Article and Bare predication in English and Dutch: A semantic ...

Article and Bare predication in English and Dutch: A semantic/pragmatic approach
Bert Le Bruyn
Utrecht Institute of Linguistics
b.s.w.lebruyn@uu.nl
1. Introduction | In this paper I propose an analysis for singular nominal predication with and
without indefinite article in English and Dutch (henceforth Article and Bare predication). My main
claim is that A-predication involves non-uniqueness whereas B-predication is neutral with respect
to uniqueness. In 2. I make this precise, in 3. and 4. I present the application to English and Dutch
and in 5. I compare my proposal to those in the recent literature, zooming in on its assets and limits.
2. Non-Uniqueness and predicates (see also figure 1) | In argument position there is a binary
opposition def.art.↔indef.art. that is generally analyzed in terms of familiarity and/or uniqueness,
the indefinite article being the unmarked member of the pair (Farkas 2002). In predicate position
two things change. The first is that familiarity no longer plays a role (under the assumption that
indefinite predicate nominals in general don’t introduce discourse referents). The second is that –
due to the availability of bare nominals – the binary uniqueness opposition is turned into a ternary
one; (i) the definite article still marks uniqueness but –
assuming Horn’s division of pragmatic labour – (ii) the
indefinite article marks non-uniqueness whereas (iii) the bare
nominal is the neutral member of the triplet. The resulting
truth-conditional contributions of the definite and the
indefinite article in predicate position are given in (1) and (2):
(1) λPλx(P(x)&¬∃y(x≠y&P(y))) (2) λPλx(P(x)&∃y(x≠y&P(y))) figure 1
3. Application to English
Facts | English is known not to allow for B-predication except with a small class of nouns (see
Huddleston & Pullum 2002):
(3) * John is teacher. (4) Mary is president/CEO/chairwoman.
These nouns can be characterized as those that refer to singletons independently of any context.
More specifically (i) they imply reference to a subdomain of the universe (for the nouns in (4) a
country, company or board) and (ii) refer to a singleton within that subdomain.
Analysis | To account for these facts the only assumption that has to be added to my general claim
is that English has to encode the uniqueness-non-uniqueness distinction. Only those nouns that refer
uniquely or non-uniquely will then be allowed to occur bare. The former type is illustrated in (4). I
know of no nouns of the latter type.
4. Application to Dutch
Preliminary note | Given that a lot of the application to Dutch builds on de Swart, Winter & Zwarts
(2007) (henceforth SWZ) I indicate where I differ from them throughout this section.
Facts | In Dutch nouns fall into one of two classes: those that generally occur with A-predication
and those that generally occur with B-predication, henceforth A- and B-nouns (see SWZ):
(5) White Fang is een wolf. (6) Sly is slager.
WF is a wolf Sly is butcher
SWZ characterize B-nouns as referring to roles in society (professions in particular: butcher,
plumber, …) and A-nouns as referring to kinds. They furthermore point out that B-nouns can
appear with A-predication but then receive a ‘kind’ interpretation. (7) e.g. conveys that Sly has the
stereotypical properties of a butcher without necessarily being one. It can be used if Sly happens to
be a violent boxer but not a professional butcher whereas this interpretation is out for (6).
(7) Sly is een slager.
Sly is a butcher
A fact that is not reported by SWZ is that A-nouns can also appear with B-predication and then
receive a ‘role’ interpretation (see Ebeling 2006). (8) e.g. is attested in the context of a play/game in
which Marie performs the role of rat (e.g. in the game rats and ravens).
(8) Marie is rat.
Marie is rat

Analysis
Types, shifts and coercion operators (see also figure 2) | I follow SWZ in assuming that A- and
B-nouns are of type e and are sortally different: A-nouns are of the type of kinds whereas B-nouns
are of the (new) type of capacities. I furthermore assume two type-shifters
and two coercion operators (CAP, REL and kind are taken over from SWZ,
cap is an addition of mine):
CAP: applies to a capacity and returns the set of individuals performing it
REL: applies to a kind and returns the set of individuals belonging to it
cap: applies to a kind and returns the corresponding capacity
kind: applies to a capacity and returns the corresponding kind
To occur in predicate position kinds and capacities have to shift from type e
to type by their designated type-shift (REL, CAP). I also foresee
possible coercion from capacities to kinds (through kind) and vice versa (through cap). figure 2
The realization of REL and non-uniqueness | The crucial difference between kinds and capacities
is that the former are regularities occurring in nature, whereas the latter are artificial roles created
by society. One way of capturing this semantically is to impose on kinds a minimal constraint of
having at least two instantiations across possible worlds (Chierchia 1998). When shifted to type
this would mean the following necessarily applies to sets derived from kinds but not to sets
derived from capacities:
(9) λwλPλx(P(w)(x)&∃w’∃y(P(w’)(y)))
The fact that (9) is extremely close to the semantics of the indefinite article I proposed in (2)
suggests that there is a close link between the indefinite article and REL. To formalize this I propose
the indefinite article is the realization of REL in predicate position.
Deriving the facts | With the previously introduced elements in place and the assumption that
covert shifts are only allowed when there is no overt alternative (Chierchia’s Blocking Principle) we
can derive the facts. A-predication can only be the result of REL, be it directly for A-nouns (cf.(5))
or via kind coercion (cf. (7)) and can be seen as kind-membership predication. B-predication can
only be the result of CAP, be it directly for B-nouns (cf. (6)) or via cap coercion (cf. (8)) and can be
seen as capacity-membership predication.
Note that SWZ propose that the indefinite article (and NumPs in general) merely select kinds. This
would suffice to account for the interpretations of (5)-(7) but not for the ‘role’-reading of (8): on a
kind-selection analysis there is no reason to assume rat in (8) underwent CAP and not REL.
5. Assets and limits | 3 Assets (i) The semantics / pragmatics I propose for the indefinite article in
predicate position doesn’t come out of the blue but is linked to its semantics / pragmatics in
argument position (unlike Munn & Schmitt 2005, Roy 2006, Déprez 2005, Matushansky & Spector
2005). (ii) The application to Dutch is equipped to account for both kind-predication involving
capacities and capacity-predication involving kinds (unlike Matushansky & Spector 2005, SWZ and
Zamparelli 2008). (iii) The analysis foresees in a common core for English and Dutch singular
nominal predication (unlike all previously mentioned analyses + Dobrovie-Sorin & Beyssade 2005,
Marí & Martin 2008). 3 Limits. (i) I silently assume bare nominal predication is different from
adjectival predication but leave the spelling out of the difference for future work (see Kupferman
1991 for discussion). (ii) The analysis I propose only holds for cases where both bare and non-bare
nouns are acceptable. This means I have nothing to say about (a) (syntactically) modified nouns
(Hij is *(een) goede ingenieur ‘He is a good engineer’), (b) presentational contexts (Het is *(een)
advocaat ‘It is a lawyer’), and (c) the realization of REL in argument position. (iii) The analysis
makes no syntactic predictions beyond those that follow from a strict wysiwyg syntax.
References | Beyssade & Dobrovie-Sorin (2005). Salt XV. | Chierchia (1998). NLS 6. | de Swart, Winter & Zwarts (2007). ‘Bare
nominals and reference to capacities’. NLLT 25. | Déprez (2005). Morphological number, semantic number and bare nouns. Lingua
115. | Ebeling (2006). Semiotaxis. | Farkas (2002). ‘Specificity Distinctions’. Journal of Semantics 19. | Huddleston & Pullum (2002).
The Cambridge Grammar of the English Language. | Kupferman (1991). Langages 101. | Marí & Martin (2008) ‘Bare and indefinite
NPs in predicative position in French’, Working Papers of the SFB732. | Matushansky & Spector (2005). SuB9. | Munn & Schmitt
(2005). ‘Number and indefinites’. Lingua 115. | Roy (2006). Ph.D. thesis. | Zamparelli (2008). ‘Bare predicate nominals in Romance
languages’, in: Høeg Müller & Klinge, Essays on nominal determination, John Benjamins.