Bare coordination: a new case for cross-linguistic availability of covert type-shifting

Bare coordination: a new case for cross-linguistic

availability of covert type-shifting

Recoordinating bare coordination

Bert Le Bruyn & Henriëtte de Swart

3

Spoon was

The phenomenon of bare coordination

I saw cats dogsand I saw

Context

We had to set the table for the queen. We arranged one crystal goblet, one silver spoon, two antique gold forks and two platinum knives.

Forks and knives were equally dirty

indefinite interpretation

definite interpretation

Plurals

Singulars

was set to the right of the plate* set to the right of the plate*Goblet spoon wereand only definite interpretation

Heycock & Zamparelli (2003)

??? There were goblet and spoon on the table.

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coordinatednot coordinated

bare singulars

bare plurals

indefinite definite indefinite definite

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/8/80/Symbol_OK.svg




http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/P_no_red.svg




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Why is it bare singulars cannot occur bare whereas coordinated bare singulars can ?

When and why do bare coordinated nouns get a definite reading?

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• New facts• Previous analyses• Our analysis in a nutshell• Our analysis in OT• The semantics of and

Roadmap

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Roadmap

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New facts


bare singulars

bare plurals











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New facts: English

We had to set the table for the queen. We arranged one crystal goblet, one silver spoon, two antique gold forks and two platinum knives. Goblet and spoon were set on the right of the plate.(Heycock & Zamparelli 2003)

We had to set the table for the queen. We arranged one crystal goblet, one silver spoon, two antique gold forks and two platinum knives. Forks and knives were equally dirty. (Heycock & Zamparelli 2003)

He had pad and pencil to picture the whole event.

There were forks and knives on the table.(Heycock & Zamparelli 2003)

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Recap

Basic dataCoordination lifts all semantic constraints on the absence of articles.

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Can you replicate the data for your language?

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• New facts• Previous analyses• Our analysis in a nutshell• Our analysis in OT• The semantics of and• Surprise Bonus

Roadmap

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Roadmap

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Roodenburg (2004)

The analysis in a nutshell

Premise 1: Bare Coordinated NPs are plural.

Conclusion: Bare coordinated NPs are allowed in argument position.

Premise 2: Bare Plural NPs are allowed in argument position.

> Cat and dog were fighting.

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Roodenburg (2004)


As for the definite readings: they’re akin to functional readings of bare plurals (Condoravdi 1994)

> Ghosts haunted the campus. Students were aware of the danger.

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Roodenburg (2004)

Problem

Roodenburg predicts bare coordination always to behave on a par with bare plural.

> Ghosts haunted the campus and we had to warn the students, the faculty and the rest of the staff. ??It turned out though that students were already aware of the danger. > Ghosts haunted the campus and we had to warn the students, the faculty and the rest of the staff. It turned out though that students and faculty were already aware of the danger.

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Focus on deriving the definite reading of bare coordinated nominals.

Proposal: allow for N-to-D raising of the coordinated phrase.

DP

CoordP

NP1 and NP2

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Roadmap

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Roadmap

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Our analysis in a nutshell


bare singulars

bare plurals


> Classic blocking account:

indefinite bare singulars are blocked bydefinite bare singulars are blocked bydefinite bare plurals are blocked by the definite plural article

the definite singular articlethe indefinite singular article









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bare singulars

bare plurals


> Not so classic blocking account:

A, thesing and theplural don’t apply at the coordination level.As a consequence they cannot be taken to block indefinite or definite readings of coordinated bare nominals.









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A, thesing and theplural don’t apply at the coordination level.

>Indirect evidence

un homme et une femme (amale man and afemale woman) 1760000

un homme et femme (amale man and woman) 696

une femme et une fille (afemale woman and afemale girl) 885

une femme et fille (afemale woman and girl) 15

les hommes et les femmes (the men and the women) 3030000

les hommes et femmes (the men and women) 361000yahoo.fr 11/11/2010

Generalization:

Strong preference for repetition of the determiner; Suggests that the repetition of the determiner is the default; Suggests that the cases in which there is no repetition involve elided Ds.

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A, thesing and theplural don’t apply at the coordination level.

>Direct evidence

Dog and cat were fighting. > bare coordination can trigger plural agreement

> there is a level of syntactic representation at which CoordPs have to have plurality specified (see also de Vries 1992)

> If Ds were to apply to CoordPs we would predict CoordPs to be able to take a plural article, even if both conjuncts are singular.

> This is however not the case.

*Dog and cat was fighting.

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les hommes et les femmes the men and the women 3030000

les hommes et femmes the men and women 361000

les homme et femme the man and woman 99

les hommes et les garçons the men and the boys 2570

les hommes et garçons the men and boys 175

les homme et garçon the man and boy 1

les femmes et les filles the women and the girls 164000

les femmes et filles the women and girls 16000

les femme et fille the woman and girl 18

yahoo.fr 11/11/2010

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Recap


Basic insightDeterminers don’t apply at the coordination level.

ImplementationClassic blocking ...

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Roadmap

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Roadmap

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From ‘informal’ blocking to OTDP

NumP

CoordP

AND

NumP

NP

N

NumP

NP

N

DP DP

N-domain

CoordP-domain

N.B. Coordination can apply at the DP, NumP or NP-level.

N N

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From ‘informal’ blocking to OT

a. FdrMark discourse referents

b. FplMark reference to a group

For each type of functional projection we have a faithfulness constraint.

DP

NumP

c. FdefMark definiteness

We add an extra one for D projections.

DP

For the two domains we add a markedness constraint.

d. *FunctNDon’t mark functional structure in the N-domain

e. *FunctCoordPDon’t mark functional structure in the CoordP-domain.

N-dom

CoordP-dom

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a. FdrMark discourse referents

b. FplMark reference to a group

For French and English the following ranking holds:

c. FdefMark definiteness

e. *FunctCoordPDon’t mark functional structure in the CoordP-domain.

d. *FunctNDon’t mark functional structure in the N-domain.

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Depending on the level at which coordination applies the ranking derives the following possibilities:

the cats and the dogsDP level coordination

cats and dogsNumP level coordination

cat and dogNP level coordination

Testable illegal structures:

I saw *(a) cat.Bare singular arguments

several cat and dogDs applying at CoordP

Untestable (?) illegal structures:

I saw cat and dogs (?)(meaning I saw cats and dogs)

Number at CoordP

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Recap



ImplementationClassic blocking ... and its formalization in OT.

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Roadmap

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Roadmap

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The semantics of coordination

We assume the basic semantics of coordination at the level of sets is that of set intersection.

X Y

Bare coordination never has this basic semantics.

X and Y

> Bride and groom were extremely happy.

There was an extremely happy person who was both bride and groom.

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Two types of coordination:

> coordination with ‘joint’ readings

> coordination with ‘split’ readings

Bare coordination always concerns coordination with ‘split’ readings.

Our challenge will be to derive split readings without giving up the basic intuition of coordination being an instance of set intersection.

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How to go about this?

> Enrichment of and

> First enrichment: turn and into a ‘matchmaker’

PQ ( )PQ x E E x( ) ( )

> Based on a proposal by Yoad Winter (p.c.)

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bride groom

( , )

( , )

( , )

( , )

( , )

( , )

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( , )

( , )

( , )

( , )

( , )

QxE ExP

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> Enrichment of and

> First enrichment: turn and into a ‘matchmaker’

PQ ( )PQ x E E x( ) ( )

> Second enrichment: add a function that turns (singular) couples into plural individuals.

> Based on a proposal by Yoad Winter (p.c.)

PQ ( )PQ x E E x( ) ( )RtoI

Relations to Individuals

RtoI(R) = {xy : R(x,y)}

How to go about this?

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bride and groom

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The semantics of coordinationbride and groom

> Bride and groom were extremely happy.

> the unique plural individual consisting of a bride and groom was extremely happy

> extremely_happy( )

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Recap



ImplementationClassic blocking ... and its formalization in OT.

The semantics of bare coordinationEnriched version of an intersective semantics.

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Roadmap

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Roadmap

shortcut to conclusion

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Why cat and dog is ‘definite’ by default


bare singulars

bare plurals



bare singulars

bare plurals





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Cat and dog were fighting.

> Implicature of uniqueness

If there had been more cats and dogs, we could have told you so.

Given that we did not tell you, you can assume that there was only one cat and one dog.

> The effect of this implicature is almost indistinguishable from the contribution of the definite article.

Even though our semantic account predicts both a definite and an indefinite reading, pragmatically the indefinite reading is so close to the definite reading that one gets the impression there’s only a definite reading.


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Predictions

... coordinated bare plurals should not have any preference for definite readings.

... the preference for definite interpretations should be cancelable.

Given that the implicature depends on the nouns being singular...

Given that we assume the default definite interpretation is an implicature...

> This is arguably what we find (see Heycock & Zamparelli).

> This is what we have demonstrated for existential contexts.


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More predictions

... the definiteness effect should not only be found for coordinated nouns but also for uncoordinated singular nouns in languages that have a singular/plural distinction but no articles

Given that the implicature arises because of the competition between bare singulars and plurals...

> Languages like Hindi and Russian have indeed been argued to only allow for definite readings for bare singulars, despite their acceptability in existential environments (see Dayal 2004).


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More predictions

... the definiteness effect should not only be found for coordinated nouns but also for uncoordinated singular nouns in languages that have a singular/plural distinction but no articles

... uncoordinated plural nouns in these languages should not show any preference for definite readings


> Languages like Hindi and Russian have indeed been argued to only allow for definite readings for bare singulars, despite their acceptability in existential environments (see Dayal 2004, Geist 2010).

> Uncoordinated bare plurals in Hindi and Russian have indeed been argued to allow both definite and indefinite readings (see Dayal 2004).


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One more prediction

... there should be no definiteness effect in Chinese comparable to the one in Hindi and Russian


> Bare nominals in Chinese have indeed been argued to freely allow both for a definite and an indefinite reading (see Yang 2001).

N.B.

This implicature account can be formulated both under the analysis of the singular/plural contrast of Farkas & de Swart (2010) and the one in the tradition of Krifka (1989) (see a.o. Sauerland et al. 2005).


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Roadmap

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Why is it bare singulars cannot occur bare whereas coordinated bare singulars can ?

When and why do bare coordinated nouns get a definite reading?

> Articles don’t apply at the coordination level

> No blocking of bare coordinated forms

> Semantically, definite/indefinite readings are available through type-shifting > Pragmatically, bare singulars prefer ‘definite’ readings

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Current work

How to account for cases like the following:

We hinted at a covert D in front of woman but this has been challenged in the literature.

this man and woman

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References

Dayal, 2004, ‘Number marking and (in)definiteness in kind terms’, Linguistics and Philosophy 27, 393-450.

Farkas & de Swart, 2010, “The semantics and pragmatics of plurals”, Semantics and Pragmatics 3.

Geist, 2010, “Indefinite NPs without indefinite articles”, presentation at SUB 2010.

Heycock & Zamparelli, 2003, “Coordinated bare definites”, Linguistic Inquiry 34, 443-469.

Heycock & Zamparelli, 2005, “Friends and colleagues”, Natural Language Semantics 13, 201-270.

Krifka, 1989, “Nominal reference, temporal constitution and quantification in event semantics”, in: Bartsch, van Benthem & van Emde Boas (eds.), Semantics and contextual expression, Foris.

Roodenburg, 2004, Pour une approche scalaire de la déficience nominale, Ph.D. Dissertation, Universiteit van Amsterdam.

Sauerland, Anderssen & Yatsushiro, 2005, “The plural is semantically unmarked”, in: Kepser & Reis (eds.), Linguistic evidence, de Gruyter.

Yang, 2001, Common nouns, classifiers, and quantification in Chinese, Ph.D. Dissertation, Rutgers University.

Zwarts, 2009, Bare constructions in Dutch, Ms., Utrecht University.

Writing abstracts

How semanticists derive narrow scope

58

Carlson

Come1Come2Not

x[come(x)]ykx[R(x,yk)&come(x)]P<e,t>-P<e,t> / St-St shorthand!

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Shorthand convention

In principle negation is of type <t,t>.

The <<e,t>,<e,t>> variant can be obtained as follow:

come(k)

S<e,t> -S come(k)

-come(k)

x-come(x)

function application

lambda abstraction

In these slides, the notation x(-come(x)) obtained through negation of the type <<e,t>,<e,t>> is shorthand for the above process. back

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Carlson

Come1Come2NotSome childrenChildren

Some children didn’t come.

x[come(x)]ykx[R(x,yk)&come(x)]P<e,t>-P<e,t> / St-St P<e,t>x[children(x)&P<e,t>(x)]childrenk

P<e,t>x[children(x)&P<e,t>(x)]<<e,t>,t>

x[come(x)]<e,t>

P<e,t>-P<e,t> / St-St

<<e,t>,<e,t>> <t,t>

(1) x[come(x)]P<e,t>x[children(x)&P<e,t>(x)]x[children(x)&come(x)]St-St -

(2) P<e,t>-P<e,t> x[come(x)] x[-come(x)]P<e,t>x[children(x)&P<e,t>(x)]x[children(x)&-come(x)]

shorthand!

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Chierchia

Come1NotSome childrenChildren

Children didn’t come.

e

x[come(x)]childrenk

x[come(x)]P<e,t>-P<e,t> / St-St P<e,t>x[children(x)&P<e,t>(x)]childrenk

<e,t>

x[come(x)] childrenkcome(childrenk)St-St-come(childrenk)

=-(come(childrenk))=-(x[R(x,childrenk)&come(x)])=-x[R(x,childrenk)&come(x)]

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Van Geenhoven



<e,t>

x[come(x)]x[children(x)]

x[come(x)]P<e,t>-P<e,t> / St-St P<e,t>x[children(x)&P<e,t>(x)]x[children(x)]

<e,t>


x[come(x)]P<e,t>-P<e,t>x[-come(x)] x[children(x)]

= P-x[come(x)&P(x)] x[children(x)]

= -x[come(x)&children(x)]

?

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Carlson

Come1Come2NotSome childrenChildren


<<e,t>,t>

x[come(x)]<e,t>

P<e,t>-P<e,t> / St-St

<<e,t>,<e,t>> <t,t>

(1)(2)

childrenk

x[come(x)]ykx[R(x,yk)&come(x)]P<e,t>-P<e,t> / St-St P<e,t>x[children(x)&P<e,t>(x)]childrenk

ykx[R(x,yk)&come(x)]<e,t>

x[come(x)]P<e,t>-P<e,t>

(3)(4)

P<e,t>-P<e,t> ykx[R(x,yk)&come(x)]

x[-come(x)]

yk - x[R(x,yk)&come(x)]

childrenk

childrenk

-come(childrenk)

-x[R(x,childrenk)&come(x)]

x[come(x)]

ykx[R(x,yk)&come(x)]

childrenk

childrenk

come(childrenk)

x[R(x,childrenk)&come(x)]

St-St

St-St

-come(childrenk)

-x[R(x,childrenk)&come(x)]

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Krifka



<e,t>


x[come(x)]P<e,t>-P<e,t> / St-St P<e,t>x[children(x)&P<e,t>(x)]x[children(x)]

<e,t>


x[come(x)]P<e,t>-P<e,t>x[-come(x)] x[children(x)]

= -come(x[children(x)])

= -(come(x[children(x)]))= -x[children(x)&come(x)]

not allowed in standard Montague grammar!!!

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Conclusion

> Narrow scope is always accounted for by local type-shifting and doesn’t presuppose that bare nominals always refer to kinds.

Carlson builds type-shifting into predicates.

Van Geenhoven applies local type-shifting to predicates.

Krifka applies local type-shifting to nouns.

Chierchia applies local type-shifting to nouns with a small detour via kinds.

> General constraint on covert type-shifting: apply it as locally as possible.

The empirical validity of a locality constraint on type-

shifting

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Do bare nouns take wide scope?

YES!NO!

Min QueThe rest of the world

If they do, there is no reason to assume a locality constraint on type-shifting...

The answer...

English (Carlson), Spanish (Espinal and McNally 2010 and references therein), Hungarian (Farkas and de Swart 2003), Russian (Geist 2010), Albanian (Kalluli 2001), Hebrew (Doron 2003), Hindi (Dayal 2003, 2004), Mandarin Chinese (Yang 2001, Rullmann & You 2006), Indonesian (Chung 2000, Sato 2008), Javanese (Sato 2008), Turkish (Bliss 2003), Brazilian Portuguese (Schmitt & Munn 1999)

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How to go about testing scope?

> A first attempt

Every boy read a book.

a. There is a book that every boy read.

b. Every boy is such that he read a book.

Why is this not a good format for test items?

wide

narrow

Because every situation that makes a. true will also make b. true.

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How to go about testing scope?

> A better attempt

John didn’t read a (single) book.

a. There is a book that John didn’t read.

b. John read no book.

Why is this a better format for test items?

wide

narrow

Because a. can be true in situations in which b. is not true.

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A small classroom experimentDeze diagnose heeft ons doen inzien waarom hij sommige dwangideeën heeft, zoals altijd de eerste willen zijn (op de trap, in bad, aan tafel...) of woedebuien (omdat hij dingen niet begrijpt) of irrationele angsten (zoals steeds denken dat er bijen rond zoemen, terwijl het soms maar een grasmaaier is). Hoe ouder hij wordt, hij is nu bijna acht jaar, hoe duidelijker het autisme wordt.

Ik vind het absoluut niet leuk dat hij moet huilen vanwege mij. En dat is wel een aantal keren op een dag, omdat hij dingen niet mag of dat hij juist iets moet (naar bed gaan bijvoorbeeld). Ik weet dat het er bij hoort, maar leuk is anders. Nu kan ik er weer even tegen.

omdat hij dingen niet begrijpt

because he things not understand

omdat hij dingen niet mag

because he things not may

Does this necessarily mean that he doesn’t understand anything?

Does this necessarily mean that he’s not allowed to do anything?

The set-up of the English experiment

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Setting-up the bare nominal test items

A.B.

A.B.

This last sentence is truth-conditionally only compatible with a wide scope reading of colleagues.

Task: judge the naturalness of the last utterance with respect to the rest of the dialogue on a scale from 0 to 5.

Rationale: subjects should not accept a continuation in which Flynn contradicts himself.

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Further design of the experiment

An experiment that would only look at the acceptability of bare nominal items would be meaningless.

Why?Because we wouldn’t know what the numbers meant.

Our baseline

Given that we were testing whether bare nominals could scope above negation, we needed an item that could not.

> Negative Polarity Items

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An example of an NPI test item

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Experiments also need control items and fillers.

Why?

Control items are used to check whether people are actually sensitive to the phenomenon one is testing.

Our control items > Singular indefinites

Filler items are used to try to distract subjects in such a way that they don’t discover what the experiment is really about.

Our fillers > See example

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An example of a singular indefinite

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Examples of filler items

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> Overview of the number of items:

2 NPI items2 Singular indefinite items3 Bare plural items5 Fillers

> Participants and procedure:

Questionnaire was put online. Included a number of questions that would allow us to weed out non-native speakers. Total number of relevant questionnaires: 63.

Results of the English experiment

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Results: Means and SD

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Results: Means and SD

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Results: statistics

There’s a (significant) difference between the NPI items and the BP items.

There’s a (significant) difference between the BP items and the SI items.

There’s a (significant) difference between BP1 and BP2. /

Paired t-tests

Conclusion of the English experiment

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Do bare nouns take wide scope?

There is ground to assume that bare nouns can take wide scope.

> This means that the general narrow scope behaviour cannot be derived solely by forcing covert type-shifting to apply locally.

> Covert type-shifting turns out to be less constrained than might seem at first sight.

Questions/discussion

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General comment

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Content objection 1

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Content objection 2

For those interested in contributing to the discussion

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An alternative clever way of testing

> Ionin 2010

There is a reviewer that is such that every teenager watched every movie he recommended.Every teenager is such that he watched every movie that was recommended by a reviewer.

> Remaining problem: Which item could serve as a baseline?

A syntactic interludium

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Boskovic (2005)

He saw expensive cars.

*Expensive he saw cars. (English)

Expensive he saw cars. (Serbo-Croatian)

Some preliminary facts

93

Boskovic (2005)

You like friends of Peter.

[Who] do you like friends of. (Eng)

[Who] do you like friends of. (SC)

Some preliminary facts

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Boskovic (2005)

Serbo-Croatian doesn’t have covert Ds whereas English does.

How does this explain the facts?

Why is this relevant for us?

the generalization

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Boskovic (2005)

PIC

Phase Impenetrability Condition:

“only the Spec of a phase is accessible for movement outside the phase”

explaining the facts

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Boskovic (2005)

XP

Spec X’

X XP

Spec X’

X XP

Spec X’

X Comp

DP

XP

Spec X’

X NP

Spec X’

X

Spec X’

X Comp

DP

XP


NP

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Boskovic (2005)

Anti-Locality hypothesis

“movement shouldn’t be too short, it should at least cross a full phrasal boundary”


98

Boskovic (2005)

DP

Spec D’

D NP

Adjunct NP


N Compl

NP

DP

99

Boskovic (2005)



DP

Spec D’

NP

expensive NP

cars Compl

expensive NP

cars Compl

En

gli

sh

Ser

bo

-Cro

atia

n

NP

DP

Expensive he saw cars.

1. PIC

2. Anti-Loc

1. PIC

2. Anti-LocXP

NP

( )

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Boskovic (2005)



Spec D’

friends of John friends of John

En

gli

sh

Ser

bo

-Cro

atia

nNP

DP

Who do you like friends of.

1. PIC

2. Anti-Loc

1. PIC

2. Anti-LocXP

NP

( )

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Boskovic (2005)

If Boskovic is right there is no a priori reason for arguments to have a D projection.

This goes against Longobardi who assumes argumenthood requires the presence of a (covert or overt) D.

More in line with a type-shifting approach that does more in the semantics and less in the syntax.

relevance

102

Boskovic (2005)

If you’re interested in exploring this line further, you can visit Boskovic’s website (download section). He extends the ideas developed above to a great number of languages and a great deal of different constructions.

http://web2.uconn.edu/boskovic/

remark

103

Borer (2005)

Wants to pursue an alternative to type-shifting.

(i) I bought cookies.(ii) John bought ?(a) cookie.

both –s and a are countability markers; without them cookie would get a mass reading

(iii) Wo mai le quqi (Mandarin) I buy LE cookie(iv) Wo mai le yi ge quqi (Mandarin) I buy LE one CL cookie

104

Borer (2005)

syntax of a (count) indefinite on its existential reading:

[DPe [#Pa e [CLa e [NPgirl]]]]

Indefinites like a in English do double duty: they function as classifiers and counters.

They don’t necessarily do triple duty though: the existential force associated with them on their existential reading comes from existential closure over the variables in the C-command domain of the verb.

No need for type-shifting!

the enterprise

105

Borer (2005)

If you want to explore this line of thinking further, read Borer (2005) and make sure to complement it with Krifka (2004).

In name only ‘Bare NPs: Kind-referring, Indefinites, Both or Neither?’

Documents

Bare coordination: a new case for cross-linguistic availability of covert type-shifting