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Another Look at the Acceptability of Bare Singular NP s in Episodic Sentences in Brazilian Portuguese
Author(s) -
Ionin Tania,
Grolla Elaine,
Santos Hélade
Publication year - 2018
Publication title -
syntax
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.587
H-Index - 24
eISSN - 1467-9612
pISSN - 1368-0005
DOI - 10.1111/synt.12163
Subject(s) - portuguese , brazilian portuguese , subject (documents) , context (archaeology) , position (finance) , interpretation (philosophy) , constraint (computer aided design) , linguistics , psychology , mathematics , history , computer science , philosophy , economics , geometry , archaeology , finance , library science
Bare (determinerless) singular NP s in Brazilian Portuguese have been variously analyzed as indefinite terms, as kind terms, or as ambiguous between the two. It has furthermore been noted (Schmitt & Munn [Schmitt, C., 1999] and subsequent literature) that bare singulars, unlike bare plurals, are degraded in the preverbal subject position of episodic sentences but that their acceptability is improved when they are embedded in a list. We conducted an experimental study examining the effects of NP type, syntactic position, and list context on the acceptability of bare NP s in Brazilian Portuguese. Our results indicate that the low acceptability of bare singulars in the subject position of episodic sentences results from the additive effects of three separate factors, rather than from a constraint against bare singulars in subject position. Implications of these findings for theories of bare‐ NP interpretation in Brazilian Portuguese are discussed.