Open AccessInformation structure and the referential status of bare plurals
Author(s) -
Norberto Moreno,
Isabel Kareli León Pérez
Publication year - 2001
Publication title -
zas papers in linguistics
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
ISSN - 1435-9588
DOI - 10.21248/zaspil.23.2001.119
Subject(s) - linguistics , object (grammar) , focus (optics) , information structure , subject (documents) , interpretation (philosophy) , position (finance) , affect (linguistics) , semantic interpretation , computer science , psychology , natural language processing , philosophy , physics , world wide web , finance , optics , economics
The goal of this paper is to study the influence of information structure in the referential status of linguistic expressions such as bare plurals and indefinite NPs in Spanish. In particular, we will argue for the following claims: (a) Spanish bare plurals can receive a generic interpretation in object position and (b) Spanish bare plurals in object position can be topics in siru. We will focus on object position because of the well known semantic and syntactic constraints that affect preverbal subject bare plurals in Spanish.