161–189.Google Scholar
Van Geenhoven, Veerle. 1996. Semantic Incorporation and indefinite descriptions: Semantic and syntactic aspects of West Greenlandic noun incorporation. Ph.D. dissertation, Universität Tübingen.Google Scholar
Ward, Gregory, Sproat, Richard & McKoon, Gail. 1991. A pragmatic analysis of so-called anaphoric islands. Language 67, 439–474.Google Scholar
Zimmer, Karl. 1972. Appropriateness conditions for nominal compounds. Working Papers on Language Universals 8, 3–20.Google Scholar