Recoordinating bare coordination
1. Background | The coordination of bare nominals leads to three interesting effects that were
recently analyzed by Heycock & Zamparelli (2003) and Roodenburg (2004): (i) unlike their
uncoordinated counterparts, coordinated bare singulars can occur in argument position in
languages like English and French (see (1)); (ii) coordinated bare plurals can get – next to their
standard indefinite reading – a definite reading (see (1) and (2)); (iii) for coordinated bare
singulars the definite reading seems to be the only one available (see (1) and (2)).
(1)
(2)
We had to set the table for the queen. We arranged one crystal gobletk, one silver spoonl, two
antique gold forksi and two platinum knivesj.
Forksi and knivesj were equally dirty. Gobletk and spoonl were set to the right of the plate.
There were goblets and spoons on the table.
*There were goblet and spoon on the table.
2. Previous accounts | Heycock & Zamparelli argue that the definite reading of coordinated
bare nominals and – by extension – the availability of coordinated bare singulars is to be analyzed
in terms of N-to-D raising, a process they also assume for proper names. They however fail to
explain (i) why N-to-D raising is available to coordinated bare nouns but not to uncoordinated
ones and (ii) why a definite interpretation of coordinated nouns is different from a proper name
interpretation.
Roodenburg proposes that the availability of coordinated bare singulars is related to the fact that
coordinated NPs are syntactically plural. He furthermore assumes the definite reading of
coordinated bare nominals is nothing more than a strong indefinite reading akin to the one of
students in Ghosts haunted the campus. Students were aware of the danger. He however fails to explain (i)
why plurality would play the role it plays and (ii) why coordinated bare singulars can only get a
strong indefinite reading – unlike their plural counterparts.
3. One more piece of data | Before we present our analysis we have to add one crucial piece of
data we came across when checking (2) for French. Whereas both Heycock & Zamparelli and
Roodenburg assume coordinated bare singulars can never get a normal indefinite reading we
claim that they can. We show this on the basis of the grammaticality of coordinated bare singulars
in existential constructions:
(3)
(4)
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.
On pense passer le réveillon de noël dans un hôtel extrêmement luxueux, avec un super repas! Dans cet
hôtel il y a cheminée et jaccuzzi dans la chambre. | We are thinking about spending Christmas eve in an
extremely luxurious hotel, with a super dinner! In this hotel there is hearth and jaccuzzi in the room.
The crucial difference between (3) and (4) on the one hand and (2) on the other hand is that the
French existential construction is number neutral whereas the English one is not. The
consequence of this is that (3) and (4) miss the strange ring that is present in (2) because of the
lack of agreement between the verb and the noun immediately following it. Note that singular
bare coordinated nouns are acceptable in existential environments in English too as long as they
don’t play a role in number agreement:
(5)
The bedrooms are bright, served by a lift and all have telephone and balcony.
With this piece of data in place we can present our analysis. We first account for the availability
of coordinated bare nominals in all their guises (sing, plur, def and indef).
4. Determiners and coordination | We formulate our analysis in type-shifting theory (Partee
1987, Chierchia 1998). Two basic assumptions are crucial: (i) arguments are of type e (for
definites) or <<e,t>,t> (for indefinites) whereas nouns and – by extension – coordinated nouns
are of type <e,t>, (ii) type-shifts can take place covertly unless they are lexicalized, in French and
English these lexicalizations are taken to correspond to the indefinite and definite articles.
We propose that the reason coordinated bare nominals are different from their uncoordinated
counterparts is that the relevant type-shifts – ∃ for indefinites and ι for definites – are lexicalized
for uncoordinated nominals but not for coordinated ones. This is particularly clear in French
where articles are in principle repeated before each conjunct even if there is nothing that would
prevent the article in the first conjunct to apply to the second conjunct as well or to apply to the
conjunction as a whole:
(5)
a. un homme et une femme
b. un homme et femme
c. une femme et une fille
d. une femme et fille
e. les hommes et les femmes
f. les hommes et femmes
am man and af woman
a m man and woman
a f woman and a f girl
a f woman and girl
the men and the women
the men and women
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(5) is organized in pairs, all of which are expected to have equally acceptable members. (5b) is
expected to be as acceptable as (5a) given that masculine is the default gender in French. For (5d)
no appeal has to be made to default gender to expect it to be as acceptable as (5c) and for (5e)
and (5f) even number considerations shouldn’t play a role. Despite all this a clear generalization
emerges, viz. that the expressions in which the articles are repeated are preferred over those in
which they are not. We take this to be supporting evidence for our claim that the ∃ and the ι
shifts are not lexicalized for coordinated nominals. Note for completeness that (5e) and (5f)
present no clear semantic distinction. Both are e.g. fine in contexts in which men are opposed to
women:
(6)
a. l’égalité des hommes et des femmes
b. l’égalité des hommes et femmes
the equality of_the men and of_the women
the equality of_the men and women
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Once we assume articles cannot apply to coordinations it is no longer a mystery why coordinated
bare nominals are different from their uncoordinated counterparts: they can type-shift covertly
and appear freely in argument position as indefinites or definites.
5. Singular bare coordination | The fact that the existential reading of coordinated bare
singulars is so rare that it escaped the attention of Heycock & Zamparelli and Roodenburg raises
the question why coordinated bare singulars generally prefer the ι shift over the ∃ shift. The
answer we propose is based on the division of labour between bare singulars and bare plurals.
A sentence such as (7) is truth-conditionally compatible with two situations: one in which we saw
a single dog and a single cat and one in which we saw several dogs and cats.
(7)
We saw cat and dog.
Note though that if we had seen more than one dog and more than one cat we could have told
you so by pluralizing the nouns. Given that we did not, the Maxim of Quantity allows you to
conclude that we saw a single dog and a single cat (see Farkas & de Swart 2010 for a complete
formalization). It appears then that the seeing situation described in (7) involved only one dog
and one cat. According to us it’s in this uniqueness implicature that lies the explanation for the
default definite interpretation of bare singulars. The iota type-shift is nothing more than the typeshifting version of this uniqueness implicature: it picks out the unique dog and cat in a certain
context.
Independent support for this competition analysis comes from its predictions: (i) coordinated
bare plurals shouldn’t have a preference for definite readings, (ii) the preference for definite
readings should be cancellable in contexts that force an indefinite reading, (iii) bare singulars in
languages without articles but with a singular/plural distinction should have a preference for
definite readings and (iv) bare plurals in these languages shouldn’t show any preference for
definite readings, (v) bare nouns in a language without articles and without a singular/plural
distinction should not show any preference for definite readings. Predictions (i) and (ii) are
confirmed by the facts presented in 1. and 3., predictions (iii) and (iv) by facts presented in Dayal
(2004) on Hindi and Russian and prediction (v) by facts presented in Yang (2001) on Chinese.
6. Conclusion | In this paper 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.
References | Chierchia (1998). Reference to kinds across languages. NLS | Dayal (2004). Number marking and (in)definiteness
in kind terms. L&P | Farkas & de Swart (2010). The semantics and pragmatics of plurals. Semantics&Pragmatics | Heycock
& Zamparelli (2003). Coordinated bare definites. LI | Partee (1987). Noun Phrase interpretation and type-shifting principles. |
Roodenburg (2004). PhD dissertation University of Amsterdam. | Yang (2001). PhD dissertation Rutgers.