Bare plurals and indefinite determiners
Spanish unos
CHALLENGE 1
Facts
1
Spanish unos doesn’t allow for proportional readings.
?Unos estudiantes son abogados.
unos
students
are lawyers
Intended: ‘Some students are lawyers.’
?UNOS estudiantes son abogados.
UNOS
students
are lawyers
Intended: ‘Some students are lawyers.’
1
I take unos...otros to be a fixed expression (see also Gutiérrez-Rexach 2001 and Martí 2007).
Previous analyses
Why is it that unos behaves in this way ?
What is it that makes unos special compared to other determiners ?
Previous analyses
Why is it that unos behaves in this way ?
What is it that makes unos special compared to other determiners ?
Martí 2007
Syntactic / semantic decomposition of indefinites
- number
- existential quantification
- positive polarity
- partitivity implicature
unos
algunos
Claim:
Alg- adds the partitivity implicature. Unos lacks alg- and
therefore does not give rise to partitive readings.
Previous analyses
Why is it that unos behaves in this way ?
What is it that makes unos special compared to other determiners ?
Martí 2007
Question that remains:
Why is unos the only determiner that needs alg- to get a
partitive reading ?
ok
Dos estudiantes son abogados.
*
Algodos estudiantes son abogados.
-> Back to where we were...
Previous analyses
Why is it that unos behaves in this way ?
What is it that makes unos special compared to other determiners ?
My analysis
Why is it that unos behaves in this way ?
What is it that makes unos special compared to other determiners ?
Unos is the default plural indefinite determiner in Spanish.
Unos is the indefinite plural article in Spanish.
-> in as far as indefinite articles are grammaticalized
markers of argumenthood they are expected not to give rise
to derived interpretations (such as the partitive one)
Parallel with the singular indefinite article:
? A student is a lawyer.
Argumentation
-> in as far as indefinite articles are grammaticalized
markers of argumenthood they are expected not to give
rise to derived interpretations (such as the partitive one)
Can we show that unos underwent a grammaticalization process
comparable to that of an indefinite article ?
-> what does the grammaticalization process of an indefinite article
look like ?
-> what predictions does this make for unos ?
-> are these predictions borne out ?
Argumentation
1. The indefinite article loses part of its semantic content
1
One student came to see me.
-> partitive reading possible
A student came to see me.
-> partitive reading impossible
Prediction: unos did allow for partitive readings in Early Spanish.
1
plausible but not checked
Argumentation
Prediction: unos did allow for partitive readings in Early Spanish.
Following Gutiérrez-Rexach (2001) I assume non-partitive Ds
cannot appear in the upstairs D position of (standard) partitives.
Present day Spanish:
??? He visto a unos de los familiares de Pedro.
have seen a some of the relatives of Pedro
Intended: ‘I saw some of Pedro’s relatives.’
Early Spanish:
E
ellas yendo se, fueron unos de los guardadores a la ciudat.
And they going
went unos of the guards
to the city
‘And while they were going, some of the guards went to the city.’
< manuscrito escurialense I.I.6. (between 1254 and 1270)
Argumentation
2. The indefinite article, in the beginning of its grammaticalization
process, is used to mark the introduction of salient discourse
referents (cf. Givón 1981, Stark 2002, Blazer 1979).
Corpus study: El Cid (late 12th early 13th century)
-> look at bare singulars
verse 1-500 (approx. 3900 words)
# bare singulars: approx. 150
# bare singular objects: approx. 31
Argumentation
objects in epitetha
5
‘fixed’ expressions
dar salto ‘to attack’
2
still attested
aver miedo ‘to be scared’
1
still attested
aver menester ‘to need’
aver gracia ‘to have grace’
1
1
still attested
still attested
meter mano ‘to touch/grab’
1
still attested
mass objects
3
Argumentation
object of verb in subjuntivo
3
object of verb in future
4
object of verb in imperative
3
object of infinitive following ‘want to’
2
object in generalization
1
 discourse referents
do not correspond to
something in reality
(and could thus be
said to be less salient)
Prediction: bare plurals, at some moment in time, could only be
used to introduce discourse referents that do not correspond to
something in reality.
Argumentation
Prediction: bare plurals, at some moment in time, could only be
used to introduce discourse referents that do not correspond to
something in reality.
Corpus study: El Cid
-> look at bare plurals
verse 1-500 (approx. 3900 words)
# bare plurals: approx. 54
# bare plural objects: approx. 6
?
Argumentation
3. Important gain in frequency of the indefinite article
El Cid
El Quijote
late 12th early 13th century
1605
verse 1-500 (approx. 3900 words)
Part I, CH 2 (approx. 2200 words)
approx. 650 NPs
approx. 420 NPs
% bare singulars
23
% indefinite singular 3
% bare singulars
14
% indefinite singular 5
Argumentation
un
Prediction: important gain in frequency for unos.
Corpus del Español, Mark Davies
Argumentation
Prediction: important gain in frequency for unos.
El Cid
El Quijote
late 12th early 13th century
1605
verse 1-500 (approx. 3900 words)
Part I, CH 2 (approx. 2200 words)
approx. 650 NPs
approx. 420 NPs
% bare plurals
8
% bare plurals
4
% indefinite plural
0
% indefinite plural
1
Argumentation
Prediction: important gain in frequency for unos.
unos
Summary
Prediction: unos did allow for partitive readings in Early Spanish.
Prediction: important gain in frequency for unos.
+
unos is parallel to the indefinite article in not allowing partitive
readings
un
unos
+
+
a quick browse through attested examples of unos + ‘of’ +
‘the’ seems to indicate that unos lost its partitive potential
around the same time.
Unos seems to function as a plural indefinite article.
Summary
Prediction: bare plurals, at some moment in time, could only be
used to introduce discourse referents that do not correspond to
something in reality.
+
Spanish allows for bare plurals...
Unos doesn’t seem to be the perfect match of the
singular indefinite article.
?
CHALLENGE 2
Facts + previous analysis
Al
principio, Juan quería restaurar muebles,
At_the beginning
Juan
wanted
restore
pieces_of_furniture
pero terminó vendiéndolos.
but
ended_up selling_them
‘In the beginning, Juan wanted to restore pieces of furniture, but
he ended up selling them.’
Claim by Laca (1996, 1999): bare plurals do not introduce
standard discourse referents, they refer to kinds.
More facts
En la fabricación hubo
in
the production
problemas técnicos
there_were problems
technical
uno de ellos era la construcción de la torre.
one
of
them
was the construction
of
the tower
‘In the production there were technical problems, one of them
was the construction of the tower.’
¿contra ? Laca
My analysis
- bare plurals introduce discourse referents
- accommodation mechanism used by de Swart & Farkas (2003)
-> bare plurals are not the standard choice to introduce
discourse referents
-> they are only used to introduce discourse referents
that are not likely to be picked in later discourse
If this analysis makes sense it would:
-> account for Laca’s intuition
-> account for the corpus facts
-> leave for unos the role of indefinite plural article
(being the standard default det to introduce DRs)
What are the predictions ?
My analysis
What are the predictions ?
1. Unos being the marked option will:
- be dispreferred to introduce discourse referents that we know
are less likely to be picked up in later discourse
object of verb in subjuntivo
object of verb in future
cf. supra
object of verb in imperative
object of infinitive following ‘want to’
object in generalization
- cannot introduce discourse referents that we know cannot be
picked up in later discourse
object in scope of negation (unos is a PPI)
My analysis
What are the predictions ?
2. Bare plurals only allowing for the introduction of non-salient
discourse referents:
-> will be disallowed in ‘salient’ environments
By assumption the preverbal subject position is such
environment.
* Políticos han ocupado el palacio.
Politicians have occupied the palace.
The bigger picture
The bare plural in Spanish is used to introduce discourse
referents that are not likely to be picked up.
Unos functions as the default determiner that is used to introduce
plural discourse referents that are likely to be picked up...
... This boils down to saying that unos is the plural indefinite
article.
The difference between the singular and the plural indefinite
article...
... resides in the fact that the bare singular doesn’t allow for
accommodation and does not constitute a competitor for the
singular indefinite article.
Loose ends
The exact grammaticalization process of unos needs further
study.
Unos is not only famous for its lack of partitive readings but also
for its group readings. How does this connect to my analysis ?
A tentative OT analysis
Constraints
*ART: don’t use articles
FSAL: mark salience
Qx(Salient(x)&P(x)&Q(x))
 noun
unos noun

FSAL
*
*ART
*
Qx(P(x)&Q(x))
 noun
unos noun

*
A brief look at des
French des
DP
D
The meaning of des


PL
NumP
Num
PP
P
de
des
DP
D
les
NP
hommes
Default way to proceed:
accommodation (cf. de Swart & Farkas 2003)
Coercion way:
move further to D.
-> wide-scope readings and partitive readings
French des
-> being standardly <e,t> it is equivalent to a bare plural
-> it is therefore expected that there cannot be a bare plural
and des N in French
-> only competitor is de in the scope of negation
The End