Bare nominals in Brazilian Portuguese : an integral approach / Albert Wall.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Wall, Albert, author.

Series:

Linguistik aktuell.

Linguistik Aktuell/Linguistics Today (LA), 01660829 ; Volume 245

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Portuguese language--Brazil--Noun phrase.

Portuguese language.

Physical Description:

1 online resource.

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

Amsterdam, [Netherlands] ; Philadelphia, Pennsylvania : John Benjamins Publishing Company, 2017.

Summary:

Over the last three decades, Brazilian Portuguese bare nominals have turned into a hot topic in the cross-linguistic study of nominal syntax and semantics. This contribution is the first comprehensive, book-length treatment of the issue, covering both the long-standing discussion about the adequate analysis of these forms as well as the establishment of a solid empirical basis for future research. The book goes further than previous accounts in also taking into consideration the phonetic-phonological dimension, showing the advantages of a more comprehensive account. The empirical section outlines an innovative approach in which different methods and data types are combined and focuses on the underresearched definite / specific / referential uses and interpretations of bare singulars. The book also addresses the traditional topics in the study of bare nominals – genericity, the mass/count distinction, NP-internal plural agreement, the NP/DP distinction, and syntax-semantics-phonology interface questions – in the light of the new findings.

Contents:

Intro

Bare Nominals in Brazilian Portuguese

Editorial page

Title page

LCC data

Table of contents

Index of tables

Index of figures

List of abbreviations and remarks on glosses

Acknowledgments

Chapter 1. Introduction

1.1 The orientation and organization of this work

1.2 What data do we want to account for?

1.3 (Bare) Nominals in Brazilian Portuguese and linguistic theory

1.3.1 Nominal semantics

1.3.1.1 (In)definiteness

1.3.1.2 Mass/count and seinsarten

1.3.1.3 Reference and referential anchoring

1.3.1.4 Genericity

1.3.1.5 Further assumptions

1.3.2 Syntax: DP or not DP is not the question

1.3.2.1 DP/NP and parameters

1.3.2.2 Zero/null/empty Ds

1.3.2.3 Strong syntax in spite of "weak" phonetics and phonology?

1.3.2.4 Consequences for parametric analyses

1.3.2.5 New questions about the BrP data

1.3.3 The interface problem: From syntax to acoustics - and back again

1.4 Empirical demands, challenges, and a research program

1.4.1 Towards a "serious corpus study" on BrP BNs

1.4.2 Methodological issues in acceptability judgment tasks on BrP BNs

1.4.3 Exploring phonetics/phonology and perception

1.5 Towards an integral approach

Chapter 2. The literature on Brazilian Portuguese bare nominals

2.1 BNs in (more or less) traditional grammars

2.2 The issue of syntactic and semantic parameters

2.3 Argumenthood and reference

2.4 Genericity and the notion of kinds

2.5 Mass or count or neither?

2.6 Bare plurals and agreement

2.7 (In)definiteness

2.8 Information structure

2.9 Incorporation

2.10 Acquisition

2.11 Interim balance

2.11.1 On problems and consensus

2.11.2 Desiderata

2.12 The diachronic perspective: Kabatek 2002

2.12.1 Do the Romance articles follow some grammaticalization cycle?.

2.12.2 Implications from Kabatek (2002) for a synchronic analysis of BrP BSs

2.13 Wrapping up: The two basic theoretical and empirical questions

Chapter 3. Article assimilation and bare nominals

3.1 External vocalic sandhis in Brazilian Portuguese

3.1.1 Leda Bisol's account of external sandhis in Brazilian Portuguese and reactions

3.1.2 Prosody

3.1.3 Restriction of EL to word-final /a/

3.1.4 The so-called "monomorphemes"

3.1.5 Fusion vs. deletion and the number of processes

3.1.6 A first balance

3.2 External sandhis and the (definite) articles

3.2.1 EL and DE with articles in unstressed contexts

3.2.2 DE with articles under word stress

3.2.3 Non-vocalic contexts

3.3 Evidence from perception: A forced choice experiment

3.3.1 Materials and experiment design

3.3.2 Results

3.3.3 Discussion

3.4 Contrasting European and Brazilian Portuguese

3.4.1 The corpus study

3.4.2 Feature coding

3.4.3 Results: The distribution of possible assimilation contexts

3.4.4 Discussion and conclusion

3.5 Vocalic articles in Romance languages

3.6 OCP-effects on Romance articles as evidence for syntactic status

3.6.1 A typology of OCP-effects in Romance

3.6.2 The phonological-perceptual hypothesis and encapsulated syntax

Chapter 4. Definite/specific (and some generic) BSs in corpora

4.1 Spoken language

4.1.1 Mobral, Peul, Nurc

4.1.2 IBORUNA

4.1.3 Big Brother Brazil

4.1.4 The Frog Story corpus

4.2 Written language

4.2.1 Jornal do Brasil

4.2.2 Other written sources

4.3 Discussion

4.3.1 Objections

4.3.2 Overview of relevant features

4.3.2.1 Preliminary observations and general tendencies

4.3.2.2 Discursive, semantic and syntactic features

4.3.3 Digression: Genericity

4.4 Summary and conclusions.

Chapter 5. Acceptability Judgment Tasks on (generic and specific) BrP BSs

5.1 Acceptability Judgment Tasks on BrP: Advances and challenges

5.1.1 Issues in experiment design

5.1.2 Issues in data interpretation

5.1.3 Consistency of samples and mean judgments across subjects

5.1.4 Advances: an interim summary

5.2 How (not) to test obligatoriness of definiteness and specificity marking in BrP

5.3 Bare singulars in canonical definiteness contexts: New results

5.3.1 Participants

5.3.2 Procedure and implementation

5.3.3 Materials and design

5.3.4 Results

5.3.4.1 Consistency of samples

5.3.4.2 Judgments and statistics

5.3.4.3 Discussion

5.4 Conclusions

Chapter 6. Towards an integral approach

6.1 Answering the empirical questions

6.1.1 Are there any syntactic restrictions on argumental BNs in BrP?

6.1.2 Explanations beyond syntax and semantics

6.1.3 Further empirical questions

6.2 Nominal determination in the integral perspective

6.2.1 Syntax: The presence and absence of determiners

6.2.1.1 Brazilian Portuguese bare singulars and DP analyses

6.2.1.2 Towards a novel analysis

6.2.1.3 The syntactic core

6.2.1.4 Lager syntactic units and the place of semantics

6.2.1.5 Levels of syntactic abstraction

6.2.2 Semantics: denotational domains and seinsarten

6.2.3 Genericity in the integral perspective

6.2.4 The integral analysis: summary and examples

6.2.5 General theoretical implications and an open question

6.3 Answering the theoretical questions

6.3.1 Why are there no restrictions on BSs in BrP? (ThQ1)

6.3.2 Explaining the distribution and interpretation of BSs in BrP (ThQ2)

6.3.3 Linking ThQ1 and ThQ2

6.4 Concluding remarks

Bibliography

Corpora and other linguistic data sources and tools

References

Author index

Subject index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references and indexes.

Description based on print version record.

ISBN:

9789027264657