Recoordinating bare coordination 1. Background |

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 (for indefinites) whereas nouns and – by extension – coordinated nouns are of type , (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.