Bare plurals and indefinite determiners (in argument position)

1. Bare plurals and indefinite determiners (in argument position) 14 Oct. 2008 | Bert Le Bruyn

2. Outline ● Assumptions about articles and bare nominals ● Spanish unos and the bare plural - challenge 1 - challenge 2 ● French des and the bare plural ● Conclusion ( ) ( )

3. Assumptions

4. Assumptions about articles Indefinite articles are used to set up referents in a conversational space. (de Swart & Zwarts 2007) Slightly more formally: Indefinite articles are grammatical devices that mark the introduction of a discourse referent. x boy(x) a boy

5. Assumptions about articles Indefinite articles are used to set up referents in a conversational space. (de Swart & Zwarts 2007) Slightly more formally: Indefinite articles are grammatical devices that mark the introduction of a discourse referent. x boy(x) a boy All D’s have this same ability but have extra semantic content.

6. Assumptions about articles All D’s have this same ability but have extra semantic content. Examples: - cardinality - specificity - partitivity - ...

7. Assumptions about articles All D’s have this same ability but have extra semantic content. Examples: - cardinality - specificity - partitivity - ... Two men came to see me. “Two men came to see me” “Two men of a predefined set of men came to see me” A man came to see me. “A man came to see me”

8. Assumptions about articles All D’s have this same ability but have extra semantic content. Examples: - cardinality - specificity - partitivity - ... Test for partitivity rationale stative properties can only be predicated of pre-introduced referents Two students are sick. ?? A student is sick.

9. Assumptions about bare nominals Syntax bare singular bare plural [NPbook] [NumP –s [NPbook]] Semantics bare singulars cannot introduce discourse referents bare plurals can introduce discourse referents via accommodation (in languages that do allow for bare singulars the presence of discourse referents is inferred) General syntactic arguments have to have a corresponding discourse referent

10. Spanish unos and the bare plural

11. CHALLENGE 1

12. Facts Spanish unos doesn’t allow for proportional readings. ?Unos estudiantes son abogados. unos students are lawyers Intended: ‘Some students are lawyers.’ ?UNOS estudiantes son abogados. UNOS students are lawyers Intended: ‘Some students are lawyers.’

13. Previous analyses Why is it that unos behaves in this way ? What is it that makes unos special compared to other determiners ?

14. Previous analyses Why is it that unos behaves in this way ? What is it that makes unos special compared to other determiners ? Martí 2007 Syntactic / semantic decomposition of indefinites • number • existential quantification • positive polarity • partitivity implicature unos algunos Claim: Alg- adds the partitivity implicature. Unos lacks alg- and therefore does not give rise to partitive readings.

15. Previous analyses Why is it that unos behaves in this way ? What is it that makes unos special compared to other determiners ? Martí 2007 Question that remains: Why is unos the only determiner that needs alg- to get a partitive reading ? ok Dos estudiantes son abogados. * Algodos estudiantes son abogados. -> Back to where we were...

16. Previous analyses Why is it that unos behaves in this way ? What is it that makes unos special compared to other determiners ?

17. My analysis Why is it that unos behaves in this way ? What is it that makes unos special compared to other determiners ? Unos is the default plural indefinite determiner in Spanish. Unos is the indefinite plural article in Spanish. -> in as far as indefinite articles are grammaticalized devices for introducing discourse referents they are not expected to give rise to partitive readings Parallel with the singular indefinite article: ? A student is a lawyer.

18. Argumentation -> in as far as indefinite articles are grammaticalized devices for introducing discourse referents they are not expected to give rise to partitive readings Can we show that unos underwent a grammaticalization process comparable to that of an indefinite article ? -> what does the grammaticalization process of an indefinite article look like ? -> what predictions does this make for unos ? -> are these predictions borne out ?

19. Prediction 1 1. The indefinite article loses part of its semantic content -> partitive reading possible One student came to see me. -> partitive reading impossible A student came to see me. Prediction: unos did allow for partitive readings in Early Spanish.

20. Prediction 1 (cont.) Prediction: unos did allow for partitive readings in Early Spanish. Following Gutiérrez-Rexach (2001) I assume non-partitive Ds cannot appear in the upstairs D position of (standard) partitives. Present day Spanish: ??? He visto a unos de los familiares de Pedro. have seen a some of the relatives of Pedro Intended: ‘I saw some of Pedro’s relatives.’ Early Spanish: E ellas yendo se, fueron unos de los guardadores a la ciudat. And they going went unos of the guards to the city ‘And while they were going, some of the guards went to the city.’ < manuscrito escurialense I.I.6. (between 1254 and 1270)

21. Prediction 1 (cont.) Two potential problems: • only 1 example It might be an accident... - it’s a translation The original text might have had some influence...

22. Prediction 1 (cont.) • only 1 example It might be an accident... -> Are there any texts that contain more than one instance of unos de los ? YES Alfonso X 5 General Estoria +/- 1270 Anonymous 8 Manuscrito Escurialense +/- 1260 translations! Casiodoro de Reina 6 Biblia Reina-Valera +/- 1570

23. Prediction 1 (cont.) - it’s a translation The original text might have had some influence... -> Can we safely assume that there is no real interference of the original text ? YES -> Compare examples to the source text Manuscrito Escurialense Vulgata Reina-Valera Textus Receptus (Stephanus 1550)

27. Prediction 1 (cont.) ( ) Two potential problems: • only 1 example It might be an accident... - it’s a translation The original text might have had some influence...

28. Prediction 2 2. Important gain in frequency of the indefinite article

29. Prediction 2 (cont.) un uno una Corpus del Español, Mark Davies

30. Prediction 2 (cont.) Prediction: important gain in frequency for unos.

31. Prediction 2 (cont.) Prediction: important gain in frequency for unos. unos unas Corpus del Español, Mark Davies

32. Prediction 3 3. The indefinite article, in the beginning of its grammaticalization process, is used to mark the introduction of salient discourse referents (cf. Stark 2002, Blazer 1979).

33. Prediction 3 3. The indefinite article, in the beginning of its grammaticalization process, is used to mark the introduction of salient discoursereferents (cf. Stark 2002, Blazer 1979). difficult notion ● implies a comparison bare nominals vs. nominals with the indefinite article ●how to decide on salience of a discourse referent ? objective criterion: is it picked up ?

34. Prediction 3 (cont.) 3. The indefinite article, in the beginning of its grammaticalization process, is used to mark the introduction of salient discourse referents (cf. Stark 2002, Blazer 1979). Corpus study: El Cid (late 12th early 13th century) -> compare singulars with and without ind. art. verse 1-500 (approx. 3900 words) # bare singulars: approx. 150 # objects: approx. 31 # singulars with indefinite article: approx. 20 # objects: approx. 6

35. Prediction 3 (cont.) Bare singulars objects in epitetha 5 v. 41, 58, 78, 175, 439 ‘fixed’ expressions dar salto ‘to attack’ 2 v.30, 244 aver miedo ‘to be scared’ 1 v.469 aver menester ‘to need’ 1 v.135 aver gracia ‘to have grace’ 1 v.40 meter mano ‘to touch/grab’ 1 v.500 mass objects 3 v.29, 345, 345 object of verb in subjuntivo 3 v.20, 192 object of verb in future 4 v.249, 382, 386, 450 object of verb in imperative 3 v.25, 273, 420 object of infinitive following ‘want to’ 2 v.36, 194 object in generalization 1 v.126 others 5 v.125, 285, 333, 351, 428

36. Prediction 3 (cont.) How many are referred back to ? #1 3%

37. Prediction 3 (cont.) Singulars with indefinite article How many are referred back to ? 4 66% Prediction: Unos, in the beginning of its grammaticalization process, is used to mark the introduction of salient discourse referents.

38. Prediction 3 (cont.) ? Prediction: Unos, in the beginning of its grammaticalization process, is used to mark the introduction of salient discourse referents. Corpus study: El Cid -> compare plurals with and without unos verse 1-500 (approx. 3900 words) # bare plurals: approx. 54 # objects: approx. 6 # plurals with unos: 0 the whole of El Cid # plurals with unos: 3 # objects: 2

39. Prediction 3 (preview) Prediction: Unos, in the beginning of its grammaticalization process, is used to mark the introduction of salient discourse referents. 1482-1492 Corpus study: Amadís de Gaula The whole of Amadís de Gaula: # plurals with unos: 57 # bare plurals : ?? Prologue, CH I-III # bare plurals : 6 in argument position

40. Prediction 3 (preview) Prediction: Unos, in the beginning of its grammaticalization process, is used to mark the introduction of salient discourse referents. 1482-1492 Corpus study: Amadís de Gaula Prologue, CH I-III # bare plurals : 6 in argument position How many are referred back to ? #1 16%

41. Prediction 3 (preview) Prediction: Unos, in the beginning of its grammaticalization process, is used to mark the introduction of salient discourse referents. 1482-1492 Corpus study: Amadís de Gaula The whole of Amadís de Gaula: # plurals with unos: 57 How many are referred back to ? #22 39% not very convincing...

42. What went wrong ? unos paños 8 ‘clothes’ plurale tantum unos arboles 18 ‘trees’ locus amoenus + topos in medieval literature 26 only 2 out of these 26 got picked up If we eliminate those from our list... the percentage changes dramatically... ... to 71 %

43. Intermediate summary Prediction: unos did allow for partitive readings in Early Spanish. Prediction: important gain in frequency for unos. + unos is parallel to the indefinite article in not allowing partitive readings unos un + + we have reasons to believe unos was first used to introduce salient discourse referents + by 1569 unos had started losing part of its partitive potential (algunos had become far more frequent in partitives). Unos seems to function as a plural indefinite article.

44. Intermediate summary Apparent problem: Spanish allows for bare plurals but not for bare singulars. Unos doesn’t seem to be the perfect match of the singular indefinite article. Empirical question: do bare plurals introduce discourse referents ?

45. CHALLENGE 2

46. Facts + previous analysis Al principio, Juan quería restaurar muebles, At_the beginning Juan wanted restore pieces_of_furniture pero terminó vendiéndolos. but ended_up selling_them ‘In the beginning, Juan wanted to restore pieces of furniture, but he ended up selling them.’ Claim by Laca (1996, 1999): bare plurals do not introduce standard discourse referents, only their descriptive content can be picked up.

47. More facts En la fabricación hubo problemas técnicos in the production there_were problems technical uno de ellos era la construcción de la torre. one of them was the construction of the tower ‘In the production there were technical problems, one of them was the construction of the tower.’ How to account for the tendency of bare plurals to not be picked up without stating that they don’t introduce discourse referents ?

48. My analysis bare plurals introduce discourse referents that are low in salience -> bare plurals are not the standard choice to introduce discourse referents -> they are only used to introduce discourse referents that are not likely to be picked in later discourse (for whatever reason) If this analysis makes sense it would: -> account for Laca’s intuition CH 2 -> account for the facts -> leave for unos the role of indefinite plural article (being the standard default det to introduce DRs) CH 1

49. My analysis Basic intuition Bare plurals introduce discourse referents that are not likely to be picked up. similar intuition about Spanish bare plurals in Laca & Tasmowski (1994) similar intuition about Hindi bare singulars in Dayal (1992, 1999, 2004) -> interestingly both Laca and Dayal end up stating that no discourse referents are being introduced -> this does not account for the intuition

50. My analysis Basic intuition Bare plurals introduce discourse referents that are not likely to be picked up. Centering Theory (i) Jeff helped Dick wash the car. Forward-Looking Center all discourse entities evoked in an utterance Jeff, Dick, the car members are ranked according to discourse salience Jeff > Dick - the car Preferred Center member of FLC ranked highest (ii) He washed the windows. He = Jeff Walker, Joshi & Prince (1998)