Certain singular countable nouns do not require determinatives in specific syntactic environments
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Linguistic literature documents that certain singular count nouns can appear without standard determiners, quantifiers, or demonstratives when functioning in specific syntactic environments such as subject positions in categorical statements.
This paper aims at investigating under which conditions Danish Bare Singular Count Nouns (BSCNs) can function as subjects in standard categorical statements, i.e. outside special discourse types such as proverbs, newspaper headlines, titles of paintings, etc. Taking as a point of departure a brief discussion of the distributional differences between, on the one hand, Bare Plural count nouns (BPs) and mass nouns and, on the other, BSCNs, it is shown that, contrary to BP- and mass noun subjects, BSCNs in subject position are non-referential and do not imply existential presupposition. On these grounds, and on the basis of analyses of phenomena such as agreement features, genericity and pseudo-incorporation, it is argued that the BSCN-subjects of categorical statements are objects which, owing to the lack of realisation of nominal functional categories, act as property-denoting modifiers restricting the denotation of a covert predicate. Consequently, it is concluded that BSCNs in subject position do not function as arguments in themselves, but are instead pseudo-incorporated into the covert predicate as modifiers.
... not without value as linguistic evidence . 7.4.1.2 Principles of excerption The study includes nouns in argument ... singular count nouns that are not modified by a demonstrative , quantifier , or possessive noun / pronoun . Proper ...
This volume explores the multiple aspects of cyclical syntactic change from a wide range of empirical perspectives. The notion of 'linguistic cycle' has long been recognized as being relevant to the description of many processes of language change. In grammaticalization, a given linguistic form loses its lexical meaning - and sometimes some of its phonological content - and then gradually weakens until it ultimately vanishes. This change becomes cyclical when the grammaticalized form is replaced by an innovative item, which can then develop along exactly the same pathway. But cyclical changes have also been observed in language change outside of grammaticalization proper. The chapters in this book reflect the growing interest in the phenomenon of grammaticalization and cyclicity in generat
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