27.4511, Calls: General Linguistics, Syntax/Switzerland

Fri Nov 4 23:07:04 UTC 2016

LINGUIST List: Vol-27-4511. Fri Nov 04 2016. ISSN: 1069 - 4875.

Subject: 27.4511, Calls: General Linguistics, Syntax/Switzerland

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Date: Fri, 04 Nov 2016 19:06:51
From: Tabea Ihsane [tabea.ihsane at unige.ch]
Subject: Bare Nouns vs. ‘Partitive Articles': Differences and Similarities

Full Title: Bare Nouns vs. ‘Partitive Articles': Differences and Similarities 

Date: 10-Sep-2017 - 13-Sep-2017
Location: Zurich, Switzerland 
Contact Person: Tabea Ihsane
Meeting Email: tabea.ihsane at unige.ch

Linguistic Field(s): General Linguistics; Syntax 

Call Deadline: 10-Nov-2016 

Meeting Description:

Several Romance and some Germanic languages feature a ‘partitive article’
(PA), like du/des (of.the) in French and del/dei (of.the) in Italian, often
found in contexts where many European languages have bare plural or bare mass
nouns. The workshop aims at bringing together researchers working on any
aspect pertaining to both of these nominals.

The most common interpretation of PAs, and focus of this workshop, is their
indefinite use as in Gianni ha comprato dei libri (It); Jean a acheté des
livres (Fr) ‘John bought (some) books’ (Storto 2003, Cardinaletti/Giusti
2016). Although there is abundant literature on PAs (e.g. Ihsane 2008) and
bare nouns (e.g. Kabatek/Wall 2013), these works do not offer a systematic
comparison between the two types of nominals and many questions remain.

The phenomena discussed in this workshop could include the following issues:

1. Evolution of PAs:

Although Romance languages developed from Latin, not all of them have PAs. As
Latin didn’t have articles, one question is when and why (indefinite) bare
nouns gave way to nominals with (partitive) articles. Another one is why
present-day Romance languages vary as to whether PAs are obligatory or not: Je
bois *(du) jus (Fr); Bevo (del) succo (It) ‘I drink juice’.

2. Distribution:

French PAs may pattern with English bare nouns in some contexts (e.g. with
individual-level predicates: *Des hommes sont blonds/*Men are blond; Guéron
2006), but not in others (e.g. generics: Je déteste *des chats vs. I hate
cats). Similarly, French PAs pattern with Spanish bare nouns in some contexts
(e.g. generics), but not in others, such as subject positions: Des évêques ont
participé (Fr); *Obispos asistieron (Sp) ‘bishops attended’. The latter can
however be rescued with appropriate focus/topic interpretation (Suñer 1982,
Leonetti 2013). Similarly, many French generic examples with a PA in their
subject become acceptable in presence of the right element (e.g. adjective,
negation) (Roig 2013).

3. Scope differences:

Bare nouns only have narrow scope (Carlson 1977), except for Brazilian
Portuguese (Wall forthcoming), whereas nominals with a PA are ambiguous (Fr:
Ihsane 2008; It: Cardinaletti/Giusti 2016). This ambiguity however only
concerns plural nominals with PAs, which raises the question of the role of
number in these facts (Benincà 1980).

4. Internal structure:

If nominals with PAs have scope properties, it suggests that they are
quantificational. Whether this is mapped into their structure is debatable.
Cardinaletti/Giusti (2016) claim that Italian dei-nominals are DPs, not QPs.
This proposal should be tested cross-linguistically, also in contrast with
singular PAs, which do not have scope properties.

Workshop Convenors:

Tabea Ihsane (University of Geneva and University of Zurich)
Elisabeth Stark (University of Zurich)

2nd Call for Papers: 

Several Romance and some Germanic languages feature a ‘partitive article’
(PA), like du/des (of.the) in French and del/dei (of.the) in Italian, often
found in contexts where many European languages have bare plural or bare mass
nouns. The workshop aims at bringing together researchers working on any
aspect (scope properties, syntactic distribution, semantics, syntactic
analysis) pertaining to both of these nominals (i.e. bare and with a PA). 

We invite submissions of anonymous abstracts for 20+10 min presentations to
the email addresses below, with contact details in the body of the email
(name/affiliation/email address). If approved, the workshop will be part of
the 50th Annual Meeting of the Societas Linguistica Europaea (SLE) in Zürich,
10–13 September 2017. 

Important Dates: 

10 November 2016: Deadline for submission of maximum 300-word abstracts to the
workshop organizers at tabea.ihsane unige.ch and estark rom.uzh.ch 
15 November 2016: Notification of acceptance by the workshop organizers and
submission of the workshop proposal to SLE 
25 December 2016: Notification of acceptance of workshop proposals from SLE
organizers to workshop organizers 
15 January 2017: Submission of abstracts (taking into account any feedback
from the reviewing procedure) for review by SLE 
Date to be announced: Notification of acceptance of individual workshop
contributions 
10-13 September 2017: SLE conference

References:

Benincá, P. (1980), “Nomi senza articolo”, in: Rivista di Grammatica
Generativa 5, 51-63.
Cardinaletti, A. / G. Giusti. (2016), “The syntax of the Italian indefinite
determiner dei”, in: Lingua. Online:
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0024384116300298 
Carlson, G. N. (1977), “A unified analysis of the English bare plural”, in:
Linguistics and Philosophy 1, 413-56.
Guéron, J. (2006), “Generic sentences and bare plurals”, in: S. Vogeleer / L.
Tasmowski (eds.), Non-definiteness and plurality. Amsterdam: John Benjamins,
219–234.
Ihsane, T. (2008), The layered DP in French. Form and Meaning of French
Indefinites. Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.
Kabatek, J. / A. Wall. (2013), New Perspectives on Bare Noun Phrases in
Romance and Beyond. Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
Leonetti, M. (2013), “Information structure and the distribution of Spanish
bare plurals”, in: J. Kabatek / A. Wall (eds.), 121-156. 
Roig, A. (2013), “Des N et du N sujets : Des Généricités toujours refusées?”,
in: Travaux De Linguistique: Revue Internationale De Linguistique Française
67, 61–89. 
Storto, G. (2003), “On the status of the partitive determiner in Italian”, in:
J. Quer / J. Schroten / M. Scorretti / P. Sleeman /E. Verheugd (eds.), Romance
languages and linguistic theory 2001: Selected papers from Going Romance 2001.
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins, 315–330.
Suñer, M. (1982), The Syntax and Semantics of Spanish Presentational
Sentence-Types. Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press.
Wall, A. (forthcoming), Bare nouns in Brazilian Portuguese.
Amsterdam/Philadelphia: John Benjamins.

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