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Ways of Number Marking: English and Brazilian Portuguese
Abstract
The chapter presents a theoretical approach for Brazilian Portuguese (BrP) and English, Type I languages, i.e., languages where numerals and plural inflection engender two classes of noun (count and mass). However, only in BrP, plural inflection in the noun is optional, and Bare Singulars (BSs) are grammatical. The proposal is that noun phrases in English and in BrP are born as predicates. In English, the first layer of the noun projects atomicity; in BrP, the determiner projects atomicity. Thus, in English, BSs are always atomic predicates and cannot be in argument position. In BrP, atomicity is not projected by the noun, so the noun, which is a cumulative predicate, is shifted to a kind individual when it occurs in argument position. This account explains the different interpretation of the BS in English and in BrP. The model is extended to explain plural inflection and DPs headed by definite articles in both languages. The chapter develops two approaches to BrP determiner phrases: a constructional approach and a presuppositional one. It explores the idea that there is microparametric variation accounting for two types of languages: noun-centered languages, English, and determiner-centered languages, BrP.KeywordsBare nominalsDeterminer phrasesSemantic variationPolysemyAtomicity
... Besides those theoretical issues, almost immediately after the publication of the nominal parameters,Schmitt & Munn (1999) showed that it blocked a language such as Brazilian Portuguese, that is, a language that has articles and bare plurals, but unexpectedly, licenses bare singulars. How to account for Brazilian Portuguese is still an open question(Ferreira 2022, Pires de Oliveira 2023. Thus, more than 25 years after Chiercha's breakthrough contribution, a lot of ink has been spent on the semantics of noun phrases, and Chierchia has proposed the number parameter(Chierchia 2021). ...
Breakthrough Contributions of Romance Languages to Formal Linguistics: Introduction to the Special Issue
South America extends, north to south, from Punta Gallinas in Colombia to the Drake Passage in Cape Horn and, east to west, from Cabo Branco in Brazil (Ponta do Seixas) to Punta Pariñas in Peru, being the fourth largest world’s continent in territory and 50th in population. It is one of our last storehouses of natural resources, including fauna, flora, mineral, and hydric reserves. However, for centuries, South America’s natural reserves have been increasingly depleted without much concern and planning. The present book is devoted to another, even less minded, often ignored, treasure of South America: linguistic diversity. Although some of us, linguists, defend that language is part of our genetic endowment, while others take it to be a cultural asset, we all agree that languages are a humankind patrimony, and linguistic preservation, documentation, and analysis are priorities, especially when minority languages are considered. Thus, studies on languages of South America are first concern.
Neste artigo investigamos a distinção massivo-contável na língua Rikbaktsa (Macro-Jê). Partimos do questionário de Lima & Rothstein (2020), o qual procuramos responder levantando os dados em um acervo inédito do qual já dispúnhamos, na pouca literatura sobre a língua (Boswood 1971, 1978; SIL 2007; Silva 2011), e em uma elicitação de dados com um falante nativo. A análise mostrou que há morfologia de plural e que ela não se combina com nomes de massa. Nomes que denotam átomos estáveis se combinam diretamente com numerais. Para serem contados, nomes de substância exigem a presença de sintagmas de medidas. Esses são indícios de que a língua em questão pode ser caracterizada como uma língua de número marcado (Chierchia 2010, 2015), mesmo que haja alguns nomes de massa que podem ser contados diretamente. Em nenhuma das quinze línguas apresentadas em Lima & Rothstein (2020) há relato de um morfema especializado para marcar massa. Chacon (2012) afirma que o Kubeo (Tukano-Oriental) exibe um demonstrativo de massa. Esse é também o caso em Rikbaktsa, mas nesta língua o demonstrativo na ‘isto’, que seleciona nomes massivos, se espalha pela gramática: aparece com marca de terceira pessoa no pronome pessoal a-na, com proformas interrogativas e em construção atributiva. Este estudo contribui, portanto, para uma melhor compreensão da distinção massivo-contável através das línguas e da gramática desta língua minoritária.
This chapter investigates the rationale for having the lexical categories or features mass and count. Some theories make the features be syntactic; others make it be semantic. It is concluded here that none of the standard accounts of their function actually serve the purpose for which they are adopted, and that we should instead remove these features from the lexicon and have lexical nouns be neither +mass nor +count. But on the other hand, if every lexical noun could be characterized by both +mass and +count, then various of the desiderata would be captured. So we conclude that lexical nouns should be neither +mass nor +count, and both +mass and +count. Although this investigation is carried out in English, the moral holds for any 'number marking' language. Furthermore, the resulting theory is the one that is naturally congenial to classifier languages, showing a hithertofore unnoticed similarity between the two language classes. (However, languages that are of neither type ... such as Dene Su łiné, Yudja, and Karitianan ... require some totally distinct vision of a mass-count distinction). © the chapters their several authors 2012. All rights reserved.
In this paper we present results of a corpus study on Greek bare singulars. This study made corpus data for the first time available for the whole set of verbs that have been claimed to allow for bare singular count nouns (BSCNs) in Greek. First we discuss two of the classes of verbs that allow BSCNs, creation verbs and existential constructions. Then we argue that BSCNs are not number neutral and that they seem to have an argumental status, thus leading us to argue that a « strict » pseudoincorporation analysis à la Espinal & McNally (2011) for instance is not supported for Greek Our data and analysis seem to indicate that a « liberal » kind of pseudoincorporation in the sense of Dayal (2011) could provide an analysis for Greek.
This paper addresses the semantics and pragmatics of singular and plural nominals in languages that manifest a binary morphological number distinction within this category. We review the main challenges such an account has to meet, and develop an analysis which treats the plural morpheme as semantically relevant, and the singular form as not contributing any number restriction on its own but acquiring one when in competition with the plural form. The competition between singular and plural nominals is grounded in bidirectional optimization over form-meaning pairs. The main conceptual advantage our proposal has over recent alternative accounts is that it respects Horn's 'division of pragmatic labor', in that it treats morphologically marked forms as semantically marked, and morphologically unmarked forms as semantically unmarked. In our account, plural forms are polysemous between an exclusive plural sense, which enforces sum reference, and an inclusive sense, which allows both atoms and sums as possible witnesses. The analysis predicts that a plural form is pragmatically appropriate only in case sum values are among the intended referents. To account for the choice between these two senses in context we invoke the Strongest Meaning Hypothesis, an independently motivated pragmatic principle. Finally, we show how the approach we develop explains some puzzling contrasts in number marking between English three/more children and Hungarian három/több gyerek ('three/more child'), a problem that has not been properly accounted for in the literature so far. ©2010 Farkas and de Swart This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of a Creative Commons Non-Commercial License (creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/3.0). Farkas and de Swart 1 Atoms, sums and the inclusive/exclusive sum interpretation 1.1 Inclusive and exclusive interpretations of the plural The question addressed in this paper is a simple one: What is the difference in meaning between singular and plural nominals in languages such as English, where this distinction is morphologically marked? 1 The issue then is to characterize the semantic difference between the pair in (1), as it pertains to information conveyed by the contrast in number. (1) a. Mary saw a horse. b. Mary saw horses.
This paper investigates what the semantics of generic sentences in Brazilian Portuguese (BP) says about the denotation of Noun Phrases in that language. More specifically, it addresses the syntactic and semantic differences among the indefinite nominals that get a generic interpretation in BP. The paper may also be taken to test well-known hypotheses about the functioning of genericity in natural languages.Este artigo investiga o que o comportamento da semântica das sentenças genéricas no Português Brasileiro (PB) diz sobre a denotação dos Sintagmas Nominais nesta língua. Mais especificamente ele discute as diferenças sintáticas e semânticas entre os nominais indefinidos que possuem uma leitura genérica no PB. Este artigo também pode ser considerado um teste para hipóteses já bem-estabelecidas sobre o funcionamento da genericidade nas línguas naturais.
This volume offers an overview of current research on grammatical number in language. The chapters Part i of the handbook present foundational notions in the study of grammatical number covering the semantic analyses of plurality, the mass–count distinction, the relationship between number and quantity expressions and the mental representation of number and individuation. The core instance of grammatical number is marking for number distinctions in nominal expressions as in English the book/the books and the chapters in Part ii, Number in the nominal domain, explore morphological, semantic, and syntactic aspects of number marking within noun phrases. The contributions examine morphological marking of number the relationship between syntax and nominal number marking, and the interactions between numeral classifiers with semantic number and number marking. They also address cases of mismatches in form and meaning with respect to number displayed by lexical plurals and collective nouns. The final chapter reviews nominal number processing from the perspective of language pathologies. While number marking on nouns has been the focus of most research on number, number distinctions can also be found in the event domain. Part iii, Number in the event domain, presents an overview of different linguistic means of expressing plurality in the event domain, covering verbal plurality marking, pluractional modifiers of the form Noun preposition Noun, frequency adjectives and dependent indefinites. Part iv provides fifteen case studies examining different aspects of grammatical number marking in a range of typologically diverse languages.
A classical viewpoint claims that reality consists of both things and stuff, and that we need a way to discuss these aspects of reality. This is achieved by using +count terms to talk about things while using +mass terms to talk about stuff. Bringing together contributions from internationally-renowned experts across interrelated disciplines, this book explores the relationship between mass and count nouns in a number of syntactic environments, and across a range of languages. It both explains how languages differ in their methods for describing these two fundamental categories of reality, and shows the many ways that modern linguistics looks to describe them. It also explores how the notions of count and mass apply to 'abstract nouns', adding a new dimension to the countability discussion. With its pioneering approach to the fundamental questions surrounding mass-count distinction, this book will be essential reading for researchers in formal semantics and linguistic typology.
The mass-count distinction is a morpho-syntactic distinction among nouns that is generally taken to have semantic content. This content is generally taken to reflect a conceptual, cognitive, or ontological distinction and relates to philosophical and cognitive notions of unity, identity, and counting. The mass-count distinction is certainly one of the most interesting and puzzling topics in syntax and semantics that bears on ontology and cognitive science. In many ways, the topic remains under-researched, though, across languages and with respect to particular phenomena within a given language, with respect to its connection to cognition, and with respect to the way it may be understood ontologically. This volume aims to contribute to some of the gaps in the research on the topic, in particular the relation between the syntactic mass-count distinction and semantic and cognitive distinctions, diagnostics for mass and count, the distribution and role of numeral classifiers, abstract mass nouns, and object mass nouns (furniture, police force, clothing).
The use of numerals in counting differs quite dramatically across languages. Some languages grammaticalize a contrast between count nouns (three cats; three books) and ʼnon-count’ or mass nouns (milk; mud), marking this distinction in different ways. Others use a system of numeral classifiers, while yet others use a combination of both. This book draws attention to the contrast between counting and measuring, and shows that it is central to our understanding of how we use numerical expressions, classifiers and count nouns in different languages. It reviews some of the more recent major linguistic results in the semantics of numericals, counting and measuring and theories of the mass/count distinction, and presents the author’s new research on the topic. The book draws heavily on crosslinguistic research, and presents in-depth case studies of the mass/count distinction and counting and measuring in a number of typologically unrelated languages. It also includes chapters on classifier constructions and on adjectival uses of measure phrases.
This chapter investigates the syntax of expressions of age and time. English sentences like At the age of seven, John... and it's already past six are argued to contain unpronounced YEAR(S) and unpronounced HOUR(S), respectively. Differences in this area of syntax between English and French or Italian may, in the spirit of comparative syntax work, be relatable to independent differences concerning number agreement. The proposal that few always modifies NUMBER is supported by the fact that in some cases (characterized by few being separated from number) few can to some degree of acceptability modify overt number. The study of expressions of age and time provides evidence in favor of postulating silent counterparts of the nouns year and hour (and age and time).
This article offers an account of the mass/count distinction and the semantics of count nouns, and argues that it is not based
on an atomic/non-atomic nor on a homogeneous/non-homogeneous distinction. I propose that atomicity in the count domain is
atomicity relative to a context k, where k is a set of entities that count as atoms (i.e. count as one) in a particular context.
Assuming for simplicity Chierchia's (1998a) and Rothstein's (2004) theory of mass nouns, in which they denote atomic Boolean
semi-lattices closed under the complete join operation, we define an operation COUNTk that applies to the mass noun denotation Nmass and derives the count noun meaning: a set of ordered pairs <d,k> where d is a member of N ∩ k and k is the context k relative
to which the operation applied. So, there is a typal distinction between mass nouns, which are of type <d,t>, and count nouns,
which are of type <d×k, t>. The grammatical differences between count and mass nouns follow from this typal distinction. This
allows us to encode grammatically the distinction between semantic atomicity, that is, atomicity relative to a context k,
and natural atomicity, that is, inherent individuability. We show a number of ways in which this distinction is grammatically
relevant.
This paper argues that bare singular noun phrases in Brazilian Portuguese are mass nouns denoting kinds. We show that the prima facie arguments against treating bare singulars as mass nouns do not hold water, since they contrast atomic bare singulars with substance mass nouns such as ouro ‘gold’, rather than with atomic mass nouns such as mobília ‘furniture’. We show that in fact bare singulars and atomic mass nouns show the same properties with respect to distributive predicates and reciprocals. We then show that in distribution and interpretation, bare singulars behave like mass nouns and not like bare plurals. We give an analysis of the semantics of bare singulars/mass nouns in the framework of Rothstein (2010), treating them as kind denoting terms, while proposing that bare plurals are generated as plural predicates NPs, as proposed by Krifka (2004), and show how this explains the differences in distribution and interpretation. We conclude that bare singulars can be the complements of mass quantifiers such as muito ‘much’ and quanto ‘how much’, in which case these behave semantically exactly like mass nouns: quanto livro with the bare singular asks about the overall measurements of a quantity of books in terms of volume or weight and is thus an expression of measure, while quantos livros with the plural count noun asks only for the cardinality of the set of books under discussion and thus is a question about counting.
Unlike the other Romance languages, Brazilian Portuguese allows bare plurals freely in argument positions, just like English. Unlike English, however, it also allows bare singular arguments. In this paper we show that the differences between English, Brazilian Portuguese and Italian can be accounted for by two independent properties of the morpho-syntax. Our account captures differences in bare nominal syntax and semantics that are either ignored by existing syntactic accounts (e.g. Longobardi 1994, 1998) or are not clearly predicted by Chierchia's (1998b) semantic account. Our analysis obviates the need for semantic parameters, and instead places the locus of variation in the morpho-syntax, as is assumed for syntactic variation generally.
This paper is devoted to the study of bare nominal arguments (i.e., determinerless NPs occurring in canonical argumental positions) from a crosslinguistic point of view. It is proposed that languages may vary in what they let their NPs denote. In some languages (like Chinese), NPs are argumental (names of kinds) and can thus occur freely without determiner in argument position; in others they are predicates (Romance), and this prevents NPs from occurring as arguments, unless the category D(eterminer) is projected. Finally, there are languages (like Germanic or Slavic) which allow both predicative and argumental NPs; these languages, being the union of the previous two types, are expected to behave like Romance for certain aspects of their nominal system (the singular count portion) and like Chinese for others (the mass and plural portions). This hypothesis (the Nominal Mapping Parameter) is investigated not just through typological considerations, but also through a detailed contrastive analysis of bare arguments in Germanic (English) vs. Romance (Italian). Some general consequences of this view, which posits a limited variation in the mapping from syntax into semantics, for current theories of Universal Grammar and acquisition are considered.
Two eye-tracking experiments investigated the processing of mass nouns used as count nouns and count nouns used as mass nouns. Following Copestake and Briscoe (1995), the basic or underived sense of a word was treated as the input to a derivational rule (“grinding” or “portioning”) which produced the derived sense as output. It was hypothesized that in the absence of biasing evidence readers would immediately assign the underived sense, resulting in difficulty if this sense proved to be incorrect. In Experiment 1, which examined the portioning of mass nouns (as in She wanted beers), a small and early penalty was observed on the target noun for mass nouns appearing in a count noun context. In Experiment 2, in addition to an early (first-pass regression) effect, a much later appearing penalty was observed for count nouns appearing in a mass noun context (as in She wanted banana). The results are taken to support the hypothesis of immediate commitment to the underived sense of polysemous words when the two senses are related by a derivational rule and they are contrasted with the processing profile observed for other types of polysemous words.
The mass/count distinction attracts a lot of attention among cognitive scientists, possibly because it involves in fundamental ways the relation between language (i.e. grammar), thought (i.e. extralinguistic conceptual systems) and reality (i.e. the physical world). In the present paper, I explore the view that the mass/count distinction is a matter of vagueness. While every noun/concept may in a sense be vague, mass nouns/concepts are vague in a way that systematically impairs their use in counting. This idea has never been systematically pursued, to the best of my knowledge. I make it precise relying on supervaluations (more specifically, ‘data semantics’) to model it. I identify a number of universals pertaining to how the mass/count contrast is encoded in the languages of the world, along with some of the major dimensions along which languages may vary on this score. I argue that the vagueness based model developed here provides a useful perspective on both. The outcome (besides shedding light on semantic variation) seems to suggest that vagueness is not just an interface phenomenon that arises in the interaction of Universal Grammar (UG) with the Conceptual/Intentional System (to adopt Chomsky’s terminology), but it is actually part of the architecture of UG. Linguistics Accepted Manuscript
Microfilm/xerographic reprint. Thesis--University of Massachusetts, Amherst, 1977.
Three experiments explored the semantics of the mass-count distinction in young children and adults. In Experiments 1 and 2, the quantity judgments of participants provided evidence that some mass nouns refer to individuals, as such. Participants judged one large portion of stuff to be "more" than three tiny portions for substance-mass nouns (e.g. mustard, ketchup), but chose according to number for count nouns (e.g. shoes, candles) and object-mass nouns (e.g. furniture, jewelry). These results suggest that some mass nouns quantify over individuals, and that therefore reference to individuals does not distinguish count nouns from mass nouns. Thus, Experiments 1 and 2 failed to support the hypothesis that there exist one-to-one mappings between mass-count syntax and semantics for either adults or young children. In Experiment 3, it was found that for mass-count flexible terms (e.g. string, stone) participants based quantity judgments on number when the terms were used with count syntax, but on total amount of stuff when used with mass syntax. Apparently, the presence of discrete physical objects in a scene (e.g. stones) is not sufficient to permit quantity judgments based on number. It is proposed that object-mass nouns (e.g. furniture) can be used to refer to individuals due to lexically specified grammatical features that normally occur in count syntax. Also, we suggest that children learning language parse words that refer to individuals as count nouns unless given morpho-syntactic and referential evidence to the contrary, in which case object-mass nouns are acquired.
this paper we argue using data from bare nouns in Brazilian Portuguese (henceforth BrP) that this kind of parameterisation is both conceptually and empirically problematic. Brazilian Portuguese, like English, but unlike most of the other Romance languages, allows bare plurals and mass nouns in argument position. However, unlike English, BrP also allows singular count nouns to appear bare in argument positions. This is illustrated in (1). We will call these simply bare singulars. (1) a. Criana inteligente. b. Chegou criana. Child is intelligent Arrived-3sg child 'Children are intelligent.' 'A child/ children arrived.' The paper is organised in the following way: first, we introduce the basics of Chierchia's proposal and explain the typology of languages it predicts. We then introduce the basic facts about bare singulars in BrP and show that BrP cannot fit into Chierchia's typology. We will then present some evidence that bare singulars are DPs without Num, and argue that the locus of semantic variation in Chierchia's sense is more successfully dealt with in the syntax of functional projections.
A semântica dos sintagmas nominais através das línguas: estudos experimentais sobre a distinção contável-massivo. PhD dissertation in Letras, Ciências Humanas da Universidade Federal do Paraná
- Kayron Bevilaqua
Object BNs in Brazilian Portuguese. More on the NP/DP analysis
- Sonia Cyrino
- Maria Teresa Espinal
Semantics in generative grammar
- Irene Heim
- Angelika Kratzer
- I Heim
The logical analysis of plurals and mass terms. In Meaning, use, and the interpretation of language
- Godehard Link
Ana Clara Polakof and Romina Trebisacce. 2021. (In)definiteness across languages. International Cooperation Project. Grupo de Pesquisa CNPq
- Roberta Pires De Oliveira
- Helena Guerra Vicente
O SNU e a (pseudo) incorporação no PB
- Cruz Taveira Da
Online approaches to Bare Singulars in Brazilian Portuguese
- Roberta Pires De Oliveira
- Gitanna Bezerra