In:Bare Nominals in Brazilian Portuguese: An integral approach
Albert Wall
[Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today 245] 2017
► pp. v–viii
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Published online: 30 November 2017
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.245.toc
https://doi.org/10.1075/la.245.toc
Table of contents
Index of tables
ix
Index of figures
xi
List of abbreviations and remarks on glosses
xiii
Acknowledgments
xv
Chapter 1.Introduction
1
1.1The orientation and organization of this work
2
1.2What data do we want to account for?
7
1.3(Bare) Nominals in Brazilian Portuguese and linguistic theory
11
1.3.1Nominal Semantics
12
1.3.1.1(In)definiteness
13
1.3.1.2Mass/count and Seinsarten
16
1.3.1.3Reference and referential anchoring
19
1.3.1.4Genericity
19
1.3.1.5Further assumptions
20
1.3.2Syntax: DP or not DP is not the question
22
1.3.2.1DP/NP and parameters
22
1.3.2.2Zero/null/empty Ds
25
1.3.2.3Strong syntax in spite of “weak” phonetics and phonology?
26
1.3.2.4Consequences for parametric analyses
28
1.3.2.5New questions about the BrP data
32
1.3.3The interface problem: from syntax to acoustics – and back again
34
1.4Empirical demands, challenges, and a research program
37
1.4.1Towards a “serious corpus study” on BrP BNs
37
1.4.2Methodological issues in Acceptability Judgment Tasks on BrP BNs
42
1.4.3Exploring phonetics/phonology and perception
47
1.5Towards an integral approach
48
Chapter 2.The literature on Brazilian Portuguese bare nominals
53
2.1BNs in (more or less) traditional grammars
55
2.2The issue of syntactic and semantic parameters
58
2.3Argumenthood and reference
59
2.4Genericity and the notion of kinds
63
2.5Mass or count or neither?
67
2.6Bare plurals and agreement
75
2.7(In)definiteness
78
2.8Information structure
83
2.9Incorporation
85
2.10Acquisition
88
2.11Interim Balance
89
2.11.1On problems and consensus
90
2.11.2Desiderata
92
2.12The diachronic perspective: Kabatek 2002
92
2.12.1Do the Romance articles follow some grammaticalization cycle?
94
2.12.2Implications from Kabatek (2002) for a synchronic analysis of BrP BSs
98
2.13Wrapping up: the two basic theoretical and empirical questions
103
Chapter 3.Article assimilation and bare nominals
105
3.1External Vocalic Sandhis in Brazilian Portuguese
107
3.1.1Leda Bisol’s account of external sandhis in Brazilian Portuguese and reactions
108
3.1.2Prosody
109
3.1.3Restriction of EL to word-final /a/
110
3.1.4The so-called “monomorphemes”
112
3.1.5Fusion vs. deletion and the number of processes
115
3.1.6A first balance
116
3.2External Sandhis and the (Definite) Articles
117
3.2.1EL and DE with articles in unstressed contexts
118
3.2.2DE with articles under word stress
121
3.2.3Non-vocalic contexts
124
3.3Evidence from perception: a forced choice experiment
127
3.3.1Materials and experiment design
127
3.3.2Results
132
3.3.3Discussion
134
3.4Contrasting European and Brazilian Portuguese
135
3.4.1The corpus study
137
3.4.2Feature coding
138
3.4.3Results: the distribution of possible assimilation contexts
140
3.4.4Discussion and conclusion
141
3.5Vocalic Articles in Romance Languages
143
3.6OCP-effects on Romance articles as evidence for syntactic status
149
3.6.1A typology of OCP-effects in Romance
150
3.6.2The phonological-perceptual hypothesis and encapsulated syntax
152
Chapter 4.Definite/specific (and some generic) BSs in corpora
161
4.1Spoken language
162
4.1.1MOBRAL, PEUL, NURC
162
4.1.2IBORUNA
167
4.1.3Big Brother Brazil
168
4.1.4The Frog Story corpus
170
4.2Written language
175
4.2.1Jornal do Brasil
175
4.2.2Other written sources
177
4.3Discussion
179
4.3.1Objections
180
4.3.2Overview of relevant features
187
4.3.2.1Preliminary observations and general tendencies
187
4.3.2.2Discursive, semantic and syntactic features
192
4.3.3Digression: Genericity
195
4.4Summary and conclusions
200
Chapter 5.Acceptability Judgment Tasks on generic and specific bare singulars
203
5.1Acceptability Judgment Tasks on BrP: advances and challenges
204
5.1.1Issues in experiment design
206
5.1.2Issues in data interpretation
207
5.1.3Consistency of samples and mean judgments across subjects
215
5.1.4Advances: an interim summary
220
5.2How (not) to test obligatoriness of definiteness and specificity marking in BrP
220
5.3Bare singulars in canonical definiteness contexts: new results
225
5.3.1Participants
228
5.3.2Procedure and implementation
229
5.3.3Materials and Design
229
5.3.4Results
233
5.3.4.1Consistency of samples
233
5.3.4.2Judgments and Statistics
238
5.3.4.3Discussion
243
5.4Conclusions
247
Chapter 6.Towards an integral approach
249
6.1Answering the empirical questions
250
6.1.1Are there any syntactic restrictions on argumental BNs in BrP?
250
6.1.2Explanations beyond syntax and semantics
251
6.1.3Further empirical questions
252
6.2Nominal determination in the integral perspective
253
6.2.1Syntax: the presence and absence of determiners
254
6.2.1.1Brazilian Portuguese bare singulars and DP analyses
254
6.2.1.2Towards a novel analysis
258
6.2.1.3The syntactic core
259
6.2.1.4Lager syntactic units and the place of semantics
264
6.2.1.5Levels of syntactic abstraction
265
6.2.2Semantics: denotational domains and seinsarten
270
6.2.3Genericity in the integral perspective
276
6.2.4The integral analysis: summary and examples
283
6.2.5General theoretical implications and an open question
286
6.3Answering the theoretical questions
289
6.3.1Why are there no restrictions on BSs in BrP? (ThQ1)
290
6.3.2Explaining the distribution and interpretation of BSs in BrP (ThQ2)
291
6.3.3Linking ThQ1 and ThQ2
296
6.4Concluding remarks
298
7.References
301
7.1Corpora and other linguistic data sources and tools
7.2References
Index
315
