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Article published In: Journal of Pidgin and Creole Languages
Vol. 40:2 (2025) ► pp.302–337

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Remarks on the syntax of bare nouns in Papiamentu

 | University of Illinois Chicago, United States
 | Leiden University, The Netherlands
 | University of Amsterdam, The Netherlands
 | Leiden University, The Netherlands | University of Vigo, Spain
Published online: 19 January 2024
DOI logo with link
https://doi.org/10.1075/jpcl.00134.lop
Abstract
This article presents an argument that bare (singular) nouns in Papiamentu include additional silent functional structure, as proposed in Kester, Ellen-Petra & Cristina Schmitt. 2007. Papiamentu and Brazilian Portuguese: A Comparative Study of Bare Nominals. In Marlyse Baptista and Jaqueline Guéron (eds) Noun Phrases in Creole Languages: A Multi-Faceted Approach, 107–143. Amsterdam: John Benjamins. Google Scholar logo with link to Google Scholar. The argument is based on Dutch-Papiamentu code-switched noun phrases and exploits the crucial datum that a Dutch bare noun is grammatical when inserted in a Papiamentu sentence, although bare nouns are ungrammatical in a Dutch unilingual sentence. We propose that this datum can be accounted for if the Dutch bare noun is the complement of a silent Papiamentu category, D or Num. The locus of cross-linguistic variation that yields the (un)acceptability of bare nouns is a property in D or Num.
Article outline
  • 1.Introduction
  • 2.Analyses of bare nouns
  • 3.The Papiamentu noun phrase
    • 3.1Bare nouns
    • 3.2Bare plural nouns
    • 3.3Definite noun phrases
    • 3.4Indefinite noun phrases
    • 3.5Summary
  • 4.The first study: Existential bare nouns
    • Participants
    • Stimuli
    • Results
  • 5.The second study: Kind bare nouns
    • Participants
    • Stimuli
  • 6.Discussion
  • 7.Conclusions
  • Acknowledgements
  • Notes
  • References
References (52)
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