Abstract
Chierchia’s comparative analysis of nominals based on the two features [\(\pm \) arg] and [\(\pm \) pred] has lead to many discussions on the semantics of nominals in argument positions and predicate positions. On the other hand, many syntactic results about left dislocation and topicalization have been accumulated. In this paper, we will try to elucidate possibilities of bare plurals in the left periphery and differentiate their readings. By examining data from Italian and German we claim that different demands on foregoing contexts are organized as constructions, as far as the left periphery is concerned. In addition, those constructions also reflect an organization of discourse.
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Notes
- 1.
Pollo and soldi in (3) seem to refer to kinds. However, pollo is a mass noun. Moreover, although soldi is a plural form of soldo, this word is always used in a plural form in this meaning. Therefore, it is not clear whether bare plurals can denote kinds in the left periphery as well.
- 2.
However, it is a little difficult to show that these bare plurals are kinds. We cannot check whether bare plurals really denote kinds with kind predicates because the predicate in the main clause does not have to be a kind-predicate. Moreover, in the first place, bare plurals licensed by ne cannot occur with kind-predicates (Zamparelli p.c.). For example Ratti, ne stermino ‘Rats, ne (I) exterminate.’ is ungrammatical. We assume this ungrammaticality is due to the meaning of ne, which existentially quantifies entities rather than denying that bare plurals are kinds. From contexts, bare plurals seem to denote neither specific indefinite entities nor contextually salient entities.
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Mori, Y., Hirayama, H. (2014). Bare Plurals in the Left Periphery in German and Italian. In: Nakano, Y., Satoh, K., Bekki, D. (eds) New Frontiers in Artificial Intelligence. JSAI-isAI 2013. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 8417. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-10061-6_6
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