recoordinating bare coordination november 18 th, 2010 a definiteness workshop bert le bruyn (joint...

Recoordinating bare coordination

November 18th, 2010A definiteness workshop

Bert Le Bruyn(joint work with Henriette de Swart)

Preliminaries

A friend and colleague came to see me.

the friend the colleague =

Yesterday I went to a wedding. The bride and groom were splendidly dressed.

the bride the groom

Spoon was

The phenomenon of bare coordination

Heycock & Zamparelli (2003)

I saw cats dogsand I saw

Context

We had to set the table for the queen. We arranged one crystal goblet, one silver spoon, two antique gold forks and two platinum knives.

Forks and knives were equally dirty

indefinite interpretation

definite interpretation

Plurals

Singulars

was set to the right of the plate* set to the right of the plate*Goblet spoon wereand only definite interpretation

The phenomenon of bare coordination


coordinatednot coordinated

bare singulars

bare plurals

indefinite definite indefinite definite

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/Symbol_OK.svg




http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/P_no_red.svg




Guiding questions...

Why is it bare singulars cannot occur bare whereas coordinated bare singulars can ?

When and why do bare coordinated nouns get a definite reading?

• Previous analyses• New facts• Our analysis• Conclusion

Roadmap



Roodenburg (2004)

Roadmap


The analysis in a nutshell

Focus on deriving the definite reading of bare coordinated nominals.

Proposal: allow for N-to-D raising of the coordinated phrase.

DP

CoordP

NP1 and NP2


Problems

Allowing for N-to-D raising for coordinated NPs begs the question why it wouldn’t be allowed for non-coordinated NPs.

N-to-D raising is often used for proper names but proper names arguably have a different semantics from definite DPs.

> Why is I read book bad ?

> Why can I saw Cat only mean that I saw someone by the name Cat?

Roodenburg (2004)


Premise 1: Bare Coordinated NPs are plural.

Conclusion: Bare coordinated NPs are allowed in argument position.

Premise 2: Bare Plural NPs are allowed in argument position.

> Cat and dog were fighting.

Roodenburg (2004)


As for the definite readings: they’re akin to functional readings of bare plurals (Condoravdi 1994)

> Ghosts haunted the campus. Students were aware of the danger.

Roodenburg (2004)

Problems

There is no one-to-one correspondence between coordinating elements like and and plurality.

Bare plurals allow both for a weak and a strong indefinite reading. Why then do coordinated bare singulars only exhibit the strong reading ?

> Next week my colleague and friend wants to come to see me.

Roodenburg (2004)

Roodenburg (2004)


bare singulars

bare plurals

ind weak definite ind weak definiteind strong ind strongindefinite indefinite


















> N-to-D raising ?

> coordinating elements as plurality markers ?

> proper name interpretation through N-to-D raising ?

> strong indefinite reading linked to plurality ?


Roadmap

New facts


bare singulars

bare plurals


> Test: see whether bare coordination is allowed in existential contexts










New facts

Et là on arrive dans un petit village où il y a école et point d’eau.And there we arrive in a small village where there is school and water point.

He had pad and pencil to picture the whole event.

There were goblet and spoon on the table.

> potentially bad because of the sequence Vpl Nsing

??

New facts

He had pad and pencil to picture the whole event.

There were goblet and spoon on the table.

> potentially bad because of the sequence Vpl Nsing

??

New facts


bare singulars

bare plurals











Roadmap

Account deriving the contrast between coordinated and uncoordinated nounsAn (extended) footnote on why coordinated bare singulars have a preference for definite readings

Our analysis in a nutshell


bare singulars

bare plurals


> Classic blocking account:

indefinite bare singulars are blocked bydefinite bare singulars are blocked bydefinite bare plurals are blocked by the definite plural article

the definite singular articlethe indefinite singular article









Our analysis in a nutshell


bare singulars

bare plurals


> Not so classic blocking account:

A, thesing and theplural don’t apply at the coordination level.As a consequence they cannot be taken to block indefinite or definite readings of coordinated bare nominals.









No Ds for CoordPs

A, thesing and theplural don’t apply at the coordination level.

>Indirect evidence

un homme et une femme (amale man and afemale woman) 1760000

un homme et femme (amale man and woman) 696

une femme et une fille (afemale woman and afemale girl) 885

une femme et fille (afemale woman and girl) 15

les hommes et les femmes (the men and the women) 3030000

les hommes et femmes (the men and women) 361000yahoo.fr 11/11/2010

Generalization:

Strong preference for repetition of the determiner; Suggests that the repetition of the determiner is the default; Suggests that the cases in which there is no repetition involve elided Ds.

No Ds for CoordPs

A, thesing and theplural don’t apply at the coordination level.

>Direct evidence

Dog and cat were fighting. > bare coordination can trigger plural agreement

> there is a level of representation at which CoordPs have to have plurality specified (see also de Vries 1992)

> If Ds were to apply to CoordPs we would predict CoordPs to be able to take a plural article, even if both conjuncts are singular.

> This is however not the case.

No Ds for CoordPs

les hommes et les femmes the men and the women 3030000

les hommes et femmes the men and women 361000

les homme et femme the man and woman 99

les hommes et les garçons the men and the boys 2570

les hommes et garçons the men and boys 175

les homme et garçon the man and boy 1

les femmes et les filles the women and the girls 164000

les femmes et filles the women and girls 16000

les femme et fille the woman and girl 18

les frères et les soeurs the brothers and the sisters 3130

les frères et soeurs the brothers and sisters 47000

les frère et soeur the brother and sister 1040

yahoo.fr 11/11/2010

> Note: except for les frère et soeur there was no evidence that singular nouns were to be interpreted as singulars.

From ‘informal’ blocking to OT


bare singulars

bare plurals


> Not so classic blocking account:

A, thesing and theplural don’t apply at the coordination level. As a consequence they cannot be taken to block indefinite or definite readings of coordinated bare nominals.









From ‘informal’ blocking to OTDP

NumP

CoordP

AND

NumP

NP

N

NumP

NP

N

DP DP

N-domain

CoordP-domain

N.B. Coordination can apply at the DP, NumP or NP-level.

N N

Constraints

a. FdrMark discourse referents

b. FplMark reference to a group

For each type of functional projection we have a faithfulness constraint.

DP

NumP

c. FdefMark definiteness

We add an extra one for D projections.

DP

For the two domains we add a markedness constraint.

d. *FunctNDon’t mark functional structure in the N-domain

e. *FunctCoordPDon’t mark functional structure in the CoordP-domain.

N-dom

CoordP-dom

Ranking

a. FdrMark discourse referents

b. FplMark reference to a group

For French and English the following ranking holds:

c. FdefMark definiteness

e. *FunctCoordPDon’t mark functional structure in the CoordP-domain.

d. *FunctNDon’t mark functional structure in the N-domain.

What the ranking derives

Depending on the level at which coordination applies the ranking derives the following possibilities:

the cats and the dogsDP level coordination

cats and dogsNumP level coordination

cat and dogNP level coordination

Testable illegal structures:

I saw *(a) cat.Bare singular arguments

several cat and dogDs applying at CoordP

Untestable (?) illegal structures:

I saw cat and dogs (?)(meaning I saw cats and dogs)

Number at CoordP

Recap

Basic data

Coordination lifts all semantic constraints on the use of articles.

Basic insight

Articles don’t apply at the coordination level.

Implementation

Classic blocking and its formalization in OT.




> Articles don’t apply at the coordination level

> No blocking of bare coordinated forms

> Semantically, definite/indefinite readings are available through covert type-shifting

Why cat and dog is definite by default


bare singulars

bare plurals



bare singulars

bare plurals













Cat and dog were fighting.

> Implicature of uniqueness

If there had been more cats and dogs, we could have told you so.

Given that we did not tell you, you can assume that there was only one cat and one dog.

> The effect of this implicature is similar to the semantic contribution of the definite article.

Even though our semantic account predicts both a definite and an indefinite reading, pragmatically it’s the definite reading that will in principle be preferred.


Predictions

... coordinated bare plurals should not have any preference for definite readings.

... the preference for definite interpretations should be cancelable.

Given that the implicature depends on the nouns being singular...

Given that we assume the default definite interpretation is an implicature...

> This is arguably what we find (see Heycock & Zamparelli).

> This is what we have demonstrated for existential contexts.


More predictions

... the definiteness effect should not only be found for coordinated nouns but also for uncoordinated singular nouns in languages that have a singular/plural distinction but no articles

Given that the implicature arises because of the competition between bare singulars and plurals...

> Languages like Hindi and Russian have indeed been argued to only allow for definite readings for bare singulars, despite their acceptability in existential environments (see Dayal 2004).


More predictions

... the definiteness effect should not only be found for coordinated nouns but also for uncoordinated singular nouns in languages that have a singular/plural distinction but no articles

... uncoordinated plural nouns in these languages should not show any preference for definite readings


> Languages like Hindi and Russian have indeed been argued to only allow for definite readings for bare singulars, despite their acceptability in existential environments (see Dayal 2004, Geist 2010).

> Uncoordinated bare plurals in Hindi and Russian have indeed been argued to allow both definite and indefinite readings (see Dayal 2004).


One more prediction

... there should be no definiteness effect in Chinese comparable to the one in Hindi and Russian


> Bare nominals in Chinese have indeed been argued to freely allow both for a definite and an indefinite reading (see Yang 2001).

N.B.

This implicature account can be formulated both under the analysis of the singular/plural contrast of Farkas & de Swart (2010) and the one in the tradition of Krifka (1989) (see a.o. Sauerland et al. 2005).

Recap

Basic data

Coordination lifts all semantic constraints on the use of articles.

Basic insight

Articles don’t apply at the coordination level.

Implementation

Classic blocking and its formalization in OT.

Extra insight

Bare singulars trigger a uniqueness implicature.




> Articles don’t apply at the coordination level

> No blocking of bare coordinated forms

> Semantically, definite/indefinite readings are available through type-shifting > Pragmatically, bare singulars prefer definite readings


Roadmap

Conclusion

We have argued that coordinated bare nominals have more freedom than their uncoordinated counterparts because there are no articles that stop them from type-shifting covertly.

We furthermore showed that the preference for definite interpretations of coordinated bare singulars is part of a larger cross-linguistically motivated pattern of competition between bare singulars and plurals.

Further support for the analysis could come from languages in which CoordPs can get overt number marking and overt indefinite/definite articles. They are predicted not to allow for bare coordination.

Conclusion

The analysis is compatible with recent work by Benetti (Benetti 2008) who proposes for French that bare enumerations involve reference to a single (plural) individual whereas non-bare coordination involves reference to multiple individuals.

Chacun était plongé dans un profond repos;Le maître du logis, les valets, le chien même,Poules, poulets, chapons, tout dormait.

This results in different anaphoric/cataphoric relations, arguably visible at the level of resumptives.

Further scrutiny is needed to determine whether this effect is semantic or pragmatic.

References

Benetti, 2008, L’article zéro en français contemporain, Peter Lang.

Dayal, 2004, ‘Number marking and (in)definiteness in kind terms’, Linguistics and Philosophy 27, 393-450.

Farkas & de Swart, 2010, “The semantics and pragmatics of plurals”, Semantics and Pragmatics 3.

Geist, 2010, “Indefinite NPs without indefinite articles”, presentation at SUB 2010.

Heycock & Zamparelli, 2003, “Coordinated bare definites”, Linguistic Inquiry 34, 443-469.

Krifka, 1989, “Nominal reference, temporal constitution and quantification in event semantics”, in: Bartsch, van Benthem & van Emde Boas (eds.), Semantics and contextual expression, Foris.

Roodenburg, 2004, Pour une approche scalaire de la déficience nominale, Ph.D. Dissertation, Universiteit van Amsterdam.

Sauerland, Anderssen & Yatsushiro, 2005, “The plural is semantically unmarked”, in: Kepser & Reis (eds.), Linguistic evidence, de Gruyter.

Yang, 2001, Common nouns, classifiers, and quantification in Chinese, Ph.D. Dissertation, Rutgers University.

This presentation builds on work that both Henriette and me carried out with Vera Mulder and Paulien Hesselink. We hereby gratefully acknowledge their contribution.

recoordinating bare coordination november 18 th, 2010 a definiteness workshop bert le bruyn (joint...

Documents

bare coordinated nps

coordinated bare singulars

bare plural nps

coordinated nouns

coordinated phrase

noncoordinated nps

d raising

strong reading