Recoordinating bare coordination December 9 th, 2010 Going Romance Bert Le Bruyn & Henriëtte de...

Recoordinating bare coordination

December 9th, 2010Going Romance

Bert Le Bruyn & Henriëtte de Swart

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Spoon was

The phenomenon of bare coordination

I saw cats dogsand I 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*Goblet spoon wereand only definite interpretation

Heycock & Zamparelli (2003)

??? There were goblet and spoon on the table.

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coordinatednot coordinated

bare singulars

bare plurals

indefinite definite indefinite definite

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/Symbol_OK.svg




http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/P_no_red.svg




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Why is it bare singulars cannot occur bare whereas coordinated bare singulars can ?

When and why do bare coordinated nouns get a definite reading?

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• New facts• Previous analyses• Our analysis in a nutshell• Our analysis in OT• The semantics of and• Surprise Bonus

Roadmap

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Roadmap

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New facts


bare singulars

bare plurals





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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 Vpl Nsing

???

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Recap

Basic dataCoordination lifts all semantic constraints on the absence of articles.

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Roadmap

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Roadmap

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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.

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Roodenburg (2004)


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.

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Roodenburg (2004)

Problem

Functional readings of bare plurals are limited to the subject position. Definite readings of coordinated bare nominals are not.

> Ghosts haunted the campus. We warned students about the danger.

> During the debate about the new law, the Prime Minister didn’t succeed in bringing proponents and opponents closer together.

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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

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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 Goblet was set to the right of the plate bad ?

> Why can I saw Cat only mean that I saw someone by the name Cat?

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Roadmap

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Roadmap

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Our analysis in a nutshell

> Blocked by I read a book and I read the book.

> Why is Goblet and spoon were set to the right of the plate good ?

> Not blocked!

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bare singulars

bare plurals


> Classic blocking account:

indefinite bare singulars are blocked bydefinite bare singulars are blocked bydefinite bare plurals are blocked by the definite plural article

the definite singular articlethe indefinite singular article









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bare singulars

bare plurals


> Not so classic blocking account:

A, thesing and theplural don’t apply at the coordination level.As a consequence they cannot be taken to block indefinite or definite readings of coordinated bare nominals.









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A, thesing and theplural don’t apply at the coordination level.

>Indirect evidence

un homme et une femme (amale man and afemale woman) 1760000

un homme et femme (amale man and woman) 696

une femme et une fille (afemale woman and afemale girl) 885

une femme et fille (afemale woman and girl) 15

les hommes et les femmes (the men and the women) 3030000

les hommes et femmes (the men and women) 361000yahoo.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.

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A, thesing and theplural 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 syntactic 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.

*Dog and cat was fighting.

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les hommes et les femmes the men and the women 3030000

les hommes et femmes the men and women 361000

les homme et femme the man and woman 99

les hommes et les garçons the men and the boys 2570

les hommes et garçons the men and boys 175

les homme et garçon the man and boy 1

les femmes et les filles the women and the girls 164000

les femmes et filles the women and girls 16000

les femme et fille the woman and girl 18

yahoo.fr 11/11/2010

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Recap


Basic insightDeterminers don’t apply at the coordination level.

ImplementationClassic blocking ...

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Roadmap

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Roadmap

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From ‘informal’ blocking to OTDP

NumP

CoordP

AND

NumP

NP

N

NumP

NP

N

DP DP

N-domain

CoordP-domain

N.B. Coordination can apply at the DP, NumP or NP-level.

N N

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From ‘informal’ blocking to OT

a. FdrMark discourse referents

b. FplMark reference to a group

For each type of functional projection we have a faithfulness constraint.

DP

NumP

c. FdefMark definiteness

We add an extra one for D projections.

DP

For the two domains we add a markedness constraint.

d. *FunctNDon’t mark functional structure in the N-domain

e. *FunctCoordPDon’t mark functional structure in the CoordP-domain.

N-dom

CoordP-dom

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a. FdrMark discourse referents

b. FplMark reference to a group

For French and English the following ranking holds:

c. FdefMark definiteness

e. *FunctCoordPDon’t mark functional structure in the CoordP-domain.

d. *FunctNDon’t mark functional structure in the N-domain.

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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 dogDs applying at CoordP

Untestable (?) illegal structures:

I saw cat and dogs (?)(meaning I saw cats and dogs)

Number at CoordP

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Recap



ImplementationClassic blocking ... and its formalization in OT.

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Roadmap

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Roadmap

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The semantics of coordination

We assume the basic semantics of coordination at the level of sets is that of set intersection.

X Y

Bare coordination never has this basic semantics.

X and Y

> Bride and groom were extremely happy.

There was an extremely happy person who was both bride and groom.

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Two types of coordination:

> coordination with ‘joint’ readings

> coordination with ‘split’ readings

Bare coordination always concerns coordination with ‘split’ readings.

Our challenge will be to derive split readings without giving up the basic intuition of coordination being an instance of set intersection.

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How to go about this?

> Enrichment of and

> First enrichment: turn and into a ‘matchmaker’

PQ ( )PQ x E E x( ) ( )

> Based on a proposal by Yoad Winter (p.c.)

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bride groom

( , )

( , )

( , )

( , )

( , )

( , )

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( , )

( , )

( , )

( , )

( , )

QxE ExP

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> Enrichment of and

> First enrichment: turn and into a ‘matchmaker’

PQ ( )PQ x E E x( ) ( )

> Second enrichment: add a function that turns (singular) couples into plural individuals.

> Based on a proposal by Yoad Winter (p.c.)

PQ ( )PQ x E E x( ) ( )RtoI

Relations to Individuals

RtoI(R) = {xy : R(x,y)}

How to go about this?

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bride and groom

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The semantics of coordinationbride and groom

> Bride and groom were extremely happy.

> the unique plural individual consisting of a bride and groom was extremely happy

> extremely_happy( )

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Recap



ImplementationClassic blocking ... and its formalization in OT.

The semantics of bare coordinationEnriched version of an intersective semantics.

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Roadmap

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Roadmap

shortcut to conclusion

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Why cat and dog is ‘definite’ by default


bare singulars

bare plurals



bare singulars

bare plurals


















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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 almost indistinguishable from the contribution of the definite article.

Even though our semantic account predicts both a definite and an indefinite reading, pragmatically the indefinite reading is so close to the definite reading that one gets the impression there’s only a definite reading.


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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.


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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).


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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


> 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).


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One more prediction

... there should be no definiteness effect in Chinese comparable to the one in Hindi and Russian


> 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).


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Roadmap

to conclusion

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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

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References

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.

Heycock & Zamparelli, 2005, “Friends and colleagues”, Natural Language Semantics 13, 201-270.

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.

Zwarts, 2009, Bare constructions in Dutch, Ms., Utrecht University.

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

http://www.hum.uu.nl/medewerkers/b.s.w.lebruyn/weakreferentiality/index.htm

On the elided D analysis of single determiner

coordinations

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Problems for the elided D analysis

This incompatible man and woman.

??This incompatible man and this incompatible woman.


My five maternal aunts and uncles were all Methodists.

My five maternal aunts and my five maternal uncles were all Methodists.

default: 5 individuals

default: 10 individuals

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> All disambiguating cases involve some kind of modification.

> Modification overrules the restriction on determiners at the coordination level.

> Can be linked to a general constraint on modification of bare nominals (see Zwarts 2009).

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This soldier and sailor agreed.

*Ce soldat et marin étaient d’accord.

The soldiers and sailors agreed.

Les soldats et marins étaient d’accord.

If we assume French doesn’t allow the non-repetition of determiners, why would there be a difference between singular and plural determiners ?


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un homme et une femme (amale man and afemale woman) 1760000

un homme et femme (amale man and woman) 696

une femme et une fille (afemale woman and afemale girl) 885

une femme et fille (afemale woman and girl) 15

les hommes et les femmes (the men and the women) 3030000

les hommes et femmes (the men and women) 361000yahoo.fr 11/11/2010

338000

uk.yahoo.uk 05/12/2010restricted to UK pages

801000

276

1250

1580000

26100


FRENCH ENGLISH

This is a strong argument iff:> French shows no preference for repetition of plural determiners. > A language like English shows no difference in the repetition of singular and plural determiners.

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Conclusion

There is still some work to be done to make a waterproof case for the elided D analysis.

Crucially however there are no knock-down arguments against it and we do have a strong argument against an analysis that takes determiners to apply to the coordination of two bare singulars.

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