Bare and Not-So-Bare Nouns and the Structure of NP

This article examines the distribution and interpretational variability of bare nouns and [classifier + noun] phrases in Cantonese and Mandarin. We argue that bare nouns are never bare in structure and that [classifier + noun] phrases may have more structure than just Classifier Phrase. We show that...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Linguistic inquiry 1999-10, Vol.30 (4), p.509-542
Main Authors: Cheng, Lisa Lai-Shen, Sybesma, Rint
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Cantonese
classifiers
count nouns
Descriptive studies and applied theories
Linguistics
Mandarin
mass nouns
noun interpretation
Noun phrases
Nouns
NP structure
Numerals
Phrase structure
Predicates
Pronouns
Proper names
Semantics
Soups
Thematic studies
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Summary:This article examines the distribution and interpretational variability of bare nouns and [classifier + noun] phrases in Cantonese and Mandarin. We argue that bare nouns are never bare in structure and that [classifier + noun] phrases may have more structure than just Classifier Phrase. We show that the lack of articles and number morphology in Cantonese/Mandarin leads to many interesting differences between Chinese-type languages and English-/Italian-type languages.
ISSN:0024-3892
1530-9150
DOI:10.1162/002438999554192