1. Recoordinating bare coordination November 18 th, 2010 A definiteness workshop Bert Le Bruyn (joint work with Henriette de Swart)

2. Preliminaries A friend and colleague came to see me. the friendthe colleague= Yesterday I went to a wedding. The bride and groom were splendidly dressed. the bride the groom 

3. Spoon was The phenomenon of bare coordination Heycock & Zamparelli (2003) I saw catsdogsandI 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 * Gobletspoonwereandonly definite interpretation

4. The phenomenon of bare coordination Heycock & Zamparelli (2003) coordinatednot coordinated bare singulars bare plurals indefinitedefiniteindefinitedefinite

5. 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?

6. Previous analyses New facts Our analysis Conclusion Roadmap

7. Previous analyses New facts Our analysis Conclusion Heycock & Zamparelli (2003) Roodenburg (2004) Roadmap

8. Heycock & Zamparelli (2003) 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

9. Heycock & Zamparelli (2003) 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?

10. Roodenburg (2004) The analysis in a nutshell  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.

11. Roodenburg (2004) The analysis in a nutshell  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.

12. 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.

13. Roodenburg (2004) coordinatednot coordinated bare singulars bare plurals ind weakdefiniteind weakdefiniteind strong indefinite

14. 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? > N-to-D raising ? > coordinating elements as plurality markers ? > proper name interpretation through N-to-D raising ? > strong indefinite reading linked to plurality ?

15. Previous analyses New facts Our analysis Conclusion Roadmap

16. Previous analyses New facts Our analysis Conclusion Roadmap

17. New facts coordinatednot coordinated bare singulars bare plurals indefinitedefiniteindefinitedefinite > Test: see whether bare coordination is allowed in existential contexts

18. 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 V pl N sing ??

19. 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 V pl N sing ??

20. New facts coordinatednot coordinated bare singulars bare plurals indefinitedefiniteindefinitedefinite

21. Previous analyses New facts Our analysis Conclusion Roadmap Account deriving the contrast between coordinated and uncoordinated nouns An (extended) footnote on why coordinated bare singulars have a preference for definite readings

22. Our analysis in a nutshell coordinatednot coordinated bare singulars bare plurals indefinitedefiniteindefinitedefinite > Classic blocking account: indefinite bare singulars are blocked by definite bare singulars are blocked by definite bare plurals are blocked by the definite plural article the definite singular article the indefinite singular article

23. Our analysis in a nutshell coordinatednot coordinated bare singulars bare plurals indefinitedefiniteindefinitedefinite > Not so classic blocking account: A, the sing and the plural don’t apply at the coordination level. As a consequence they cannot be taken to block indefinite or definite readings of coordinated bare nominals.

24. No Ds for CoordPs A, the sing and the plural don’t apply at the coordination level. >Indirect evidence un homme et une femme (a male man and a female woman)1760000 un homme et femme (a male man and woman)696 une femme et une fille (a female woman and a female girl)885 une femme et fille (a female woman and girl)15 les hommes et les femmes (the men and the women)3030000 les hommes et femmes (the men and women)361000 yahoo.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.

25. No Ds for CoordPs A, the sing and the plural 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.

26. No Ds for CoordPs les hommes et les femmes the men and the women3030000 les hommes et femmes the men and women361000 les homme et femme the man and woman99 les hommes et les garçons the men and the boys2570 les hommes et garçons the men and boys175 les homme et garçon the man and boy1 les femmes et les filles the women and the girls164000 les femmes et filles the women and girls16000 les femme et fille the woman and girl18 les frères et les soeurs the brothers and the sisters3130 les frères et soeurs the brothers and sisters47000 les frère et soeur the brother and sister1040 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.

27. From ‘informal’ blocking to OT coordinatednot coordinated bare singulars bare plurals indefinitedefiniteindefinitedefinite > Not so classic blocking account: A, the sing and the plural don’t apply at the coordination level. As a consequence they cannot be taken to block indefinite or definite readings of coordinated bare nominals.

28. From ‘informal’ blocking to OT DP NumP CoordP AND NumP NP N NumP NP N DP N-domain CoordP-domain N.B. Coordination can apply at the DP, NumP or NP-level. NN

29. Constraints a. Fdr Mark discourse referents b. Fpl Mark reference to a group For each type of functional projection we have a faithfulness constraint. DP NumP c. Fdef Mark definiteness We add an extra one for D projections. DP For the two domains we add a markedness constraint. d. *FunctN Don’t mark functional structure in the N-domain e. *FunctCoordP Don’t mark functional structure in the CoordP-domain. N-dom CoordP-dom

30. Ranking a. Fdr Mark discourse referents b. Fpl Mark reference to a group For French and English the following ranking holds: c. Fdef Mark definiteness e. *FunctCoordP Don’t mark functional structure in the CoordP-domain. d. *FunctN Don’t mark functional structure in the N-domain.

31. 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 dog Ds applying at CoordP Untestable (?) illegal structures: I saw cat and dogs (?) (meaning I saw cats and dogs) Number at CoordP

32. 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.

33. 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? > Articles don’t apply at the coordination level > No blocking of bare coordinated forms > Semantically, definite/indefinite readings are available through covert type-shifting

34. Why cat and dog is definite by default coordinatednot coordinated bare singulars bare plurals indefinitedefiniteindefinitedefinite coordinatednot coordinated bare singulars bare plurals indefinitedefiniteindefinitedefinite

35. Why cat and dog is definite by default 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.

36. Why cat and dog is definite by default 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.

37. Why cat and dog is definite by default 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).

38. Why cat and dog is definite by default 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 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, Geist 2010). > Uncoordinated bare plurals in Hindi and Russian have indeed been argued to allow both definite and indefinite readings (see Dayal 2004).

39. Why cat and dog is definite by default One more prediction... there should be no definiteness effect in Chinese comparable to the one in Hindi and Russian Given that the implicature arises because of the competition between bare singulars and plurals... > 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).

40. 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.

41. 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? > 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

42. Previous analyses New facts Our analysis Conclusion Roadmap

43. Previous analyses New facts Our analysis Conclusion Roadmap

44. 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.

45. 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.

46. 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.

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